This was easy to predict knowing what we know now, the Raiders apparently fined him 250k and sent him another warning letter. Morons. They should have just released him yesterday if they were going to do that. They weren't listening, or they were building their case to void the contract.
He's going to land. While Belichek has established a culture, and missed practice pisses Brady off, Belichek came from a regime that had different rules for different players with the Giants. And that won them a few superbowls. He doesn't play by the rules himself. I could see it happening. Obviously he likes Houston too.
Guess the question is whether AB’s issue with the league excused him from skipping team practices. I would say it didn’t, especially if your team was “backing” you. On top of that, believe he skipped practice after he apparently resolved the issue. AB is elite, no doubt about that. A leader? Don’t think many coaches would think so after his antics the last year.
^Yeah throughout I thought the raiders were supporting his helmet campaign as much as they possibly could. IDK what else they could have done... guess they could have paid his attorney fees, for the appeals? Let him throw his tantrums & violate his contract without consequence? Raiders could have threatened to boycott all their games this season until the NFL lets AB wear whatever he wants? So what the raiders did, that one might interpret as not treating AB like a human being, is warning letters and fines? And geez man... are you still feeling good about analogizing AB's behavior, to Obama?! I see a massive disconnect on both those fronts, but appreciate you trying to explain a counter to all this even if I can't see even a sliver of it... I'd yet to hear anyone trying to defend this perspective.
There is a whole field dedicated to this called emotional intelligence. That's the human part of it. They treated him like an object in this marriage, not a human. Every action they took was additional disrespect. Right down to making his contract week to week. It's dehumanizing and disrespect for a guy like AB. The Raiders were all about protecting themselves, which they did, and now you see the result of it. It was predictable. For better or worse, we shall see.
Oakland had no real choice with AB. He apologized because he wanted his contract guaranteed - that's it. No way Oakland wants to get locked into $15-$30MM of guarantees with a player that might flip out again next week. They were right to void that part given they had a deadline looming. Now they have options. If AB wants to play hard, he can still get paid with the Raiders. If he no-shows, they can just keep him on the roster and keep fining/suspending/not-paying him. If they decide to release him, they owe nothing and he can go sign a smaller contract elsewhere.
There is. And AB has none of it. He screwed himself out of millions of dollars by acting like a petulant child. Oakland is out a 3rd round pick at worst. If they had indulged him, they might have been out $30MM. This isn't just Oakland - he flipped out on Pittsburgh too, which spurred all this.
Has anyone reported on how much the undisclosed fine was (specifically for the confrontation with the GM), that he got along with the $200k one?