Andre Johnson won’t be in attendance at the Texans’ mandatory minicamp this week, the wideout’s advisor and uncle Andre Melton tells Brian T. Smith of the Houston Chronicle. According to Smith, Melton’s comments today confirmed that Johnson and the Texans remain “at odds,” with no immediate end in sight for the standoff. With training camp several weeks away, Melton says the Houston receiver has yet to determine whether or not he’ll extend his holdout into July and August.
“We’ll evaluate it in a month or so and see what’s going on,” Melton said.
As Joel Corry of CBSSports.com notes (via Twitter), Johnson forfeited a $1MM roster bonus by skipping the Texans’ OTAs, so by comparison, the fine for missing this week’s minicamp “is peanuts.”
Johnson made his frustration public for the first time last month, wondering aloud if Houston was still the place for him after the club’s disastrous 2013 campaign and suggesting that he likely wouldn’t attend June’s OTAs or minicamp. The longtime Texan, who will turn 33 in July, added that the offseason had been “very frustrating,” and expressed some unhappiness that the team continues to cycle through coaches and quarterbacks.
It’s not clear what sort of resolution we can expect between Johnson and the Texans. There are still three years remaining on the wideout’s current contract, and he hasn’t indicated that he wants to renegotiate that deal. A trade to a contender is one possibility, but Houston doesn’t appear amenable to that idea, and in any case, many potential trade partners have filled their rosters and no longer have cap space to take on a player who is set to earn a $10MM base salary in 2014.