Webster Slaughter: A great player who helped change the game
By STEVE KING
Webster Slaughter is one of the best wide receivers the Browns have ever had.
Inducted last year into the Cleveland Browns Legends, the team’s hall of fame, he had 305 receptions for 4,834 yards (15.8 yards-per-catch average) and 27 touchdowns in a six- year career that lasted from 1986-91.
But Slaughter is known for something else as well, of which we are reminded by the fact the NFL free agency signing period begins at 4 p.m. Wednesday..
It is that he was a pioneer as one of the league’s first true free agents nearly 29 years ago.
It was on Sept. 24, 1992 that U.S. District Court Judge David Doty ruled that Slaughter, along with three other players in Philadelphia Eagles tight end Keith Jackson, New England Patriots defensive end Garin Veris and Detroit Lions running back D.J. Dozier were being awarded a temporary restraining order and became unrestricted free agents for five days, until an evidentiary hearing could be heard.
All but Dozier signed contracts with new teams in that short window of opportunity, Slaughter with the — gulp! — AFC Central rival Houston Oilers, a team he had bedeviled throughout his career, including in the 1988 regular-season finale when he caught six pases for 136 yards, including the game-winner, as Cleveland rallied from a 16-point third-quarter deficit to survive at home to earn a playoff berth, Jackson with the Miami Dolphins and Veris with the San Francisco 49ers.
Slaughter’s contract had expired after the 1991 season and, along with the three other players, he had steadfastly maintained throughout the offseason that he was an unrestricted free agent who could sign with any team. The Browns had just as steadfastly maintained that he wasn’t free at all, that he had to re-up with them or sit out the year. The league was operating what was called Plan B free agency, a very limiting system whereby teams could protect almost all of their players, leaving exposed only those players they didn’t want.
The Browns, then, were shocked by the court’s ruling, and that Slaughter was allowed to leave while getting nothing in return. It was an embarrassingly bad decision on their part. They played poker, gambled big and lost it all
The following year, with no legal leg to stand on, the NFL and its owners had to allow the beginning of unrestricted free agency, pretty much as we know it today..
Slaughter still had plenty of gas left in the tank, as evidenced by the fact that, in three sessions with the Oilers, he caught 184 passes, 145 of which came in the last two years, for 11 touchdowns as that club, led by Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Warren Moon and an explosive pass offense, unsuccessfully chased its first Super Bowl trip.
He went to his old head coach in Cleveland, Marty Schottenheimer, who was then in charge of the Kansas City Chiefs, in 1995, catching 34 passes for four TDs. He had a similar season the following year — 32 catches for two scores — with the New York Jets in 1996. He then retired, but only temporarily. After sitting out the 1997 season, the San Diego State product and Stockton, Cal. native returned to his roots to play with the San Diego Chargers for the 12th — and final — year of his career, seeing only limited action.
Slaughter finished with 563 receptions overall for 8,111 yards (14.4) and 44 TDs. If he had done all that with the Browns, then he would now stand second on the club in career catches, 99 behind his former teammate, Ozzie Newsome, first in yards receiving and fifth in TD grabs.
But fate got in the way of that happening. He was destined to do more in more ways than one.
And NFL players for nearly the last 30 years, with the way unrestricted free agency has benefitted them and the league overall by allowing bad teams to get better through more avenues than just the draft, are so very glad he did.
