Was Ezekiel Elliott Victim of a Johnny Damon-Yankees Situation?

I don’t want to bum out any Boston fans who are riding high after the Patriots’ Ezekiel Elliott signing, but I can’t keep quiet about this. It’s too big a scandal to be hidden in the shadows. Someone needs to speak out.

The Patriots may have pulled a classic New York Yankees move, and it makes me sick.

Just check out this tweet Zeke sent out only hours before announcing his signing with the Patriots.

If you’ve been following football over the last few years, you’ve become accustomed to seeing Zeke’s wild hair and beard combo.

And now, suddenly all of that disappears when he joins an organization famed for its no-nonsense approach? Remind you of any other terrible events from Boston sports history?

It was heartbreaking when the evil Yankees did it to Johnny Damon, and I’m a little worried the Patriots are the Yankees of this situation. That’s never a comparison I want to make, but you’ve gotta call a spade a spade.

In recent years we’ve been hearing more and more previously-buried fun stories emerge from the Belichick era in New England. Gronk passing out drunk in the training room. Tom Brady hijinks. Randy Moss having fun with a rookie Julian Edelman.

The Pats were finally starting to shake that reputation as the no-fun evil empire led by Emperor Palpatine Belichick. I don’t know if anyone was gonna go as far as calling us “fun” or “lighthearted”, but at least nobody was going to call this front office “tyrannical.”

So that leaves me with one option.

I have to go ahead and assume that Zeke did this because he wanted to. A “new year new me” kind of move. A fresh cut for a fresh start. For my own sanity in not having to compare the Patriots to the Yankees, I am forced to believe this to be the entire truth.

Now we just cross our fingers and hope that we have some sort of reverse-Samson situation here, where cutting his hair gives Zeke his powers back and we see him playing football like a young man again.