It’s not often that a report emerges of an NFL player under contract with one team talking to an owner of another team about playing for that other team. On those rare occasions, alarm bells should ring at 345 Park Avenue.

The tampering policy has specific rules that apply in a case like this. Last cited when then-Vikings running back Adrian Peterson reportedly told Cowboys owner Jerry Jones that Peterson would like to play for the Cowboys at some point, the tampering policy requires the owner of the other team to immediately end the conversation and to report the comment to the owner that has the player under contract.

Although the NFL rarely makes an issue out of potential tampering violations, the report that Seahawks safety Earl Thomas communicated directly with Raiders owner Mark Davis about playing in Oakland prompted a walk-back report, from Michael Gehlken of the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“Person familiar with conversation had different account,” Gehlken wrote Tuesday night on Twitter. “Earl Thomas, Mark Davis recently exchanged pleasantries in Las Vegas. Someone asked Thomas if holding out. Thomas responded in jest: ‘Why? You guys coming to get me?’ Regardless, Raiders an unlikely fit for his services.”

Whether the Raiders are a fit is irrelevant to whether Thomas said enough to trigger an obligation by Davis to call Seahawks owner Paul Allen and inform him that one of his players has communicated with Davis about playing for the Raiders. Ergo (that’s a word that doesn’t get used nearly enough) the follow-up report that slams the brakes on the idea that Thomas made a Shark Tank-style pitch to Davis, regardless of whether Davis was receptive.

Moving forward, this one probably will die. Unless, for some reason, the NFL decides to break from its habit of looking the other way when evidence of potential tampering is hiding in plain view.