DeAndre Baker cleared to leave Florida for work purposes
Legally embattled NY Giants cornerback, DeAndre Baker, received more good news from the Florida court system on Wednesday.
When the initial DeAndre Baker arrest news broke, many – including myself- largely wrote Baker off as a future member of the NY Giants. However, Baker and his legal team have enjoyed several victories in the court proceedings so far that make it more of a possibility that he’ll stick around.
None of those victories have been bigger than the news Baker got on Wednesday, as he is now cleared to leave Florida for work purposes related to the NY Giants.
He’ll have to provide a clear itinerary on what he’s doing and where he’ll be going as long as providing the courts with proof of where he’ll be staying when he is out of the state.
Obviously, should Baker have been stuck in jail – or even on house arrest – his chances of playing for Big Blue would have gone down dramatically as he wouldn’t have been able to attend practices or participate with the team for who knows how long.
Sometimes, court hearings and trials can go on for longer than a year so his NY Giants career could have been effectively over should the judge not have ruled in his favor in this regard.
Now, the ball is in head coach Joe Judge’s court as he has to make an extremely tough decision on whether he wants to take a chance on his troubled – but talented – young cornerback when he has preached so much about having the right culture.
It’s an unenviable position to be in for a rookie coach, and obviously GM Dave Gettleman plays a factor here as he’s the one that spent a first-round pick on Baker and he’ll want to be at least somewhat involved in the eventual decision.
Will the Giants allow him to practice, anyway?
The Giants previously instructed Baker to stay away from all virtual team activities and I’m expecting that will continue to happen even when physical practices roll around (which could actually be sooner rather than later) until there is some type of break in the case.
Without speculating too much on the legal matter too much, it does seem to be a bit more convoluted than initially reported by the media.
It’s likely going to take some kind of plea deal or an outright dismissal of the case for DeAndre Baker to be officially cleared by the team to report back, but you just never know these days.