In any professional sport, winning costs money. Great players who lead their teams to victory ask to be paid accordingly. As they say, to the victor go the spoils. But in the NFL, the spoils are limited by the salary cap.

The two franchises that have been able to work around this issue most efficiently – the Philadelphia Eagles, with four straight appearances in the NFC Championship game, and the New England Patriots, with three of the past four Super Bowl titles – each face their greatest obstacle yet when it comes to balancing economic efficiency with the need to keep their stars happy. For the Eagles, the issue is receiver Terrell Owens; for the Patriots, the focus is defensive lineman Richard Seymour.

Each player is challenging his team’s stance against re-negotiating contracts with more than a single year remaining. Each player has held out of minicamp and threatens to hold out of training camp and possibly the regular season. Both teams are responding in the same way, holding their ground and declaring that they will not change their contract re-negotiation policies. But should these players actually hold out for part of the upcoming season, the effect on the two teams will be much different.

A talkative wide receiver like Owens gets more press than a quiet defensive lineman like Seymour, but the latter has a far better case for a new contract. A filing error by his previous agent blocked Owens from unrestricted free agency, but the veteran was able to arrange a trade to the Eagles last year. Playing in Philadelphia rather than Baltimore was Owens’s choice, and he even got to re-negotiate a contract that put a hefty $10 million signing bonus in his bank account. Owens’s contract calls for a base salary of just $3.25 million in 2005, but when you include his signing bonus, he earns $6.6 million a year, the third-highest total in the league behind Oakland’s Randy Moss and Indianapolis’s Marvin Harrison.

Seymour, on the other hand, is still playing under the rookie contract he signed when drafted in 2001. At the time, the Pats demanded that he sign for six years, rather than the five most rookies get. His 2005 salary of $2.8 million will be less than half the average of what the top five best-paid defensive linemen make, and his original signing bonus, if pro-rated over all six seasons, comes out to less than $1 million a year.

Furthermore, Seymour is a singular talent in a way that Owens is not. As great as Owens was in 2004, he is just one of several great wide receivers in today’s NFL, on par with not just Moss and Harrison but also Torry Holt of St. Louis and Hines Ward of Pittsburgh. Seymour, however, has a reasonable case as the best defensive lineman in the game today. He is a rare lineman who excels against both the pass and the run, attracting double- and sometimes triple teams. He’s one of only two linemen to be named to three straight Pro Bowl teams (La’Roi Glover of the Cowboys is the other). And while the 32-year-old Owens likely has his best years behind him, the 26-year-old Seymour is just entering his prime.

Both Seymour and Owens are demanding salaries matching their status among the game’s elite. Neither front office disagrees that Seymour and Owens are worth top dollar. Instead, the Eagles and Patriots are wondering if paying top dollar for a great wide receiver or a great defensive lineman is the best way to build a championship team under the salary cap. And while Seymour is the better player, Philadelphia is the team that needs to answer “yes.”

For proof, we need look no further than last winter. Both Seymour and Owens missed time to injuries during the regular season, and sat out the entire postseason before returning in the Super Bowl. The Patriots did not miss a beat, defensively dominating both the Colts and the Steelers in the AFC playoffs. In Seymour’s absence, Pats coach Bill Belichick called on backup Jarvis Green, who at 26 is also entering his prime; New England’s other two starting defensive linemen – Ty Warren and Vince Wilfork – are also recent first round draft picks.

Philadelphia, on the other hand, has no replacement for Owens. The other Eagles receivers are a collection of secondary talents who perform best when used in specific roles that play to their strengths. Without Owens, quarterback Donovan McNabb has career averages of 6.7 yards per attempt and 58.4% completion percentage; with Owens playing, McNabb managed 8.3 and 64.0%. Owens’s presence and ability to attract the top defenders also improved his fellow receivers. Todd Pinkston, for one, could concentrate on finding holes in zone coverage, leading to a season where he averaged more yards per catch and caught a higher percentage of passes than ever before in his career.

The Eagles were able to win two playoff games last year without Owens, but that’s no reason to believe they can do it again. The huge chasm between the Eagles and the rest of the NFC is not going to exist every year, and even if the Eagles do dominate the NFC, they’ll still need to beat the best team from the AFC in order to win a Super Bowl. Without Seymour, the Patriots would still be a very good team in an extremely competitive conference. But replace Philadelphia’s offense with the Owens-free 2003 version, and the Eagles would no longer be miles ahead of the rest of the NFC. That, more than the age or quotability of these two players, is the difference between the holdouts.

Mr. Schatz is the editor in chief of FootballOutsiders.com.