Former NFL receiver Antonio Brown will not be going to prison for attempted murder.
Via David Fischer of the Associated Press, Brown plans to accept a plea deal. He’ll plead guilty to a lesser charge and serve no time.
Per the report, attorney Mark Eiglarsh said Brown plans to plead no contest to aggravated assault on September 30. He will be sentenced to probation and the adjudication will be withheld. That prevents Brown from being regarded as a convicted felon.
It means that Brown will be pleading no contest to a felony.
He originally faced up to 30 years in prison for an incident that occurred at a celebrity boxing match in May 2025. Brown allegedly grabbed a handgun from a security officer and fired two shots at a man who allegedly had attacked Brown.
Brown had left the country after the incident. He was eventually apprehended and returned to the U.S. to face the charges.
“This was not an easy decision,” Eiglarsh said in a statement issued Wednesday. “Antonio believes in his innocence. He believes strongly in his Stand Your Ground defense, and he believes he would ultimately prevail at trial. But when prosecutors put an offer on the table that transforms a potential decades-long prison sentence into a significantly reduced charge and probation, there was simply no way he could reasonably turn it down.”
Brown is eligible for enshrinement in the Hall of Fame in 2027. Off-field issues aren’t supposed to be considered. It remains to be seen how the newly reconfigured Hall of Fame voting panel will handle his candidacy.
A 12-year veteran, Brown earned first-team All-Pro status in four straight seasons. He qualified for the Pro Bowl seven times.
Brown finished his career with 928 catches for 12,291 yards and 83 touchdowns. That puts him at 28th, 28th, and (with Travis Kelce’s next touchdown catch) 28th on the all-time list.
Which could make it hard to get him in, even without considering the off-field issues. Especially in light of the various disruptions he created for the Steelers, Raiders, Patriots, and Buccaneers.
With Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart reportedly heading for season-ending knee surgery, the Giants have to make a decision about the quarterback position moving forward.
Option A: The Jameis Winston experience, and everything that goes along with it — good, bad, and/or highly entertaining.
Option B: Sign a free agent and see if he would be a better option to win games. At this point, however, most guys who are available would be unlikely to be able to start. Jimmy Garoppolo is the best option.
Option C: Make a trade.
There are some options. Here are some of the ones we noticed after perusing the various rosters and depth charts.
Derek Carr: He’s still on the Saints reserve-retired list. A trade would be required, if there’s mutual interest.
Anthony Richardson: If the Colts would be comfortable with Riley Leonard as the understudy to Daniel Jones, the Colts could finally get value for the fourth overall pick in the 2023 draft.
Joe Flacco: John Harbaugh won a Super Bowl with Flacco in Baltimore. And Flacco has repeatedly shown he can still play.
Shedeur Sanders: If the Browns are willing to move on from Sanders, Harbaugh possibly would want Shedeur. The Ravens were going to draft him in 2025, but he didn’t want to back up Lamar Jackson.
Mason Rudolph: He has played a lot, and he may not have much of a future in Pittsburgh.
Sam Howell: He’s the backup to Dak Prescott, and he has plenty of starting experience; the Cowboys could elevate Joe Milton III to take Prescott’s place.
J.J. McCarthy: Jim Harbaugh loves him. John Harbaugh could be intrigued by him.
Gardner Minshew: If the Cardinals are content to have Carson Beck as the backup to Jacoby Brissett, why not? He has 47 career starts.
Mac Jones: He’s in the last year of his contract, and he played well last year in place of Brock Purdy.
The Giants also could pilfer a player from a practice squad. Possibilities (not many) include Will Levis (Jets), Josh Johnson (Bengals), Joe Milton III (Cowboys), and Max Brosmer (Vikings).
ESPN’s latest round of layoffs included the bush-league decision to fire Ryan Clark while he was on the air. Apparently, ESPN felt compelled to pull the plug during a break in NFL Live because Outkick was poised to report that Clark would be among those whose time with the four-letter network was ending.
In a recent interview with Craig Melvin’s Glass Half Full podcast, Clark addressed ESPN’s decision to choose to tell Clark he was being let go during a live show over letting the Outkick report emerge before Clark was informed of his termination.
Ultimately, Clark was happy that it happened in a way that vindicated him.
“If they’re patient and they’re evil, it never comes to light,” Clark told Melvin. “If you’re smart enough to say, ‘We have these massive layoffs on Tuesday. If we’re doing this for the right reasons — if it’s about budget, if it’s about merging two companies, Ryan gets to find out that he’s laid off the day everybody else is.’
“But the evil — right? — the ‘want’ and will to try to humiliate me, to try to garner favor for doing something you know is foul, backfired, because you give it to mean and evil and hateful people, right? Who you learn a snake gonna do snake shit, right?
“And you may think while you have it in this cage and you feeding it rats, it loves you, but it’ll eat you too, right? And so now they see me on TV, they start getting antsy, and because you leaked it to them so they can write a great article about it, they can be so damn happy that Ryan Clark is gone, they’re about to out you. That’s how it happened. So now these things that were happening to me behind the scenes for an extended period of time, the world got to see it. And because the world got to see it, now I’m not so stupid. Now I’m not so whatever you want to make me. Like these things were really happening.”
The threshold problem with ESPN’s approach is that one or more people who had the information about who would be laid off couldn’t be trusted to keep their mouths shut. While Clark was the only one who was fired while on air, others found out about their fates from media reports and/or reporters before being told by ESPN.
The through line for all of this is that companies either care about their employees or they don’t. The best proof as to whether they truly care is if they continue to care once they’ve decided an employee’s services are no longer needed.
ESPN has made its position on that matter obvious. And all current and future employees of ESPN should be taking notes.
When Colin Kaepernick was being ignored by the NFL teams, he didn’t have much to say. Now that he’s selling a book, interviews with Kaepernick are popping up everywhere.
We haven’t paid much attention to his various sit-downs and sound bites because, frankly, it’s an old story. The NFL has long since moved on from Kaepernick, freezing him out long enough to make it unrealistic that the now-38-year-old quarterback would have a plausible path to a roster, a practice squad, or even a tryout.
Still, one news item caught our eye in recent weeks. With Kaepernick’s book tour putting him back in the vicinity of the front burner, Giants coach John Harbaugh told Ian O’Connor of The Athletic that Harbaugh wanted to add Kaepernick to the Ravens in 2017.
Through it all, Kaepernick got one workout, five years ago with the Raiders. With the Giants now desperate for quarterback help (and with Jake Haener and Brandon Allen as the most viable options behind new starter Jameis Winston), why not bring Kaepernick in for a look?
Kaepernick continues to say that he’s staying in shape, and that he wants to play. It should be immediately obvious whether he still has the abilities that made Harbaugh interested in him nine years ago.
Harbaugh’s New York staff includes Greg Roman, who was the offensive coordinator during Kaepernick’s first four years in San Francisco. It would be easy, in theory, to configure the offense to fit Kaepernick. If Kaepernick still has the skills he had when he last played.
It starts with a workout (and quite possibly ends with one). There’s no reason not to give it a whirl. The anthem controversy has subsided. (Harbaugh and the Giants surely would want assurances that Kaepernick wouldn’t dust it off, if he ended up on the sideline before games.)
The threshold question is how does Kaepernick look? And there’s only one way to find out. The Giants, who now face not having Jaxson Dart for up to the rest of the season, have plenty of reasons to give Kaepernick a chance to show them what he can do.
It would be different if John Harbaugh hadn’t recently spoken in such glowing terms about Kaepernick. With not many viable options available in free agency — and with Harbaugh having considerable power in New York — let’s see if Harbaugh puts his recent words into current action.
Adam Vinatieri isn’t in the NFL record book for the longest field goal, but he now is the Guinness World Record-holder for the highest field goal.
The Hall of Fame kicker made a field goal from an altitude of 11,332 feet (3,434 meters) above sea level in the Swiss Alps on Tuesday.
Vinatieri’s record-setting kick took place at Jungfraujoch, known as the “Top of Europe,” on snow-covered ground with swirling winds. A Guinness World Records adjudicator was on hand to certify the achievement.
“Snow is simply part of my time with the Patriots,” Vinatieri said, via a team news release. “But kicking a field goal at 3,454 meters is something completely different from anything I’ve ever done. You feel the altitude with every breath you take. Your heart rate is different. Your rhythm is different. And no one can really tell you beforehand how it will affect the kick, because no one has done this before. The fact that we were able to set the record under these conditions makes me very proud.”
The event kicked off the Patriots’ countdown to their Nov. 15 game in Munich and celebrated Vinatieri’s legendary career.
He last kicked in the NFL in 2019, retiring as the NFL’s all-time leader with 599 field goals.
