If you make it into the NFL and survive for a season or two, you’re going to make a little bit of money—or, for the average person, a lot of money. Just for some perspective, the minimum salary any rostered player could make in 2023—a rookie college free agent—is $750,000. It will go up a bit every year. So at a minimum, if you’re in the league for two years, you’re making a million and a half bucks.
Make that kind of money and you’re going to attract all kinds of negative attention. In Cleveland, evidently, there is growing belief that Browns players are being targeted by an organized crime ring after three players on the roster were burglarized in a very short period of time over the weekend and into Monday.
According to Browns Digest, running back Demetric Felton had his car stolen on Sunday in a parking garage. Former first-round cornerback Greg Newsome II was robbed at gunpoint, again, having his vehicle stolen. It is reported that a third player, as of this time unnamed, was robbed of his car and of some jewelry.
It’s hard not to think there is something more going on when you have three Browns players being robbed of their vehicles over a short period of time. I’m sure it’s not too difficult to find out where players live, and where they go, after all. They all have to come to practice and can be followed. Newsome said that he believed he was followed into the parking garage before being robbed.
After these latest developments, the players and the team are inevitably going to be on high alert, as one can reasonably assume that more robbery attempts will be made. Not every player can be supervised around the clock—and nobody wants to live like that, anyway.
But something very concerning is obviously going on if there is an organized crime syndicate actively targeting Browns players. Their publicly acknowledged wealth automatically makes them targets for these sorts of groups, after all.
We do not know who the third player is as of yet, but Newsome at least has already pocketed some change in his time in the league. A first-round pick in 2021, his rookie contract included a signing bonus north of $6.6 million and he’s earned nearly another $2 million in base salary over his first two seasons. He will make close to $2 million this year.
Now, the loss of a vehicle for him might not be economically crippling, but to be robbed at gunpoint would be a traumatic experience for anybody. The exact circumstances of the other robberies—or even if there have been others that have yet to come to light—are not known. One would imagine the team is going to have to publicly address this soon, perhaps today.
