Yahoo Finance Leonard Fournette won grievance against Jaguars, recoups almost $100,000
The Jacksonville Jaguars ended a disappointing 2018 season with a 20-3 loss to the Houston Texans.
You may not remember — and we can’t blame you, 2019 has had a major news story seemingly every day — but in that game, Jaguars running back Leonard Fournette, who was inactive, spent the game sitting on the bench. Fellow running back T.J. Yeldon was sitting with him, though Yeldon was in uniform.
Jacksonville football czar Tom Coughlin wasn’t pleased with their behavior one bit (though it doesn’t seem like Coughlin likes much) and came down hard on the RBs.
There was a statement calling their actions “disrespectful, selfish and behavior unbecoming of a professional football player,” but that was the least of it.
Coughlin also fined at least Fournette, docking him $99,000. Based on Fournette’s 2018 base salary of $1.7 million, that amount represents one game check.
Fournette filed a grievance against the team, and on Wednesday Associated Press reporter Mark Long tweeted that Fournette won the grievance, recouping the money.
He’s at least the second Jacksonville player to win a grievance against the team based on excessive fines: earlier this week, now-Rams linebacker Dante Fowler revealed that he had been fined $700,000 by the Jaguars and won the money back after filing a grievance.
That’s a huge amount of money. And Coughlin levied those fines on Fowler for missing “mandatory” offseason appointments with training and medical staff, in direct opposition to the terms of the collective-bargaining agreement.
An arbitrator decided in Fowler’s favor.
Earlier this week, the NFL Players Association sent a letter to players, not only describing the case that Fowler won (Fowler wasn’t named in the letter; he revealed it was him on Twitter), but remarkably told players to think twice before signing with Jacksonville.
“You as players may want to consider this when you have a chance to select your next club,” the letter said.
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