Last week, Atlanta Falcons’ defensive end Takk McKinley (seen above at training camp in August) played NFL insider, tweeting that the team declined two deals involving him. The team disputed those accounts and fined him for his tweets, but on Monday, they actually cut him. Here’s more on that from The Associated Press:
The Atlanta Falcons on Monday waived defensive end Takk McKinley, a 2017 first-round pick, less than one week after he made public his displeasure he had not been traded.
…Morris said last week he planned to discuss McKinley’s status with Falcons President Rich McKay, who assumed control of football operations after coach Dan Quinn and general manager Thomas Dimitroff were fired following an 0-5 start.
Morris said last week he needed to determine if McKinley “can even be on this team, if that’s even possible at this point. We’ll move forward and we’ll move forward swiftly.”
Well, they definitely did that. And it appears that taking this to Twitter may not have been the wisest approach for McKinley; it led to a fine for him, and now it’s led to him being released. But maybe that will lead to him catching on somewhere else and being happy there. At any rate, it’s certainly interesting to see a player’s attempt to report potential transactions involving him lead to a release.
[The Associated Press, via Sportsnet.ca; photo from Curtis Compton/USA Today Sports]
