Earlier this week, veteran wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins officially became a free agent when the Arizona Cardinals made the somewhat surprising decision to release him after presumably failing to find a trade partner over the past few months. Hopkins will have no shortage of teams wishing to sign him ahead of next season, but it sounds like teams might be wary of any communication with him that isn’t face-to-face or on the phone.
As Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk explains, DeAndre Hopkins represents himself without an agent. Because of that, NFL teams have been avoiding email contact with Hopkins to ensure they’re talking with him during negotiations and not a non-certified agent posing as Hopkins.
“Per a league source, multiple teams have been shying away from sending emails to and from receiver DeAndre Hopkins, given the possibility that they’ll be communicating not with Hopkins but with a non-certified agent who is pretending to be Hopkins. Instead, those teams insist on talking directly to Hopkins — and only Hopkins,” Florio wrote for Pro Football Talk this week.
This is a similar situation that teams handled previously with Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, who also represents himself without an agent.
