Antonio Brown was supposed to help provide the Oakland Raiders’ offense with the spark it was lacking in 2018, but it now sounds like there is at least a possibility that the star wide receiver may never play for the team.
Brown has made headlines for all the wrong reasons in his first offseason in Oakland, the latest of which came when he publicly ripped the Raiders for fining him over the practices he missed during his helmet dispute with the NFL. That led to a heated exchange with GM Mike Mayock, and the Raiders are now suspending Brown. That may only be the start.
As the contract experts from Spotrac note, the Raiders could look to void the guarantees in the contract extension they signed Brown to after acquiring him in a trade with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
It’s perfectly possible that the #Raiders may soon look to void the guarantees for Antonio Brown’s 2019 & 2020 salaries ($14.6M in 2019, $14.5M in 2020) based on various incidents of conduct detrimental to the team.
— Spotrac (@spotrac) September 5, 2019
NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah also speculated that Oakland could look to get out of the deal. Former NFL executive Mike Tannenbaum explained that a typical contract would be structured in a way that the Raiders could void Brown’s guarantees if he is suspended for conduct detrimental to the team and not on the active roster in Week 1.
The significance of a suspension is that it would void (assuming normal contract language) his $29,125,000 in contract guarantees. However, if he’s on the Active Roster on opening day his $14,625,000 ’19 salary becomes guaranteed because he’s a Veteran. They could suspend him https://t.co/I1w7QTgFoq
— Mike Tannenbaum (@RealTannenbaum) September 5, 2019
and then release him and then they would owe him nothing in terms of guaranteed money. The Raiders in all likelihood would try to recoup their $1,000,000 signing bonus as well.
— Mike Tannenbaum (@RealTannenbaum) September 5, 2019
It’s unclear how long Brown’s suspension will be, so it may be premature to think Oakland will look to move on from him. They also desperately need him on offense, so the best outcome would be to figure out a way to put all the drama in the past and focus on football.
Of course, that is a lot easier said than done. Brown filed multiple grievances against the NFL because he was told he could not wear a helmet that no longer meets safety standards, and he seemingly bragged on social media this week that he did all that just to secure a new endorsement deal. He also recently tried to rekindle his feud with Ben Roethlisberger for no apparent reason, so it seems like he has no shortage of ideas for creating distractions.
