Antonio Brown Likely To Win Grievance Against Patriots?

While Antonio Brown is looking at an uphill battle if he wants to play football again in 2019, it does seem like he at least has a good chance to recoup some of the money he lost in his various releases.

The “consensus” of five different league sources is that the Patriots will eventually have to pay Brown the $9MM signing bonus they chose to withhold from him, according to Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports. It doesn’t sound like they’ll have to fork over the cash anytime soon though, as Robinson’s sources expect Patriots owner Robert Kraft will have to pay out “deep into the 2020 calendar, after an exhaustive arbitration grievance.”

One source took a particularly strong stance, saying “[New England] fighting to keep that signing bonus now is either a gross misunderstanding of [the CBA’s] rules on voiding signing bonuses or it’s just out of spite. I can’t believe they don’t understand the signing bonus voids in the CBA. There’s just no way. This is just spitefulness. They’re fighting [Brown] completely out of the anger and embarrassment in ownership.”

It seems like Brown is likely to get back $9MM from New England, and he isn’t going to stop there. We heard just yesterday that Brown was looking to pursue a grievance against the Raiders, although he might have a more difficult time getting money back from Oakland due to his repeated antics during his time as a Raider. The Patriots didn’t cut Brown after sexual assault allegations became public and allowed him to play in their Week 2 win over the Dolphins, which will make it hard for them to argue they released Brown because of information they weren’t aware of.

Although the star receiver has threatened retirement and has gone back and forth on Twitter about whether or not he wants to continue playing, his agent insists that he does and that teams are interested pending the league’s investigation into the assault allegations. We’ll keep you posted as soon as we hear any new developments on the grievance.

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