Saint's interested in Pacman?
The problem I have with Haynesworth are not his off-the-field problems (if he even has any, i'm not aware of any). He's had I think 2 spitting incidents in practice, was nearly party to a fight between Vince Young and a defensive player over violent hits in a non-contact drill ("We need more thugs on defense" being Haynesworth's quote), of course the Gurode face-stomping incident, etc.
He's just too unstable. The risk of him blowing his top and alienating himself to the team or doing something in a game that will probably result in a lengthier suspension since it won't be his first "incident" is pretty high.
He says he's improved, I think he had to do a variety of "anger management" work as part of his first suspensions, and maybe he has. I mean people mellow out as they get older. That's an evaluation the staff would have to make.
But considering you'd have to trade a high draft pick and hand him a huge contract . . . just strikes me as risky.
Pacman is almost the inverse. We can probably get him for cheap draft pick-wise and contractually, just because he's got no negotiating leverage at all. But the bad publicity and risk of him doing something that gets him kicked from football permanently strikes me as significantly higher.
Excellent contrast between Haynesworth and Jones.
Not only is Jones hard-working, he's probably smarter than your average NFL player as well, but his lack of structure, and his inability to avoid accumulating the wrong posse and to avoid not just situations that ARE trouble, but that LEAD to trouble, are killing him.
(Which is why the 7th chance post above was so $$.)
This guy is a game-changing player, as a cover man and as a return man. He's a good teammate between the sidelines and on team property, which isn't the whole equation, but it's a big part of it. I'm trying to compare him to some NBA players with terrible reputations that, mystically, no one's heard a bad thing about in quite a while, particularly Iverson, and also Steven Jackson.
It took AI, who grew up in absolute hardscrabble, quite a while to learn that his posse also owed HIM some loyalty by self-weeding out the wrong guys and protecting their boy. The AI who talked about the honor of playing for this country and the appreciation he now has for Larry Brown is the same guy who was in a giant bowling alley brawl and "talkin' bout practice", just with a few more years on him.
I have no idea if Jones has made, is making or is ever capable of making that leap, but it's sure as hell worth looking into. The NFL is all about accruing small advantages over time, in the course of a matchup, a play, a drive, a half, a game, a season, an off-season. If you have the nerve and the judgment to get a solid gold nugget for twenty cents on the dollar just because everyone else thinks it's pyrite, that's a giant pile of small advantages right there, the kind of head start that gives you a chance to do things like win 18 games in a row and make a bid for history.