We just had an interesting chat with Seattle rookie linebacker Aaron Curry. Interesting because Curry held out of training camp for eight days and perhaps can offer a peek into Michael Crabtree's brain. The first thing that Curry said was that he tried to stay out of the negotiations and let his agents handle everything.
"I hired ... my agents for a reason because I trusted them to do what was right and what was best for me and my family. So I knew it was going to be a hard time. It was tough for me to be out for those few days, but I had faith (in my agents) that they would work hard to get a deal done in a reasonable time."
Did the holdout set you back?
"I don't think it set me back too much because of the fact that we installed our entire playbook during OTAs and minicamp, so in my eight days off I was just studying my playbook. The only hard thing was there's a difference between studying your playbook and actually performing the actions. ... It took me two or three days to catch up."
What kind of grief did you get in the locker room for being gone?
"No, I didn't get any grief. I got a lot of jokes. Everybody just had some good humor for me. Overall, you could tell everybody was happy that I was there. They knew that I wanted to be there."
Prior to the draft, Curry also said that he looked at the depth charts of all the teams picking in the Top 20 and envisioned himself playing on those teams. So did he see himself in red and gold?
"I put myself in the 49ers' defense, and I put myself right next to Patrick Willis in the 3-4," Curry said. How'd he play? "I think I played great because you've gotta run away from Patrick Willis, so that would leave no option but to run at me. That would be great."
-- Matt Barrows
