The three-game suspensions the NFL assessed to Buccaneers receiver Antonio Brown and safety Mike Edwards, and ex-Bucs receiver John Franklin III on Thursday were the result of a two-week investigation into Brown’s vaccination status. But how they got caught misleading the team can be explained in two seconds.
All three players, sources said, produced vaccination cards purportedly from Citrus County, a county with a population of 153,843 about an hour and a half up Florida’s Gulf Coast from downtown Tampa. None of the three have any connection to that rural area—Brown and Franklin are originally from South Florida, and Franklin is from Ohio—which led to the league’s looking closer into each player’s status and ultimately busting them for fake cards.