The owners decided to keep the fans in their seats with their new anthem policy.
Ten Thoughts on the week that was in football.
1. For Bob Kraft to announce that Tom Brady will be at next month’s mini camp, that must mean Brady told Kraft and Bill Belichick that he was going to take the off-season conditioning program off.
2. As a side not, here is what Brady is doing today. He’s at the Monaco Grand Prix.
3. The NFL’s new anthem policy is flawed but the owners aren’t stupid. They know most fans were opposed to players kneeling during the anthem. In order to placate the fans and not affect their ticket sales, they came up with this policy. The NFL is a business folks. The owners will do what’s best for business.
4. New York Congressmen Peter King went on a tirade on Twitter yesterday questioning Jets CEO Christopher Johnson for saying he would pay the fines of players who were fined for kneeling. Here is King’s tweet.
While I think King’s tweet is pointless jibberish, I also don’t see the point of what Johnson is doing. He is directly opposing the league and the owners which doesn’t make much sense when you consider the fact that it’s the owners who are imposing the new anthem policy.
5. Raiders coach Jon Gruden said this week that he loves to pillage the Chiefs for talent. Does Gruden realize he signed Derrick Johnson and not Justin Houston?
6. Why is there a negative reaction to Michigan offering eighth grade prospect Tyler Martin a scholarship? Martin is in eighth grade and is already 6-3 227. He’s a monster who will only get bigger. It makes sense to offer him now for Michigan. Besides, basketball coaches have been offering seventh and eighth graders scholarships for years.
7. According to former Seahawks defensive end Cliff Avril. The team started questioning Pete Carroll after Russell Wilson’s interception in Super Bowl 49. Right. Avril is trying to land a football analyst job and what better way to do that than to make an outlandish statement like this. Please! Nice fake take Cliff!
8. Ben Roethlisberger is now open to helping out rookie quarterback Mason Rudolph. Again, I don’t understand why he wouldn’t? Roethlisberger is not going to play forever. We didn’t even know if he was going to play this season. Talk about a diva!
9. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers ran into Falcons general manager Thomas Dimitroff at the airport (I love the running into each other at the airport thing by the way) and he thanked him for extending Matt Ryan to a long term deal. Rodgers told Dimitroff he can now “move on with his life”. Something tells me this story is coming from Rodgers camp. He and his people are nudging the Packers for a new deal.
10. I would like to send my condolences to the family of former Indiana coach Doug Mallory who passed away on Friday at the age of 82.