The question of whether Buccaneers receiver Antonio Brown supplied a fake vaccination card to the team (and in turn to the league) continues to be unresolved, in large part because the NFL has yet to say whether Brown’s card is legitimate or not.
The league has not announced or leaked any findings of its investigation, which began on Thursday. Surely, it wouldn’t take much to confirm or debunk Brown’s insistence that he secured a vaccination consistent with the information on the card that he gave to the team before training camp.
Early in Monday night’s game between the Giants and the Buccaneers, Lisa Salters of ESPN said that she has spoken to Brown’s lawyer, Sean Burstyn, who repeated his position that his client is innocent of any wrongdoing. (As if anyone’s lawyer ever comes out and says, “Yep, he’s guilty.”)
“Their position hasn’t really changed since this story was first reported on Thursday, that Brown is vaccinated, and that Brown has in the past and is still encouraging others to get vaccinated as well,” Salters said. “Burstyn told me that Brown got vaccinated over the summer, that he was accompanied by one of his personal trainers when he went to get his vaccination. He said his client turned in his vaccination card to the Buccaneers, like he was supposed to do. And that’s all they’re really gonna say about the situation.”
They need to say plenty more to put this issue to bed. The league has the power to compel Brown to do so. It’s unclear whether the league has done that, but it has already had plenty of time to do so.
The NFL knows how to move quickly when it wants answers. Remember the Boston Herald reported that the Patriots secretly videotaped the Rams’ walk-through practice before Super Bowl XXXVI? That story emerged just a few days before Super Bowl XLII, and the league IMMEDIATELY mobilized to commence a full investigation, New England’s preparations for that game be damned. (The Herald later retracted its claim, with a front-page story.)
Right or wrong, it shows that the league can and will move aggressively when it chooses to do so. In this case, there’s no indication that it has moved aggressively to get an answer to the seemingly important question of whether a player has committed the ultimate COVID protocol breach by lying about being vaccinated, with the assistance of a forged vaccination card.
Whatever the answer, it already should have been secured. The fact that the answer hasn’t been secured and/or shared is troubling -- and it points to the very real possibility that the league isn’t interested in exploring just how widespread the practice of phony vaccination cards may be, because that specific outcome would make the league look like it doesn’t really care about its COVID protocols for 2021.
Then again, based on the half-hearted manner in which the league punished the Packers for the blatant and repeated COVID protocol breaches committed by Aaron Rodgers, we already know that the league doesn’t really care.