Brent Grimes had Miko Grimes trash the Dolphins to get him out of Miami

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers signed Brent Grimes last year, and he had arguably the best season of his career. He had four interceptions and led the NFL in passes defensed. He was an absolute shutdown cornerback toward the end of the season, and the Bucs are really excited to have him back.

And yet, he considered retiring this offseason. Or so he told Sports Illustrated’s Jack Dickey, who wrote a massive profile on Brent and his wife Miko. Brent thankfully didn’t retire, which means I get to share this piece as being about a current Bucs player and his wife—who made waves when Brent was with the Atlanta Falcons and Miami Dolphins, though those waves seem to have calmed down in Tampa. Perhaps because she likes Jameis Winston, while she thought Ryan Tannehill was terrible.

I never really cared much about what Miko did. She can be very entertaining, she’s often very much on point when it comes to football analysis (even if folks don’t like what she says), and she’s obviously stoking a lot of controversy. But, ultimately, she doesn’t play for the Bucs, she’s not suiting up for Sundays, and she’s no more related to the Bucs than any other player’s partner is.

We don’t write about Gerald McCoy’s wife, nor Jameis Winston’s, nor anyone else’s, really. I would say ‘or husbands’, but the NFL isn’t exactly tolerant enough to have openly gay players around, let alone married ones. Anyway: players’ partners are their own people with their own lives, and they should be treated as such, not as extensions of their partners’ professions.

Or, to quote Brent in this profile:

“People [act] like I have a battery in Miko’s back and the words go straight from my mouth to her fingers and onto Twitter. Where does it stop? Can my mom go on Twitter and talk about football? My cousin?”

One interesting thing to come out of this profile, though, and something Miko has talked about often: Brent was ready to retire when the Miami Dolphins tried to coerce him into a pay cut, and Miko went wild on Twitter to get them to cut him so he could get paid elsewhere—with Brent’s permission.

According to Miko, the Dolphins had told Brent he had to take a pay cut; if he declined, they would wait until other teams used up all their cap space and then release him. (A Dolphins spokesman says that these discussions never happened.) At home, Brent said he’d sooner retire. But Miko wasn’t going to let that happen—instead she would get him run out of town by going “as wild as possible on social media.” Her version of what happened next: “[Brent] said, ‘Go for it.’ I got his full permission to be as disrespectful to the Dolphins as I wanted to be. And I threw in Tannehill because I don’t like him or his wife.”

That, of course, let the Bucs sign Brent and they couldn’t be happier about it. So thanks for that, Miko!

Okay, okay, a few more quotes from this profile—which, really, you should read in its entirety. This one, which I found a little baffling:

Later that off-season Miko directed another broadside toward Miami, first tweeting that the Dolphins “f------ stink” and then blasting Ross for “keeping his jew buddies”—football operations boss Mike Tannenbaum—employed. (The latter post was widely condemned as anti-Semitic; Grimes says she was only commenting on “how a lot of communities . . . hire their ‘own people’ for jobs before others.”)

Eh...yeah, that’s still antisemitic, Miko. When you start going on about how Jews always give jobs to other Jews? Classic antisemitic trope. No two ways about it.

And this one, which I found to be absolutely on point.

Miko goes further. “This sport is weak,” she says, citing the “f----- up contracts and dirty owners.” She says she fears that many of the women in her shoes will one day “be feeding their husbands through straws.” She cites what she believes to be a rampant problem of domestic violence; she says she knows from talking to other wives around the league that the situation hasn’t improved since the Ray Rice tape.

That really sums up Miko: she will tell her truth. Often she’s right. Sometimes she’s not. But whether she’s right or wrong, her husband is still one of the best cornerbacks in the NFL—and the Bucs are happy to have him around.