Patriots owner Robert Kraft may not want to pay Antonio Brown any of his $9 million signing bonus, but he may have to grit his teeth and sign a check before too long.
In a piece from Yahoo, five unidentified league sources agreed that the Patriots will have to fork over some cash to Brown when he eventually files a grievance with the league.
“[New England] fighting to keep that signing bonus now is either a gross misunderstanding of [the Collective Bargaining Agreement’s] rules on voiding signing bonuses or it’s just out of spite,” one source told Yahoo. “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.”
Brown’s signing bonus was set to be paid in two installments, the first of which ($5 million) was due the Monday after his release from the Patriots last Friday.
Yahoo cited Article 4, section 9 of the CBA as Brown’s case for getting paid. Simply put, the civil lawsuit Brown faces, additional claims of sexual misconduct against him and other actions that led to his release don’t fall under the conditions of the CBA that constitute a breach of contract, therefore entitling Brown to his signing bonus.
Yahoo’s sources added, however, New England could have had an argument to get out from under Brown’s deal if they cut him immediately after they learned of the civil lawsuit filed by Britney Taylor, Brown’s former trainer, in which she says Brown sexually assaulted her twice in 2017 and forcibly raped her in 2018.
“If they had cut [Brown] as soon as they became aware of the civil suit, then there’s the argument of the [withholding] breach undermining the entire agreement,” a source told Yahoo. “But they kept him on the roster after that lawsuit was filed. They played him in a game. They even paid him checks for [two weeks of] work. If the civil suit was a true deal-breaker, the Patriots could have shown it by breaking the deal. Their actions speak to their intent and their intent was shown when they continued to pay him after the civil suit.”
Two days after his release by New England, Brown announced on Twitter he "will not be playing" in the NFL anymore and referenced the combined $39 million in guaranteed money he's lost to this point from both the Patriots and Raiders. In a separate, since-deleted tweet, Brown likened his legal situation to Kraft's misdemeanor charge of soliciting a prostitute last winter.
After Brown's Twitter tirade, an ESPN source said Kraft is "never writing that check, no matter what the ruling is now.”
According to Yahoo, Brown's expected grievance could run deep into 2020.