The Giants have opened the window for running back Devonta Freeman to return to action.
Freeman went on injured reserve last month with an ankle injury and the team announced on Friday that he’s been designated for return to the active roster. He can practice for the next three weeks and can be activated at any point.
Freeman also spent time on the reserve/COVID-19 list while on injured reserve, but was activated from that list on Thursday.
The Giants signed Freeman after Saquon Barkley‘s torn ACL and he had 54 carries for 172 yards and a touchdown in five games before his injury. He also had seven catches for 58 yards.
Wayne Gallman and Alfred Morris have handled running back duties in his absence.
No, this isn’t about a former Bucs quarterback getting caught in a sting.
This is a where-are-they-now kinda story:
It appears former Bucs leaky, sleepy quarterback Josh Freeman was at a recent FBI job fair held in the bureau’s Kansas City field office for former athletes interested in fighting crime. Freeman grew up about 20 minutes south of there.
Freeman, a former first-round pick of the Bucs in 2009 out of Kansas State, was always shrouded in mystery.
It was a mystery why the Bucs drafted him in the first place, but in his first full season he damn near guided the Bucs to the playoffs with a 10-6 record.
After that, Freeman fell apart and his career crumbled after a series of bizarre and very public episodes that included being habitually late to both his football camp as well as to both practices and scheduled Bucs events. An offseason radio appearance before the 2013 season is still talked about today for its weirdness from Freeman, which fueled rampant speculation and stoked the rumor mills.
If the name Josh Freeman sounds familiar, there’s a good reason. His talents have shone brightly on covers of numerous magazines and you’ve likely seen his greyish, 1964 C10 Chevy truck he built, which was a featured ride at the 2015 SEMA show in Las Vegas. Large framed NFL quarterback who was the starting quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 2010 to early 2013, before joining the Minnesota Vikings midway through the 2013 season.
During the 2012 season, Freeman headed to Orlando for a BSPN photoshoot where he posed as notorious alleged pedophile Michael Jackson, which did not go over well within the walls of One Buc Palace. At all.
His feuding with former Bucs commander Greg Schiano, which included thousands of dollars of fines for repeated team violations, was the final straw.
Freeman appeared in two more NFL games after he left the Bucs, both starts, one in Minnesota and the other with Indianapolis. Then he had a cup of coffee with multimple teams over a short period of time that included a stint with the Brooklyn Bolts of the Fall Experimental Football League (FXFL).
Freeman’s career ended after he retired from football weeks after signing a two-year contract with the Montreal Alouettes in 2018.
With the Bucs, Freeman was so protected by the team and shielded from just about everyone, so no one really knew him. One was lucky to just be able to say “Hi” to him without Freeman being hustled off a practice field or escorted through a doorway.
Among local media, Joe knows of only two people who remotely knew Freeman away from One Buc Palace. One was the late, great Steve Duemig. Even then, Duemig rarely spoke with Freeman away from Duemig’s radio show. Joe remembers Duemig telling him the last time he spoke with Freeman was a chance encounter in a Las Vegas casino.
Never before and not since has Joe seen a team keep a player hidden in the shadows like the Bucs did Freeman. In retrospect, the protection of Freeman seemed so suffocating, Joe has to wonder what the team was hiding?
Freeman didn’t come across like he would be an FBI agent or an employee of the agency in any way. CIA, maybe, because he was so secretive.
Josh Freeman Nfl
On the FBI’s jobs LinkedIn page, there is a post about a recent FBI job fair for former athletes and the picture used highlights Freeman wearing an FBI bulletproof vest.
Last year, the FBI Kansas City Field Office welcomed former NFL players through a partnership with @AscendingAthletes to talk about future careers with the Bureau. The athletes had a chance to examine evidence and blood spatter, tour the command post, and gun vault, operate a remote-controlled bomb robot and more.
Josh Freeman Rumors
Given the FBI’s controversies in recent decades (wiretapping of the 60s, covering for the mob, trying to frame Richard Jewell, and many other incidents) perhaps someone with the Bureau was impressed by how Freeman tried to pin the leak of a drug test result on his coach and thought Freeman was worthy hiring to use in some form of domestic surveillance?
Josh Freeman Rumors
Hat tip: @acheron1377.