Rumors are Going Around the Patriots Orchestrated Antonio Brown's Release

When the news about Antonio Brown first broke I looked at the Patriots Avengers-like collection of metahuman receivers and joked that the NFL would probably find some way to stop this. That Ginger Satan would use his absolute power to undo it somehow. Well, I’m not joking now.

It didn’t take long for the conspiracy theories to start. Sources in the league telling people something’s fishy here. Former players saying it’s “rigged.” This is probably just the beginning of something that’s going to go deeper and deeper. There’ll be more rumors. Talk of tampering. People will demand an investigation. The Raiders or some other team could file charges.

And if true, it’ll have devastating effects. The Patriots would have to pay a terrible price for tampering with a player like Brown.

There’s a direct, apples-to-apples precedent to this situation. A generational talent. The highest paid player at a so-called “skill” position. A certain future Hall of Famer who was integral to his team’s plans. Then he gets released and then signs a new deal with another team so fast that it’s likely they were negotiating while he was still under contract. This happened. The league found that team guilty and exacted a heavy punishment. Catastrophic, when you think about it.

The year? 2015. The player? Darrelle Revis. His team? The Patriots. The guilty party? The Jets. The punishment? A $100,000 fine.

The league does not take these things lightly. Especially when the team doing the tampering has a history of this sort of thing, which the Jets do. Revis was their third offense. On top of the other things they did to cheat like have an assistant coach trip an opponent’s punt team gunner. So they brought the heavy hammer of justice down on them with that heavy fine.

And if the Patriots get caught tampering with Brown, I’m afraid they’ll face the same fate. Mr. Kraft will have no choice but to pull out his checkbook and put down a “1” with six “0”s after it. Look at what it’s done to the Jets when it was Woody Johnson having to write that check. They’ve never recovered.

I hope they’re not guilty and they don’t have to pay such a crushing penalty. But it’s not a good look when a guy who just lost his job and doesn’t know where he’s going to end up reacts like this:

The conspiracy theorizing begin.