The League That Sells Beer Fined a Man for Pretending to Drink Juice

I found out the way most sports news finds most of us now: on Instagram, in the bathroom. Shoutout to Demo, a number 2 I can actually respect.

Adam Schefter's post said the NFL rescinded the $14,926 fine on Kyle Juszczyk, and I laughed out loud in a way that made the whole bathroom situation more dangerous.

The facts, because those facts aren’t funny enough. Week 2, Dolphins, touchdown from Purdy, and Juice does the toast he has done for years. The league sent him a letter saying his “imitation of chugging a beer constituted an offensive demonstration and could reasonably be construed as being in poor taste.” His defense, and I quote: “I have ‘Juice’ on my pads. The stadium yells ‘Juice’ when I catch the ball. When I celebrate, I celebrate by drinking juice…” Purdy backed him up: “seen the man do it for five years, confused by the whole thing”. Juice himself put it best on New Heights: “You can’t drink juice when you got the Bud Light patio in the end zone.”

P.S. to the league office: pick your battles. You do not want litigation with the Harvard guy.

Jason Kelce called it “hypocrisy at the highest level” on New Heights, on a show where he was already furious about $524,281 in Week 2 fines. Kelce’s own beer brand, Garage Beer, offered to pay Juice’s fine. This week the league agreed with him.

Now call me crazy. I’m a 1981 baby, a GenX-millennial cusper raised in the high WWF era, when Hulk Hogan (a total fraud in retrospect) still looked into the camera and told kids to say their prayers and eat their vitamins. I was a cub scout. My dad drilled character into me early. At my high school they wove character education and critical thinking through the entire curriculum; church once a cycle during school days, a required class on ethics, etc. Then my job on the Obama campaigns calcified the adult version: work hard, play by the rules, and get rewarded for it. (Shout out to David Simas)

So this whole thing offends my entire operating system. A fourteen-year veteran, a ten-time Pro Bowler at a position the league spent a decade trying to delete does the same joyful toast he has always done, and the league fines him fifteen grand for poor taste?

The same league that will sell you beer between every snap. Bud Light has been the official beer sponsor since 2011, in a deal worth more than a billion dollars, and the league cashes the check with a straight face. Half the country watches the games from a barstool, whether that is a Buffalo Wild Wings or a sportsbook in Vegas. Drinking is stitched into football, college or pro, and the league knows it. And it is not just beer anymore. The betting apps are official partners now. Fantasy football is gambling with a spreadsheet and a trophy. The vices are not adjacent to the product anymore. They are the product. The league will take the vice money with both hands and then fine a player for miming vice. That is not a policy. That is a racket with a dress code.

And since we are talking about vice and the people who run this sport, let us talk about the owners. Our own owner, Jed York, got caught in a prostitution sting in East Palestine, Ohio this summer. A hundred and forty bucks, a trailer park, the Mahoning Valley Human Trafficking Task Force. He pleaded no contest, took six games and half a million dollars, and apologized to his family, the players, the coaches, the fans, everybody, by name. That is how you handle it.

Then there is Robert Kraft. His massage parlor case in Jupiter started as a human trafficking investigation. Then a judge threw out the video, the charges vanished, and the trafficking part quietly disappeared right along with them. He never owned a word of it. It is a shame he got away with it, and everybody knows it.

But here is the thing that really gets me. The NFL fine system is a rigged slot machine with no principle behind it. Juice does the toast he has done since Obama was president: $14,926. A few years ago, 44 stood at a press avail chirping a certain gadfly columnist, insinuating some very San Francisco type things about the man. Some would call that libel. The league called it fine, as in not finable. Last season they threw flags for a hand gesture so obscene I cannot describe it in a family publication. Trey McBride did the gesture, then spent a month complaining about every call, total crybaby stuff, though he is on my fantasy team so I will allow it. Then Fred Warner hip-dropped McBride himself in Week 3 and got fined $17,911 for it. Credit where it is due, the league got that one right, and the rule already says three of those buys a one-game suspension. That is the sort of fining the NFL should be engaged in, because multiple hip drops should be suspendable, full stop. Just ask Ricky Pearsall’s knee: surgery in August, out all of 2026, after a hip-drop tackle last December aggravated the injury that had already cost him eight games. I digress, but that is another article.

Anyway. In honor of the whole saga, and because I contain multitudes, here is the Strokes’ “Juicebox.” You are welcome.

So Kyle’s Juice is loose, $14,926 refunded, and the league learned nothing, probably. It will fine the next toast and miss the next hip drop. But at least this week the good guy won one, and that is worth raising a juice box to. And if anything, the whole debacle probably sold more Bud Light. Who needs the frogs.