Despite being a five-year starter and still in the prime years of his career, Eric Reid remains unsigned. And he’s filed a grievance against the NFL as his free agency tenure nears the two-month mark.
Charles Robinson of Yahoo.com reports the former 49ers safety has an interesting name at the root of his case: President Donald Trump. Robinson reports Trump is the “crystal-clear target” in Reid’s case.
The president’s vulgar 2017 comments about players who chose to kneel during the national anthem amid the inequality-themed protests sparked a slew of NFL players kneeling during the anthem in Week 3 of last season. And Reid’s grievance claims Trump had direct communications with NFL owners about players who engaged in these protests. Although, the specifics of some of these alleged discussions aren’t known.
Jerry Jones discussed this issue with the president on verified phone calls, per Robinson, and the Cowboys owner has been the most outspoken owner against these protests. Jones is spearheading a group of owners’ effort to prevent players from having the right to protest during the anthem, Robinson reported earlier this spring. The New York Times recently reported a portion of the November 2017 owners-players summit was secretly recorded, and several owners expressed concern over Trump’s attacks on the NFL because of kneeling players.
This grievance also indicates Trump communicated with owners about this issue both publicly and privately, Robinson reports, adding the public communications may be the string of comments directed at players during various speeches over the past several months.
Reid began kneeling during anthems shortly after Colin Kaepernick did in 2016, and he continued the practice throughout the 2017 season. Although the 26-year-old safety said he would no longer use this form of protest next season, reports out of Cincinnati indicated Bengals owner Mike Brown asked Reid if he would continue to kneel during what was his only known free agency visit. Other than the Bengals’ visit, Reid’s seen a quiet market despite his first-round pedigree and Pro Bowl honor. He’s not the only safety to say social activism has played a role in his current unemployment, with Tre Boston saying the same recently.
Robinson notes the difference in Reid’s claim and Kaepernick’s collusion lawsuit is Kaepernick’s effort was aimed at widespread targets whereas the Reid’s grievance centers on Trump being the “driving force” on keeping Reid and Kaepernick out of the league. Robinson adds that discoveries during the Kaepernick depositions may well have played a role in Reid making Trump the target.
waa waa
I dont understand the accusations of collusion.. these players make choices and there are consequences .. if, individually, every owner feels as though Reid isn’t good enough to deal with his baggage, that’s not collusion.. if they made a pact to deny Reid a job, then he’s got a case .. maybe players with the big names can get away with hurting the bottom line of owners, but marginal players should think twice .. he knew what he was doing and knew there could be consequences .. everyone seems to fail to realize the fact that the NFL is, for all intents and purposes, the private sector .. if an owner doesn’t like the way your represent, or potentially will represent his/her organization, guess what? You’re out
You’re bang on with the actions have consequences. It’s a free market, owners can decide who plays for their team and who doesn’t. That’s how a free market works, regardless of there being a union. I hope it’s a lesson to others. Actions have consequences. The only awareness you raised in your protest is your own personal awareness of this simple fact.
From an unbiased perspective of the situation here, and being someone with a law degree (well, I’ll have one next week officially) here’s the reason for the collusion claim. The NFL CBA has a clause in it that says that if collusion is found on the part of owners, not only is there grounds for a lawsuit and bad public opinion, but it also terminates the entire CBA. Which is a huge consequence. There are likely 2 purposes here. 1) The owners don’t want to deal with that so they will budge, or even agree to budge. 2) More likely, if this actually goes to court, all he will need to do is make a plausible pleading, and he will have access to discovery, which is likely all of the emails, texts, and writings between each owner and each other, and anyone from the NFL, that remotely relates to the issue.y understanding is that even if any owners collude (maybe as few as two privately) it terminates the CBA. And reasonably, the NFL likely wouldn’t even want to take the chance that there is an email somewhere they don’t know about between two random owners. You can reasonably argue that you believe he’s grasping at straws here, but if a case can survive the pleading stage, look out. And while the owners are surely aware of this now and probably wouldn’t communicate in writing about it now, there’s a real chance that a few of them did in the beginning.
*my understanding … it should say
Congrats on your degree! I personally would be a bit surprised if there’s any emails or correspondence between any GMs saying “Don’t sign Reid, he’s a distraction” which would be collusion in my view. Is there an official definition anywhere in the CBA for collusion? Multiple owners sharing the same opinion separate from one another does not equal collusion.
Congrats on earning that degree!
cjmask, I’d be more worried about e-mails among the owners than the GM’s, but you never know. The many corporations caught up in the Silicon Valley collusion case were certainly not helped by some of Steve Jobs’ e-mails, as he was apparently one of the central figures in the case.
Thanks guys! I don’t believe (not 100% sure) the NFL specifically defines collusion in the CBA because it would likely be impossible to enumerate all the ways collusion could happen. Having the same opinion separately does not equal collusion, somewhat obviously, and in a similar area of law, antitrust, there are a zillion cases agreeing with that. I do believe it’s very possible collusion can be defined as two owners, likely early in the process, emailing each other saying don’t sign this guy because of these actions, or advising another owner not to because of those actions. That probably is enough for collusion, even with just two. Collusion will more likely be an interpretation rather than contract language in a case like this.
That’s one thing that the earliest news reports about Kaepernick’s lawsuit made clear, that even as few as only two teams were needed for collusion to be legally found.
OK come on now you’re talking too much realistic and too much sense. We in the private sector with our little bitty minor jobs that don’t make you know their list of jobs if we did that to our boss we be out the door in a heartbeat. But I guess all these high paid players are just too good to face reality.
I love seeing people celebrate and brag about how utterly powerless they are just to drag other people down to their pathetic level. “Yeah! My boss can f*** me up the a**, so you ought’a bend over, too, b****!”
Collusion will only be proven in court. All you’ve proven is that football fans like to be blatant idiots online.
Who cares
Go find a real job Eric
Yeah, because working at a job that might shorten your life by 10 or 20 years, be the cause of multiple surgeries, or leave you with early onset dementia or with a healthy brain inside a paralyzed body isn’t a real job.
This guy is delusional
Tired about hearing about this stuff. We keep going back and forth about freedom and right to protest. No one “owes” you a job.
Holy smokes…. Could there be laws in this country you don’t know about? Well, considering how idiotic you come off as being, I bet there are.
Actually there are labor laws. And they state that you can be fired (or not hired) for any reason, or no reason at all, just as long as the decision is discriminatory based on age, gender, or religion.
So Eric Reid is entitled to his 1st amendment right of free speech and every owner is entitled to tell him to F-off, there is no job for him. Freedom of Speech does not equate to freedom from consequences, as so many Millennial Snowflakes seem to think or be too dumb to grasp.
**is not discriminatory**
Thank you! Finally someone who understands what Freedom of Speech actually means!
You left out the collusion part, Ghost of BB.
You also didn’t distinguish between “at will” employment and “due process,” which may not apply in either of these cases, but since you were making broad, generalized statements about labor law, I just thought I’d point that out.
Oh, and you forgot the most famous of all the classes protected from illegal discrimination.
Sam,
Why? This is a political story and its like ck all over again. Time and time again , all this does is divide us and instead of a discussion it turns into a big f u contest.
It’s a business, therefore you have a boss. If you choose to defy the guidelines developed by management then you risk being fired. It is a consequence these players knew and they chose to ignore.
And Martin Luther King knew the consequences of defying segregation laws, and the unions knew the consequences of defying the bosses, the courts and the cops, etc., etc., etc.. Really, “it’s a business” and deferring to management all the time has gotten a bit old, especially after big business, Wall Street and the big banks gave us the Great Recession.
Yawn says I
Your career is done. Get over it you pos. Look fir any excuse you can, but end of the day you will only hurt any team publicity wise which will cost any team far more then you will gain them by playing for them. Man sf players just wanna be paid to be dbags it seems.
Snowflake.
The claims against Trump are ridiculous. If Trump really had that kind of power with the owners, the national anthem protests would have been halted last season. Reid made a choice to kneel. The owners in free agency have made the choice that they don’t want Reid on their team. Actions have consequences. If you decide to kneel for the national anthem, you have to accept that there may be repercussions. If you aren’t ready to face those repercussions, then you shouldn’t have knelt in the first place
If Reid and his legal team are getting the basis for this argument out of the discovery in Kaepernick’s case, these claims may not be so ridiculous at all, especially if Trump acted as the conduit through which collusion happened.
Does anyone know where I can buy a corndog that has cheese inside of it?
Yea! Your Mama!
I wonder if he has had any contract offers and if he turned them down because he didn’t think they were “fair” and worthy of his “talents”. He is a marginal at best safety in a market that is overflowing with competition. Regardless of his political stance, he was NEVER going to have teams beating down his door to sign him. My guess is he probably was felt out for contract demands, teams didn’t agree with his numbers and simply moved on.
That’s not true. At all, actually. I agree with the above comments that if the owners don’t want Reid on their team, that’s fine. It’s an unneccessary distraction. But he was a pro bowl safety and has started since being drafted. He may have been the best player on that defense (which isn’t saying much, given it’s been pretty pathetic since Pat Willis retired and Navorro Bowman was cut). Granted, he’s no Earl Thomas or Troy Polamalu, but he’s definitely better in terms of skill than anyone else on the market. His skill has little to do with his inability to get a job. It’s about the distraction and unwanted attention he brings to the team.
Using the same logic, couldn’t Ray Rice have brought a collusion claim? He was never convicted of a crime, although what he did was caught on video and despicable. Not equating what Reid/CK did with hitting a woman, but Rice was a very good RB that was blackballed because owners weren’t willing to take on the PR headache of signing him.