German_Force » The Boston Red Sox are celebrating their

football neighbors today White Irving Fryar Jerseys , but several key Patriots faces won’t be there.According to Phil Perry of NBCSportsBoston.com, owner Robert Kraft, coach Bill Belichick, and quarterback Tom Brady won’t be present when the Patriots are honored at today’s celebration at Fenway Park.Both teams are celebrating titles (pity the long-suffering Boston sports fans, who have to wait three months between championships), but at least for Kraft, it’s time to lay low after charges of solicitation of prostitution emerged.Their offseason program doesn’t start until next week, so it’s unclear how many players will be there. But retired tight end Rob Gronkowski said he’d be there (he would not miss a good party) Irving Fryar Jerseys 2019 , along with cornerback Stephon Gilmore. Eleven days ago, the Patriots gave Antonio Brown a $9 million signing bonus. But they’ve yet to actually give him any of it.The contract requires the team to pay the first installment of $5 million on or before Monday, September 23. Per a league source, that payment has not yet been made. Brown will now wait to see whether the money arrives in three days.If it doesn’t, Brown would have to file a grievance seeking payment. Under the labor deal, the team incurs no risk by refusing to pay it. If the Patriots lose, they simply owe him the money, without attorneys’ fees White James White Jerseys , liquidated damages, or even interest.So would New England’s case to keep the money hold water? Based on the plain terms of the labor deal, Brown did not commit a “forfeitable breach” that would permit recovery of any portion of his signing bonus. That said, the Patriots could attempt to resist payment based on the notion that Brown and his representatives knew that Brown faced a potential civil lawsuit that would trigger NFL scrutiny and a possible suspension.It would be a creative and unprecedented argument, but the Patriots have nothing to lose. That said, if there were any shenanigans associated with Brown’s efforts to gain his freedom from the Raiders — some believe he knew the Patriots were waiting to pounce — the Patriots may not want to give Brown any motivation to blow the whistle. But if the Patriots aren’t concerned about any such collateral consequences, there’s simply nothing to lose by refusing to pay the $9 million, forcing Brown to fight for it James White Jerseys 2019 , and arguing that if Brown had disclosed the threatened litigation they never would have signed him.Brown also has a fully-guaranteed base salary of $1.025 million. The same argument that could be made to avoid paying the signing bonus could, in theory, be used to avoid paying the balance of the salary. The team also could attempt to void the remaining guarantees. (Brown’s worst-case scenario would seem to be the recovery of four weeks of game checks as Termination Pay; he wouldn’t get the full year’s worth of salary because he wasn’t on the Week One roster.)If the Patriots decide to take an aggressive stance with Brown, who knows what will happen? Given that he has become anything but a sympathetic figure in recent weeks, an arbitrator could be inclined to find a way to prevent Brown from profiting from his own apparent wrongdoing.