It was inevitable. Whether it’s successful remains to be seen.
Via Anthony Olivieri of ESPN.com, former NFL receiver Antonio Brown seeks dismissal of an attempted murder charge based on Florida’s “stand your ground” law.
“Brown’s use of force on May 16, 2025, was fully justified,” Brown’s representation wrote in a motion filed this week. “Brown reasonably believed that the alleged victim intended to cause him serious harm.”
The “stand your ground” law eliminated the duty to retreat before unleashing deadly force.
The effort contains an admission that Brown did indeed fire a gun after he believed he had been attacked at a Miami celebrity boxing event.
“In that moment, Brown again reasonably feared death or great bodily harm,” the motion read, characterizing the action as “warning shots” aimed away from the person who had allegedly attacked Brown.
While I haven’t personally researched Florida law on this topic (that’s a lawyer’s way of saying “I don’t know”), it would seem that the issue ultimately will be part of the stew of facts a jury resolves at trial, like it did in the 2012 prosecution of George Zimmerman, who was acquitted for the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.
And that’s an important point. It’s one thing for Brown’s lawyers to explain his version in writing. It will be quite another for Brown to get on the witness stand and explain why he did what he did.
Even though most criminal defendants elect not to testify, it’s virtually impossible to make the “stand your ground” defense without explaining to the jury the circumstances that led to the decision to act in self-defense.
The stakes are very high. Brown faces up to 30 years in prison, with a potential mandatory minimum of 20 years.
Giants tight end Theo Johnson’s reaction to Patriots linebacker Christian Elliss’ legal hit on Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart landed him a penalty last Monday night and it also landed him more discipline from the league.
Johnson has been fined for $6,488 for his reaction to Elliss hitting Dart in bounds at the end of a run. Elliss was not fined for the hit or for one that dislodged a piece of punt returner Gunner Olszewski’s helmet later in the game.
While Elliss wasn’t fined, Patriots defensive back Jaylinn Hawkins did earn one. He was fined $9,944 for a hit on Johnson when he was deemed a defenseless player. Hawkins was also penalized during the game.
Giants cornerback Dru Phillips was also fined by the league for the same infraction. He was docked $7,292 for a play that went unflagged in the game.
Throughout Bill Belichick’s 24-year tenure with the Patriots, his right-hand man was Berj Najarian. But when Belichick landed in Chapel Hill one year ago, Najarian already had another job.
Now, Najarian is available. Via Kevin Stone of New England Football Journal, Najarian is leaving Boston College. (The report was confirmed by Karen Guregian of MassLive.com.)
Najarian served as coach Bill O’Brien’s chief of staff, taking the job after the Patriots fired Belichick in January 2024. Now that Najarian will be a free agent, the next question is whether he’ll officially re-partner with Belichick at North Carolina.
Unofficially, there’s been an apparently ongoing connection to Belichick. An April 2025 email from Belichick regarding publicity for his book (which Jordon Hudson for some reason posted on social media), showed “Berj” as a recipient. Which raised an interesting question regarding whether and to what extent Najarian (unless Belichick would be sending the email to some other “Berj”) was collaborating with the head coach of a conference rival to his current employer.
If/when Belichick brings Berj to North Carolina, there will be a fairly sizable elephant in the room. As reported by Pablo Torre, Najarian was one of multiple key Patriots employees who complained about Mike Lombardi during his stint with the Patriots, resulting in Lombardi being ousted (he has claimed he left to write a book of his own).
Lombardi is now the G.M. of the UNC program. Lombardi’s presence could potentially make Najarian unwilling to work with Belichick again. Which could, in theory, force Belichick to choose between Najarian and Lombardi.
It’s not some minor point. Najarian was, by all appearances, the most trusted member of Belichick’s staff in New England. Everything went through Berj.
Here’s how ESPN.com characterized Najarian’s job duties, in 2011 (as found by Guregian): “Point-person for day-to-day operations of the team and acts as liaison across football and non-football departments. Najarian manages several elements of head coach Bill Belichick’s off-field agenda, including football and stadium operations, player and staff communication, scheduling and personal requests. In addition, Najarian manages various special projects in coaching and player personnel.”
That could create a separate complication, as it relates to Hudson. Belichick’s girlfriend seemingly has morphed into much of the Berj role. She may not want Berj around. And Berj may not want to have to coexist with and/or tiptoe around her — especially after she reportedly made a bizarre FOIA request to North Carolina as to communications between Senior Associate Athletic Director Robbi Pickeral Evans and CBS regarding, apparently, the disastrous interview that sparked a torrent of unflattering coverage and criticism of Hudson and Belichick.
However it plays out, Berj is in play to join forces again with Belichick. Where it goes from here will be particularly interesting, possibly awkward, and potentially fascinating.
Patriots running back Tre’Veyon Henderson is the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Month for November.
After a slow start to his rookie season, Henderson has become a major playmaker in the Patriots’ offense, leading all NFL rookies with five touchdowns and 102.8 scrimmage yards per game in November.
With touchdowns of 55 and 69 yards in Week 10, Henderson became just the fourth rookie in NFL history to have multiple 50-yard rushing touchdowns in the same game.
The last Patriot to be named Offensive Rookie of the Month was Mac Jones in November of 2021.
With the Patriots leading the race for the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs, Henderson is making New England very glad it took Henderson with the 38th pick in the draft.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I managed to pass enough classes to secure a couple of undergraduate degrees from Carnegie Mellon University. (From time to time, I wonder whether it was a clerical error.) And so it was with a significant degree of delight that I received an email on Wednesday from CMU that wasn’t asking for, you know, money.
We receive many pitches regarding different studies and trends and other things that ultimately don’t come close to meeting the threshold for sharing here. This one caught my eye, mainly because it confirms one of the things I’ve said consistently about the key to being successful in football.
Unpredictability. In all things. (Most recently, we focused on the importance of unpredictability as to whether a team will, or won’t, go for it on fourth down.)
The folks at Carnegie Mellon have engaged in a study that focuses on the unpredictability of the timing before the snap, specifically as it relates to pre-snap motion.
Ron Yurko, an assistant professor of statistics and data science, used advanced statistical modeling with more than two thousand NFL plays and player-tracking data. The study, performed with Ph.D. student Quang Nguyen and recently published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A, found that quarterbacks who vary the timing between pre-snap motion and the snap face have greater overall success.
“Quarterbacks who vary the time between a receiver’s pre-snap motion and the ball snap face less defensive pressure or ‘havoc,’ like sacks or interceptions,” Yurko said. “This is because predictability allows defenses to anticipate the snap and disrupt the play.”
The study found that Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady are the best at engineering this extra layer of unpredictability.
It’s a subtle yet important wrinkle in the operation of an offense. Most develop a rhythm that makes it easier to instinctively anticipate the timing of the snap. When watching a game, that pattern often emerges. And if it can be senses on the screen, it can be sensed on the field. And if the defense trusts that the snap is coming, it erases the inherent edge the offense enjoys from knowing when the play will start.
Perhaps teams have been studying this factor privately. This is the first effort to publicly quantify the trait and to characterize it as a skill.
It definitely is a skill. It keeps defenses on their heels. It keeps them guessing. It prevents them from developing a sense as to when it’s time to go.
Unpredictability. The more a defense knows what’s coming and when it’s coming, the easier it is to stop the offense. The less the defense knows, the more that guesswork is required.
One bad guess can blow a play open. Which can blow a game open. Which can be the difference between making it to the playoffs, or advancing deep into the postseason.
Much about the operation of an NFL offense is complicated. This is simple. Within the storm of everything a quarterback processes before a play starts, varying the timing of the snap in relation to the pre-snap movement of players can add to the overall success of everything that happens once the quarterback has the ball in his hands.
