After veteran kicker Brandon McManus became a free agent following one season with the Jaguars, he signed with the Commanders. Now that the Commanders have released McManus, there’s a lingering contractual question.
McManus received a $1.5 million signing bonus. It’s not known whether all of the money has already been paid. Often, all or part of the bonus payment is deferred by weeks if not months.
That was the only guaranteed money in a one-year, $3.6 million contract.
The team declined comment on the financial aspects of the decision to terminate McManus. The Commanders could, in theory, argue that McManus knew or should have known about the incident before he was signed, and that he should have disclosed it.
That could be a tough argument to make, if McManus had no reason to believe a lawsuit was coming. The response could be that he should have expected it, based on his behavior. Of course, he denies any misbehavior.
Regardless, the fight will be harder for the Commanders to ultimately win if the money has changed hands. It’s always easier to refuse to pay and then to force the player to use the arbitration process under the Collective Bargaining Agreement to get it.
UPDATE 10:49 p.m. ET: Half of the money was due on or before April 26. The other half is due on or before June 7.
Former Jaguars kicker Brandon McManus is now former Commanders kicker, too.
The Commanders announced on Sunday night that McManus has been released.
The move comes six days after news emerged of a lawsuit filed against him and the team by two flight attendants on the Jaguars’ flight to London in 2023. The plaintiffs claim McManus sexually assaulted them. McManus has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
It’s unclear whether and to what extent the Commanders conducted an investigation, or whether they simply decided that the distraction outweighs the expected contributions.
Here’s an interesting twist. Atlas Air Worldwide, the company that flew the Jaguars to London, is owned by Apollo Global Management. Apollo was co-founded by Commanders majority owner Josh Harris.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Harris continues to own Apollo stock, although he’s no longer on the board of directors and otherwise has no role in the management of the company. That said, he’s in position to potentially find out enough through Atlas as to whether it made sense to cut ties with McManus, based on any information the plaintiffs provided to their employer about McManus’s alleged behavior.
However they got there, the Commanders got there quickly. McManus is out.
Marijuana use has lost its stigma and, in most jurisdictions, any and all threats of criminal prosecution. However, it remains a no-no for the NFL.
It’s stupid. It’s outdated. It needs to go away. Because, however, it’s a matter of collective bargaining, the league won’t simply tear down that wall and let players smoke without consequence.
That makes paragraph 14 of the complaint filed by two Atlas Air flight attendants against the Jaguars and former Jaguars (now Commanders) kicker Brandon McManus significant, as far as 345 Park Avenue is concerned: “Throughout the course of the flight, Plaintiffs smelled marijuana smoke coming from the plane’s restrooms.”
The Jaguars already have a potential problem arising from the potential violations of the alcohol policy that will come to light during the litigation. The marijuana angle creates a separate set of issues.
If people were smoking in the bathroom on the plane, plenty of other people will have smelled it. And when the players and other witnesses to whatever McManus did or didn’t do testify under oath, they’ll have to say what they saw, heard, and smelled.
That testimony could, in turn, get one or more players or other team personnel in a pickle with the substance-abuse policy.
The good news is that suspensions have become much more rare. But fines are still imposed. And if the league still cares about the marijuana policy, it will definitely care about getting to the bottom of the allegation that a specific sort of skunk was a stowaway on the flight to London.
Yes, the Jaguars will have a potential problem from the Brandon McManus — unrelated to whether McManus or the team are found civilly liable for the former kicker’s alleged misconduct.
The complaint uses the word “drinking” or “drink” three times, and the clear implication is that it wasn’t water. Moreover, it’s our understanding that witnesses will say alcohol was brought by Jaguars players onto the plane.
This becomes a problem for the Jaguars because alcohol is strictly prohibited, by league policy, on team property or during team travel. In November 2022, after incidents involving former Titans offensive coordinator Todd Downing and Commanders players, the NFL sent a memo to all teams threatening significant discipline in the event of further violations.
Was it a hollow threat by 345 Park Avenue? We’ll find out soon enough, because it appears that the Jaguars disregarded the memo, only 11 months after it was sent.
And, yes, the policy imposes an obligation on the team to ensure players follow it. It’s not enough that the team doesn’t provide it. The team has to keep players from bringing alcohol onto the plane, based on the NFL’s current rule.
The NFL has revolutionized the kickoff, turning it in the blink of an eye from a dead play into something that will be very much undead. And the consequences of the new approach, which has 19 or 20 players clustered together and not moving until the ball is caught or strikes the ground in the landing zone, remain largely unknown.
On Wednesday, 49ers special teams coordinator Brian Schneider spoke at length about the new rule and the vast changes it will be bringing to the game.
“In the offseason when you get the news it’s a lot of anxiety because what you’re looking at is, the only thing you really have to look at is the XFL and it’s different too, than that,” Schneider told reporters. “So you really try to do as much as you can until the players got here. Because before it was all in my brain and one thing would go to another and then all of a sudden, I think it’s about here now for me, in terms of once we get the fundamentals together, once we ask the players to communicate with us, talk to us, what do you see? And once we kind of broke it down that way to get to, I think some fundamentals that will stick in terms of how to get there, and now we have to see where it goes. Because it’s different. That’s for sure.”
He said he watched “a ton” of XFL tape, even though there are differences between the XFL approach (which wasn’t adopted by the UFL) and the NFL’s configuration. One big similarity is that, once the ball is kicked, most of the players will not be moving at all.
“I think everyone that sees it for the first time, it’s really strange because you see the kickoff and I’m standing right here and it’s just like, it’s like you’re in space,” Schneider said. “You never see that happen without everyone moving. And so, it’s really like the music went off and everything, I was like in the Twilight Zone and then when it happens it’s just, it’s really fast. So getting used to all that for the players and it is going to continue to evolve.”
Schneider sees it evolving through the offseason, the training camp, the preseason, and into the regular season.
“I think you’re going through the whole season,” Schneider said. “I mean, to me, if you don’t look at this like a totally different play than anything we’ve coached, I think you’re going to be playing catch up. So . . . the speed of contact, like last year, those guys are running full speed and there’s a lot of things that happen in terms of what they can and can’t do just by how fast they’re running. That’s out too now. So, all those things, you have to figure out how it works when it’s alive. And we won’t know until the first preseason, like when it’s live, live. But, you know, that’s what makes it interesting.”
One of the most interesting wrinkles will be the decisions made at return specialist. Schneider echoed prior comments from Broncos coach Sean Payton regarding the baseball skills that might be needed to catch a ball that comes in hot, given that hang time will mean nothing if no one can go until the ball is caught or hits the ground.
“It’s all about the ball,” Schneider said. “And so that’s where we always start. So you always try to anticipate what kickers are going to do and it could be anywhere. So that’s where we start preparing. So, is it going to be like a shortstop? Is it, you know, what type of fielding balls are you going to get? What type of guys are there? And then what type of runners are there? I mean, is it going to be better to have a bigger back where you can break through the arm tackles? Because everyone’s going to be engaged. Is it going to be a quicker guy? But it all starts with the football. So that’s where you build everything from and really trying to figure out where they’re going to kick it, how they’re going to kick it.”
Schneider said everyone is still figuring it out.
“There’s 31 other coaches like me that don’t know exactly if we’re on the right track, what it’s going to look like,” Schneider said. “So more than anything, it’s going to be adjusting. And so, right now, I feel good finally with the players and getting their input and working through it all. But that’s going to be — it’s exciting. I mean, I’m fired up. This is the coolest thing to happen in terms of in my coaching career because it’s — what are you going to do? You have a great opportunity to do something that’s never been done before. So, it’s a race to figure it out and it’s going to be constantly adjusting.”
However it goes, Schneider sees it as good news for field position and scoring.
“I think an easier way to explain it is all the kickoff return teams have the advantage,” Schneider said. “Every kickoff return team, just from the way the kickoff team is set up. If you think about it, we’re on the 40-yard line with the same width we were when we were way back at the 35. So, backside almost geometry, I’m not very good at math, but those guys are almost eliminated just by alignment, if that makes sense. So, where it turns into, that’s what everyone tries to figure out. So, all the fundamentals are there, but then the body types that are on there, we’ve just got to see what works. And we have our plan kind of going into it, but I think you’ve just got to be ready to adjust however it looks.”
It’s an excellent, and overlooked, point. The kickoff team will be fanned out. Then, once the ball is caught (or strikes the ground), they’ll have to move.
If the defenders don’t realign, favoring one side of the field, a returner who can get through the first line of defense will have to beat only the kicker. If, in contrast, the coverage team converges in a way that creates multiple levels for the return specialist to navigate, an opening to the backside could blow the whole thing open.
So wake up, football fans. As I said earlier today on Pat McAfee’s show, this is a huge deal. It’s perhaps the biggest change to the game since at least the adoption of the two-point conversion, 30 years ago.
It might be bigger than that. Especially since it’s taking a play that was M-I-A and giving it an E-N-E-M-A.
