Raiders may be able to keep Antonio Brown from playing for someone else

[Steely McBeam]

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As the Raiders try to figure out what to do with Antonio Brown, the player seems to be walking right into the team’s nuclear option.

The Raiders eventually may be able to put Brown on the reserve/left squad list, if he leaves the team and refuses return after receiving the so-called “five-day letter.” If that happens, Brown gets shut down for the season, and he can’t go play for another team.

From the moment the latest string of events began to unfold between Brown and the Raiders, plenty of people were musing about the possibility of Brown inevitably landing with the Patriots. And the Raiders surely don’t want to give Brown a one-way ticket to New England.

At this point, however, it’s unlikely that anyone would want Brown. There’s way too much to unpack, way too much due dilgence to be done, to find a way to plug Brown into a new team on the fly. And even if a team decides to roll the dice, they’ll be spending time watching the dice roll and roll and roll via Brown’s various social-media channels and personal interactions with teammates, coaches, and executives when they should be instead focusing on one opponent after another.

Talent is seductive; it’s completely blinded Jon Gruden. But at some point no amount of talent is worth it. Brown has reached that point.

So maybe the Raiders need not worry about engineering the ability to place Brown on the reserve/left squad list. Maybe they should just cut him — and let him go rip apart another franchise the way he’s ripped apart the Steelers and now the Raiders, if someone else is going to be sufficiently seduced by Brown’s talent to overlook the very, very bad that comes with the very, very good.