The Patriots D Loses Two LBs, but Gain the Owner of a Dunkin's Empire
Source: the Patriots have placed LB Dont’a Hightower (shoulder) on injured reserve. His season is now officially over.
— Field Yates (@FieldYates) November 7, 2017
McClellin seems to have suffered a setback working his way back. Likely out for 2017. Big blow for the #Patriots D. https://t.co/S5fn4D99eh — Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) November 7, 2017
Ricky Jean Francois, who reportedly signed with the Patriots today, owns 30 (yes, 30) Dunkin’ Donuts stores. https://t.co/YPNSnJzod8 pic.twitter.com/idYRaKyXuT
— Zack Cox (@ZackCoxNESN) November 7, 2017
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Well this is a roundhouse kick to the temple we didn’t need coming out of the bye week. Especially with the toughest travel part of the schedule (at Denver, at Oakland in Mexico) coming up. Hightower obviously is no surprise. But McClellin is. A bad one. He was going to offer a veteran presence, experience in the system and the position versatility to lineup inside or out, on the LOS or off. And now that leaves the team with:
OLB: Trey Flowers, Cassius Marsh, Lawrence Guy, Cassius Marsh
ILB: Kyle Van Noy, Elandon Roberts, David Harris, Marquis Flowers, Trevor Reilly
Plus Harvey Langi somewhere in that mix, if he ever comes back from getting rear ended at a stop light. That’s not a depth chart you look over and immediately want to fire up the Duckboats.
But at least it’s not all bad news. Because as my sainted mom always said, whenever God closes a window, he opens a door. To 30 Dunkins:
Much like a Donut shop, the NFL is a business. Few players know that better than free agent defensive lineman Ricky Jean Francois, whose played on four teams in his nine-years in the league.
“When you see the bacon donut, I’m the guy who threw the idea around,” Francois said. …
The Miami native owns an impressive 30 stores from Savannah, Georgia to Hilton Head, South Carolina. His dream is expand to 50 to 100 stores in the future.
“The crazy part is I never took time out to say I own 30 Dunkin Donuts, I have something in my name,” Francois said. …
“People want the jewelry, the rings, the cars, the house and all that I told a lot of guys is put some money to the side,” Francois said. “You need two to three incomes that doesn’t have anything to do with your main job. Right now you’re 23-years old with a bunch of money, but is that the same money you’ll have when you’re 30?”
OK, now this helps take the edge off of having a linebacker corps that sounds like a random reading of the names on a “Guess Who?” board. Not just because Ricky Jean Francois sounds like a level-headed guy who’ll never end up in the inevitable sequel for 30 for 30: Broke. But also because he’s building his empire in the most Masshole way possible.
I mean, you can’t get more New England than that. Francois might as well wear a “28-3″ shirt and a Scalley cap, drive like an asshole, start claiming he knows a way around traffic to the Sagamore (and be lying because fucking Waze took all smart people’s advantage away), find himself a townie bar with a neon shamrock in the window, name his kid Brady and start dating a chick from Weymouth with the tattoo of the Bruins logo on her calf. Christ, if all of Mass got together, we could stop the next hurricane from flooding the shoreline just with the loose Dunkin’s napkins in our cars. I’m still traumatized by the family trip to Virginia where we drove for an hour looking for a Dunkins when we were forced to get coffee from a gas station mini mart that was like raw human waste mixed with poison in my mouth. Because where I get on the highway there is literally a spot with two Dunks on the same side of the same intersection. I swear I am not making that up.
So welcome to town, Ricky Jean Francois. You are going to fit in perfectly here. Seriously, if Belichick makes you a lowball offer next year, take it. Because you’ll make more here selling coffee and your bacon donuts than you’d make in all the other 49 states combined. I just hope you can play some linebacker.