Which NFL Players Will Generate the Most 2016 Summer Nonsense?

Memorial Day weekend marks the official end of the NFL news cycle and the start of the NFL nonsense cycle. 

From now until the start of training camps in late July, the enormous NFL industrial infotainment complex lives off its stored fat reserves like a hibernating grizzly, gurgling out stale, foamy spasms of news like a keg the morning after a frat party.

What is NFL nonsense? It’s that pungent, steamy broth of celebrity gossip, manufactured scandal, rampant speculation, unhinged editorializing and borderline character assassination that flushes through the football news pipeline this time of year. It has little to do with football and a lot to do with wringing every last drop of fan interest out of the league’s most famous, glamorous or polarizing personalities. You hate it, we hate it and none of us can stop gorging on every last morsel of it until late July brings the sweet, sweet relief of real football news.

As the NFL media’s ranking expert on nonsense, it’s my job to predict the summer’s most promising sources of newsiness. It’s like predicting summer blockbusters, but with quarterbacks instead of Marvel superheroes.

So here are the top 20 NFL nonsense producers for the summer of 2016:

 

20. Antonio Brown

Brown may be the best wide receiver in the NFL right now. He’s also underpaid. And best of all, he’s coming off a semifinalist stint on Dancing with the Stars. The stage would be set for extreme nonsense for many players.

Yet the silliness will probably be kept to a minimum. Brown and the Steelers have always been grownups about his contract status, and the “reality television instead of football” argument lost its sizzle back in the early days of Kendra on Top. So while there will be some chatter, don’t expect the holdout-threat fireworks like we saw from Dez Bryant and Demaryius Thomas last year.

At least Brown’s Twitter feed remains a source of inspiration…

Grateful to work with these beautiful talented ladies! I’m really a lucky man @SharnaBurgess @Dance10Hayley #dwts pic.twitter.com/HErz5XJzhH

— Antonio Brown (@AntonioBrown84) May 12, 2016

… and information.

Ben and I have been talking during the off season and we’re cooking up some new routes for you all. DB’s beware ✈️

— Antonio Brown (@AntonioBrown84) May 21, 2016

When designing new plays, it’s best to go straight to the public and eliminate the needless “offensive coordinator” middleman.

 

19. Von Miller

Miller, like Brown, is an All-Pro who appeared on Dancing with the Stars and has a long-term contract on his mind. But Miller one-upped Brown: Who needs Ben Roethlisberger when you can visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter?

Miller has also reportedly been named Spike TV’s “Most Unstoppable Jock” and will be honored at something called the Guys’ Choice Awards on June 4. Miller’s Super Bowl MVP trophy probably won’t be ripped from its case to make room for an award that sounds like something Jimmy Kimmel made up in 1999.

The deadline to sign Miller, currently the face of the Broncos franchise, to a new contract is July 15. Once the Potter magic and basic-cable award show thrill ride ends, Miller will be pressed into midsummer service as the primary source of contract speculation. At least he will share that burden with the next guy.

 

18. Andrew Luck

Russell Wilson taught us last year that many a summer evening can be happily spent blogging fanfic about the size of a quarterback’s contract extension. The Colts have one job to do this summer, and like a neighbor with a garage to clean, they will draw it out for weeks, allowing imaginations to run wild about $75 million guarantees or franchise-crippling future holdouts.

Luck lacks Wilson’s ability to cause a stir by strolling through an amusement park in an ill-fitting shirt, but “highest-paid player in the NFL” is a Pavlovian trigger, and the dogs are already drooling.

 

17. Josh Norman

Norman hugged former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner! He flew to Paris to hang out with the Paris Saint-Germain soccer team!  He has gotten rides in Dan Snyder’s private plane, which is not to be confused with Dan Snyder’s black helicopters, which Mike Shanahan swears circle his house at night and intercept his thoughts.

Flying #Redskin1 Back home.. Jet Set’N????????????#Blessed#???????? pic.twitter.com/AJ9tysioSR

— *Joshua R. Norman (@J_No24) April 23, 2016

Norman is reportedly pricing an 18-acre farmhouse in Virginia. Congress? Trips to Paris? Virginia farmstead? A relatively unknown cornerback for a fluky playoff team last year, Norman is now one Broadway musical away from becoming a founding father.

There’s a long Washington tradition of treating the latest ultra-expensive free agent like a conquering prince for a few months before he takes the field and something goes horribly wrong. Norman may be the guy who bucks the trend, but he must have noticed as he got comfy in the cockpit of Snyder’s jet that he was sitting in butt indentations left by Albert Haynesworth and Donovan McNabb.

 

16. Las Vega$ Raiders

This will be a reliable source of semi-newsworthy speculation throughout the summer, as fans everywhere but Oakland dream of an easy excuse for regular bro-trips to Sin City (a big, sandy Dave & Buster’s, really) while the NFL pretends to be horrified by being “close to gambling” in an era when we can blow our credit ratings to online slot machines on our smartphones during our children’s piano recitals.

No decision is coming on a Raiders move to Vegas anytime soon, but every team owner, league official or politician who speaks on the record about the subject will make headlines, especially if they suggest that it’s OK for the NFL to put a team in a city that built a roller coaster on the site where Moe Greene got shot through the eyeglasses.

 

15. The Eagles Quarterbacks

What’s most entertaining about the Sam Bradford-Carson Wentz-(why not?) Chase Daniel controversy is that even the most casual fan can plainly see that Bradford is an overpaid caretaker who will hit the bench the moment Wentz outgrows his FCS water wings and dives into the grownup pool. But no one is allowed to come right out and say that, so there will be weeks of careful hairsplitting, like offensive coordinator Frank Reich insisting on CBS Radio on Wednesday that Bradford is not the confirmed starter just one week after Doug Pederson made it sound like Bradford is the confirmed starter.

Bradford and Wentz are not particularly interesting, and I wouldn’t recognize Daniel if he sat next to me in a bar. But listening to coaches and executives subtly correct and contradict each other about a matter that’s patently obvious? That’s some serious summer entertainment.

 

14. Laremy Tunsil

The Dolphins are unique in that their linemen produce most of the nonsense; they have plenty of time on their hands because they are rarely protecting Ryan Tannehill.

Tunsil brings a complex bouillabaisse of extracurricular weirdness to the menu: a marijuana-mask-induced draft slide, a Dickensian backstory that features overzealous NCAA investigators, shifty agents and a litigious stepfather, a mysterious cybervillain, a rumored pre-arthritic condition in his ankle and even sudden allergy outbreaks.

With friends like Robert Nkemdiche and enemies with the power to …

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