Raiders have no choice but to support Antonio Brown

[Rusher]

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As Raiders receiver Antonio Brown continues to push one of the strangest, most obstinate arguments in sports history, refusing to wear one of the many approved helmet models available to the 2,880 players currently on NFL rosters because he wants to use his own outdated piece of equipment, the Raiders are standing behind him.

They’re standing behind him because they have to.

“I support this guy,” coach Jon Gruden said on Saturday night. “I think that’s what needs to be said.”

Gruden is right. It needs to be said because he can’t say anything else. No matter how illogical or unwinnable Brown’s position may be, the team’s decision to embrace a guy who had plenty of red flags and warning signs keeps them from saying or doing anything that would allow anyone to say, “We told you so.”

Gruden surely hopes he can salvage the situation. He has no choice at this point. Otherwise, the decision to trade for Brown becomes the 2019 version of the decision to trade Khalil Mack — a bungled decision that hovers over the team all year long, and that makes it even harder to contend.

Gruden also downplayed the frostbitten feet incident as an “accident.” Yes, it was an accident. But it was an accident that by all appearances and based on all reports resulted from negligence. If Brown had entered a cryotherapy chamber with adequate footwear, an accident wouldn’t have happened.

But happen it did. And the various things that Brown did in Pittsburgh reportedly are already happening in Oakland. And there’s nothing the Raiders can do but take it, enabling further misbehavior from Brown because they remain hopeful that he’ll perform (eventually) like he previously did — and because they can’t afford to look like nincompoops for not only giving up a pair of draft picks to get Brown but to give him more than $30 million fully guaranteed over the next two seasons.

Meanwhile, every other player on the roster is surely paying attention to whether the rules that are being applied to them will ever apply to Brown. At some point, some of them will begin to wonder whether Brown’s talent justifies this obvious double standard.