File under: Bad optics.
Or terrible optics.
It was pretty stunning Monday when Bill O’Brien traded the Houston Texans’ franchise receiver, DeAndre Hopkins, to the Arizona Cardinals for next to nothing in return.
Part of the issue reportedly was Hopkins wanted a contract that the Texans weren’t willing to give him, but it appears the relationship between the wideout and his head coach/general manager was, in a word, fractured.
So bad was it, that Michael Irvin revealed during an appearance on ESPN’s “Get Up!” that O’Brien once called Hopkins into his office and likened him to — wait for it — Aaron Hernandez.
“(Hopkins) told me, he said ‘Michael, it was a bit of a power struggle there because Bill O’Brien, coach O’Brien thought he had too much influence over the locker room.’ He called DeAndre Hopkins in a meeting to talk about this, and kind of hash it out.
“In that meeting, he started the meeting with telling DeAndre Hopkins this, that blew my mind when DeAndre told me this. He said, he told DeAndre Hopkins ‘Hey, uh, the last time I had to have a meeting like this, it was with Aaron Hernandez. I was like, ‘What, he put in Aaron Hernandez in this meeting?’ He said yes he did, he said, ‘Michael, that blew my mind that he would even bring that up, I’ve never been in any trouble, I don’t know why he would even equate me with Aaron Hernandez.
“And from there, the meeting just deteriorated. He got into talking about DeAndre Hopkins, because DeAndre Hopkins has a few kids from different women. And he told DeAndre that he doesn’t like that he has his baby mamas around sometimes. And from there I think the relationship just went bad, and thus we got a trade of DeAndre Hopkins from Houston for basically, like I said earlier, a ham sandwich — all because of that relationship.”Â
Yeah, not good.
