Austin's Jets Deal Reportedly “Dead”

The waters surrounding Cowboys’ receiver Miles Austin began to look a little murky early last week.
 
First was the initial, “We may be interested in Miles Austin” reports out of New York; these reports are generally taken with a grain of salt, and with good reason. Football writing in early April is somewhat reminiscent of building a mansion on sand.
 
But the Jets seemed persistent. General manager Mike Tannenbaum has used contract structures ripe with “poison pill” clauses to wrestle players away from teams in the past (see: Curtis Martin in 1998).
 
The interest certainly seemed to be there, and perhaps a bit of serendipity; Austin was drafted by Bill Parcells, the Jersey-est guy this side of Tony Soprano, who maintains a pretty good relationship with Tannenbaum.
 
Austin’s weekend visit to New York was, initially, vaguely scary for Dallas fans (assuming they don’t hate Miles Austin for one reason or another); I say “vaguely” because he spent the weekend after his Friday visit with the Jets, but, then, Austin did grow up in near by Garfield, New Jersey.
 
That is, there was a pretty good chance that he spent most of that time painting eggs and eating tepid ham sandwiches with his family.
 
Austin’s future with Dallas still seemed pretty questionable once the mutilated chocolate bunnies had been digested, and to be sure, some eyebrows in Dallas, and particularly Valley Ranch, must have been raised.
 
Because the Monmouth-graduate remains an exciting prospect for a young receiving corps with myriad question marks. Dallas has invested time in Austin and it would fall somewhere between painful and unbearable to watch the kid blossom up north.
 
And that’s why an early report on Tuesday from the New York Daily News’ Rich Cimini should induce a collective sigh of relief. Cimini, who works as the Jets’ beat writer has reported that a potential deal between the team and Austin is “dead.” No green and white for Austin, no poison pill for Dallas.
 
Now, back to life, back to reality. Assuming the early report holds true, count that as one less question mark for Dallas’ receiving corps.  This is good; they already have plenty of those.