Chris O'meara / AP

This is the second straight offseason that Anquan Boldin has made noise about being unhappy with his contract, and this time he even switched agents.

How the unhappiness is managed is key said Rodney Harrison, the former Patriots safety who recently joined NBC as an analyst for Football Night in America.

“When a guy signs a contract, he has to be a man,” Harrison declared. “A lot of guys have two good years then want a new deal with two or three left. Don’t sign it if you don’t want to live up to it. Don’t sign a five-year if you feel you will outplay it. But if you sign the contract, live up to it. A lot of times, players sign free agent contracts and then are a disappointment for two years. Those teams aren’t asking for their money back.”

There are obvious exceptions, Harrison allows, and a player shouldn’t feel badly about broaching the issue with the team but, “It’s all in the way you do things. There will always be bumps and hiccups. You can either handle it classy or be in the public eye and rant and rave.”

Veteran agent Ralph Cindrich, who played for the Patriots and Oilers in the 1970s and had his own agency for more than 30 years, said the number of contract dustups has risen in recent years.

Players are more willing to go public now than ever, Cindrich says.

“When you have a player that wants to get into a war with two years left, you normally won’t win that war,” said Cindrich. “I think the prevailing view is, ‘All’s fair in love and war,’ but if you go into a holdout situation, you better know your client and he better be a strong guy. I always had very strong players mentally.”

Even if the player gets what he wants, Cindrich says, there can be collateral damage.

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“You run the risk of trashing yourself as an individual and a player that’s making noise and becoming a distraction if you don’t have a great case,” he said. “I guess it works, but I haven’t had a lot of players willing to do that and I don’t have great taste for it.”

The key to the player saving face, said Cindrich, is simple. 

“One thing that does help is if you have to have a moral issue (in holding out),” he explained. “You have to be right. Someone has to be able to look at it and say, ‘Yeah, he has a contract and he was a dumbass to sign it, but look at all these other guys he’s better than but is making less than. He does have a point.”

Who’s right and who’s wrong is going to be endlessly dissected.

“When these things go on, it makes the media’s day,” said Smith, the Chargers GM. “Then everyone can line up and have an opinion. The media needs something to write about and something to talk about. They’re not going to have one story at preseason, another at midseason and another at the end of the season. What, three articles for the whole year? The media needs these things. And I listen to all of it and find it very entertaining. I’m a fan, myself.”

With TV, talk radio, websites and newspapers kicking over rocks to find disgruntled players and outlets like twitter, blogs and personal appearances giving players and agents their own venues for venting, the wait for the next contractual brouhaha is short.

“It happens in all aspects of life, it isn’t just football,” concluded Seymour. “Everything isn’t always going to go your way but you have to know which battles are worth fighting. All battles aren’t worth fighting. Once you choose your battle and come to a conclusion that ‘this is what I’m going to do...’ that’s what you do.”

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