Patriots wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster doesn’t know what number he’ll wear in New England, but it won’t be the No. 9 jersey he wore in Kansas City.
Smith-Schuster noted that Matthew Judon currently wears No. 9, and the NFL has a rule that requires players who change numbers to buy all the unsold jerseys that have already been printed with their names and numbers. So Judon would be required to buy every No. 9 JUDON jersey currently on the market for the NFL to let him change to a different number, and Smith-Schuster would have to reimburse Judon for that plus pay him whatever amount Judon wanted for the number. Smith-Schuster says that will be too much for him to pay.
“When you’re on the same team and you have the same number and if you change it, you have to pay the fee for the rest of that jersey and then whatever new number you get, you’ve got to pay the inventory for that,” Smith-Schuster said, via the Kansas City-Star. “And that’s a whole process. He’s probably going to have to ask for 100k, which I’m definitely not going to do.”
Smith-Schuster wore No. 19 when he played for the Steelers, and that number is available in New England, so it seems likely that’s what he’ll wear as a Patriot.