The 10 craziest NFL offseason stories

It may be easy to forget now, but the saga of Tom Brady’s stolen Super Bowl jersey occupied an entire month and a half of NFL coverage, from early February until late March, when the jersey was finally recovered thanks to the work of Houston police, the FBI and Mexican authorities. Given that kind of breathless buildup, it’s nice that the payoff was as insane as it was. If only Deflategate could have been as rewarding.

Anyway, cheers to Martin Mauricio Ortega, now former news director for Diario La Prensa, on being the perpetrator of perhaps the most notorious international sports merch heist to date.

Michael Floyd blamed a failed Breathalyzer on kombucha tea

After he was allowed to pick up a ring with the New England Patriots despite being cut earlier in the season by the Cardinals for being arrested for an extreme DUI, receiver Michael Floyd joined the Minnesota Vikings in the offseason. Sure, there was still the matter of his house arrest, but that would all be cleared up by the start of the 2017 season. Except he violated the terms of said house arrest when he failed three self-administered Breathalyzer tests and slept through a fourth in early June after, he said, watching movies with teammate Kyle Rudolph and drinking kombucha tea.

Floyd said he was unaware the tea contained alcohol and that the team had told him to drink it. He was sentenced to one more day in jail, and now the Vikings can joke about this harmless mishap instead of the truly frightening drunk driving arrest he had the year before.

The Cowboys cut Lucky Whitehead over nothing

Jerry Jones is not exactly known for his strong ethical stances when it comes to player behavior, so long as the players can produce on the field. He signed Greg Hardy and kept him around for the entire 2015 season despite showing little remorse for assaulting his ex-girlfriend. There’s also a book’s worth of outlandish behavior from the Cowboys of the 1990s, and there isn’t space to begin recounting that here. But apparently being accused of stealing less than $200 worth of stuff from a Wawa in Virginia was a bridge too far.

The Cowboys cut returner Lucky Whitehead this week after Virginia police announced he was wanted on petty larceny charges. While Dallas wouldn’t be the first team to cut a marginal player following the announcement of criminal charges, this situation has been complicated by the fact the police have cleared Whitehead in a case of mistaken identity.

The Super Bowl champs strike back against fake news

The New England Patriots’ visit to the White House was easily the most discussed of any championship team visit, for several reasons. One: because of Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with owner Robert Kraft, head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady. Two: because a number of players who aren’t Brady announced that they would not join the team in the visit due to opposition to Trump and his policies. Three: because people who oppose Trump feel powerless and gloating about things like inauguration crowds and the amount of football players who visit the White House feels like fighting back, somehow. 

The day of the Pats’ White House visit, a number of images circulated social media comparing the team’s 2015 visit with President Barack Obama and the 2017 visit with Trump. The most recent was noticeably smaller, which really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but is a nice way to razz Trump if you’re so inclined. The Pats, however, won’t countenance any unfair criticism of their good buddy. So they took to Twitter to set The Resistance straight.

Bruce Arians: paint chugger

This one didn’t technically happen over the offseason, but it's worth including because an NFL head coach admitted that he had his stomach pumped twice because he drank paint. Why, exactly, would one drink paint? Well, according to Arians, he’s lactose-intolerant, and paint seemed like something milk-like that would toughen him up to play football. And this is considered to be one of the NFL’s smarter coaches.

Gisele supposedly drops the dime on Tom Brady’s concussions

For several years now, Gisele Bundchen has made it clear that she would prefer that her soon-to-be 40-year-old husband Tom Brady retire from football. Brady, however, has indicted, quite publicly at that, that he isn’t terribly concerned with his wife’s wishes, at least as they pertain to his playing career. 

Gisele got a bit of revenge when she dropped the revelation in May that Brady played with an unreported concussion in 2016 and implied he has had others that have not been disclosed. The NFL responded by saying it reviewed all reports from unaffiliated neurological consultants and found no evidence of this, but considering how forthcoming the league has been on the matter, fair to say it’s not unreasonable to give Gisele the benefit of the doubt anyway.

The 'Skins cut ties with Scot McCloughan and immediately blamed alcoholism

After presided over a two-year period of startling competence in Washington, Washington GM Scot McCloughan was fired by the team in early March. This being Dan Snyder’s team, such a move could not be done without the utmost of pettiness, so a team official anonymously told The Washington Post that day that the decision was related to McCloughan’s ongoing problems with alcohol abuse, though a half-dozen players interviewed for the same story denied that they observed any problems with McCloughan and drinking. 

The president bragged that he’s keeping a quarterback unemployed

The employment status of Colin Kaepernick has been the most enduring story of the 2017 NFL offseason. Kaepernick continues to not have a job and has only even met with one team – the Seattle Seahawks – about signing. Meanwhile, such illustrious passers as Dan Orlovsky, Kellen Clemens, Matt McGloin, Mark Sanchez, Matt Barkley, Ryan Fitzpatrick and T.J. Yates have gotten work. 

There’s little doubt that Kaepernick is being avoided for political reasons. Naturally, those who benefit from the kind of politics that oppose Kaepernick will celebrate, and it just so happens that one of those people is the sitting president, who gloated to supporters that one of the reported reasons that teams are avoiding Kaepernick is because owners don’t want their teams to be the subject of one of Trump’s derisive tweets.

Shareece Wright took a $900 Uber ride to get to voluntary workouts

One of the nice things about being an NFL player is having the kind of disposable income to do ridiculous things. But then one of the less-than-great aspects is there being pressure to attend what are described as voluntary workouts. So in some ways it’s kind of a wash, especially with the whole potential for brain injury thing. 

Anyway, back in June, Bills cornerback Shareece Wright took an eight-hour Uber ride from Chicago to Orchard Park, N.Y., when his flight was canceled. The actual cost of the trip was $632.08, but then Wright tipped $300 on top of it, which is awfully decent of him.

The Raiders announced their move to Las Vegas

The Raiders’ quest to get a fancy new stadium has gone on for decades and already once resulted in the franchise ditching Oakland, for Los Angeles, only to return to set up another split. But now the divorce is permanent, and the Raiders are departing California entirely for the sports boom town of Las Vegas. 

The team being lured away by a stadium being built with $750 million in public money only makes the situation all the more tawdry, as does the fact that the Raiders still have to stick around Oakland for at least another two seasons.