NFL: Was a free-agency story revealed during an online game of Call of Duty: Warzone? 

Perhaps it's just a sign of the times, but it appears as though NFL news can come from absolutely anywhere.

Case in point, a piece of top-secret business between the Chicago Bears and the Pittsburgh Steelers may well have been exposed during a recent online video game between two total strangers.

Reddit user ProbationOfficer2035 posted the story linked below to social-platform, Reddit. According to the gamer, he was playing an online game of CoD: Warzone with a woman, who appears to have been the wife of former-Chicago Bears offensive lineman Rashaad Coward.

"I’m a Packers fan. I was just playing Warzone with randoms and ended up with a female teammate. She had her mic on and I could hear her husband talking in the background about a “deal”. Then something was said about he would love to play in Pittsburgh," wrote ProbationOfficer2035.

"I tried to ask the girl for info but she felt a bit awkward when I asked if she could tell me who her husband was. All she would say was that it was her husband being loud in the background and that he’s an NFL player," the post continued.

ProbationOfficer2035 did a little more digging to find out who the NFL player was.

"Anyways, he currently plays in Chicago (I did look up her gamertag which is linked to her twitch/IG and she is wearing Bears' gear in some pics). The last thing I heard was that if no one else calls within the next 30 minutes, he’s gonna sign a 3-year deal in order to facilitate the trade because he would love to be in Pittsburgh. I know this is big speculation, but I heard what I heard," wrote ProbationOfficer2035.

At that point, the story was complete hearsay: every gamer has a friend who claims to have played NFL Madden with Lamar Jackson last Sunday! Due to the unlikelihood of such a story being true, most would not have believed the post.

That's when this happened, though:

Coward took to Twitter to discuss 'God's plan' and how thankful he was, fueling conjecture regarding a potential move and sending Reddit users into overdrive on the comments boards.

Shortly afterward, one of Coward's agents, Brian Adkins, appeared to - somewhat ironically - take aim at Coward's wife when he posted this to Twitter:

It's certainly beginning to look as though CoD enthusiast, ProbationOfficer 2035, was privy to a bit of inside information regarding a potential deal between the Bears and the Steelers involving Coward. The correlation on social media between the player, his wife, and the player's agent is simply too captivating to ignore.

As of yet, no deal has been struck, but gamers, NFL fans, and Reddit users everywhere will no doubt watch with keen interest to see how the situation develops. This might just be the first NFL trade/ free agency story to ever have its lid blown off in the Warzone arena.

Welcome to 2021 NFL fans!