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I really didn’t want to write this. We all know how Jerry Sullivan dog whistles his way through opinion pieces and his piece on Marcell Dareus was no different. However, when I came to this line – this silly, throwaway line – I knew that there had to be something to balance his piece on the internet:
Dareus isn’t a bad man. His problems have been more a question of bad judgment and immaturity. He has kept out of trouble for a little over a year, leading people to conclude that he’s grown up. Of course, we said the same things about Patrick Kane.
We Jerry? I don’t recall you saying word one about Patrick Kane’s sexual assault allegations, but Bucky Gleason did. I don’t recall you commenting on the questionable nature of the proprietor of the establishment having a forum to give his very slanted take in your paper. But if you’re using ‘we’ as in the royal, ‘we the Buffalo News have handled this’, sure – get yourself a cookie.
I’m getting ahead of myself though. I”m going to go through this article and dissect your rant on Dareus, but I’m also going to do you one better – and see if your prior articles can help clear things up. If you’ve read anything I’ve written here on Buffalo Wins I bounce around a bit, but I’m going to reign myself in because the selective editorials are getting old.
Wherein We Discuss Wage Inequality
We’ve got a crisis on our hands, folks, and I’m not talking about the rash of injuries. Marcell Dareus is unhappy. He’s insulted by the Bills’ piddling $90 million contract offer and wonders if they’re trying to get rid of him. I think it’s time we took up a collection for the poor guy.
People could make pledges in dimes to highlight Dareus’s contention that the team is treating him like a “dime-a-dozen” player. Seriously, he said that – twice, to make sure his sympathetic fans understood the true gravity of the insult. Dime a dozen.
I can hear the sarcasm as each of the keys were typed to make these paragraphs. The ‘dime a dozen’ insult should be familiar to you Jerry, because you used it last year to cite the Bills cutting Dareus outright. Y’know, before he had an All-Pro & Pro Bowl season:
So what if he’s a great athlete? The NFL is full of great athletes. You can find gifted athletes in the street, or in Canada or the indoor leagues, guys who would die for Dareus’ talent, hungry players who would wake up 12 hours early and run a mile to play one down in the league.n
I think the most fun part of that earlier article was citing that Dareus made it in as an alternate, which is the only way Bills players can do so. Especially when Dareus, Mario Williams and Kyle Williams went in after this season. Bunch of scrubs, the lot of them!
I digress…
And you wonder why so many fans are fed up with the attitudes of today’s NFL players. Their sense of entitlement is so enormous, their lack of perspective so profound, that they can act as if they were in the company of fast-food workers, struggling to achieve a fair minimum wage.
Ninety million bucks is not a dime a dozen. It’s roughly the annual school budget for the Orchard Park school district. Those 900 million dimes pay for a lot of textbooks, teacher salaries and sports expenditures. Now you tell me who should feel insulted.
NFL players play in a league that makes staggering amounts of money, in which billionaires own said teams and pull in at base 225+ million a year in revenue (thanks Packers for being publicly owned) and with the rising TV deal revenues will only soar in the coming years. If fans want to be angry at players for seeking maximum compensation for their role in the popularity of the NFL, I humbly request those fans also ask Robert Downey Jr to take what studios want to give him to play Iron Man in the Marvel movies, as the 74 million he made to “play pretend” is over what California schoolteachers make. Anyone? Bueller?
Orchard Park School District has a 90 million dollar budget because of two decades plus worth of elections selecting lawmakers that sought to kill public spending. One has zero to do with the other, unless you’re going to comment on the folly of public subsidy of sport on a global level, not just the “greedy players”. Or to talk about the shortsightedness of seeking to reduce taxation and not see a decline in public works. But that’s a conversation for another day.
Look, I understand that pro athletes make staggering salaries. Many NFL players have short careers and pay a heavy price for playing such a violent game later in life. The sport produces massive revenues. The money is there. It’s pointless to compare their salaries to teachers and firemen.
Fans will complain, but they keep showing up for games and sitting for hours in front of the TV to observe the concussive spectacle. They keep forking over their hard-earned money for the NFL product, and most of them don’t care about the players as human beings.
So, if you know that teachers and firemen aren’t fair comparisons, why do that? Oh right, to enrage some of your readers who hold on to those antiquated non-sequitur arguments. Then to bring in fans as the arbiter of this all because of blind loyalty – good touch. You fail to mention the triple word score of how you speak or the fans as a form of sporting Lorax, but the article is young.
The Bills set an all-time high for ticket sales this season, despite 15 years without playoffs and a roster populated with players of dubious character. They love Rex Ryan and would applaud the signing of Charles Manson if he could read defenses and make plays on the run.
But is it too much to expect a little humility, perspective and gratitude – especially from Marcell Dareus?
He should be grateful, not indignant, toward an organization that stood by him last year after his multiple lapses of behavior. People in management insisted that Dareus was a good guy and urged me to give him a break last year around the time I called for the Bills to cut him.
Sully as King of Morality and Injustice to Teams
Amazing that the king of metaphors didn’t feel like Charles Manson was joining the team when he advocated for Richie Incognito’s signing? And in that article, of all the “indiscretions” he mentions, he leaves out the detail of treatment of female staff of the Dolphins by Incognito? Nah, no time for that. Double secret probation is quite enough. By the way, equating all of the things that Incognito did into an Animal House parody is qual-i-ty Jerruh.
Being grateful to a team because they asked the local columnist to lay off shouldn’t be a thing, because one would think that’s the team’s job. And again, Jerry called for Dareus to be cut prior to one of the best statistical years for a DT in Bills history. No biggie.
And finally that humility angle – there’s an air throughout the article of “Dareus needs to learn his place” and I don’t quite see it that way. Going through a contract negotiation is the “just business” side of any business that has to be done. His owner owned his agency prior to the Bills, so I think he has an idea of what Marcell wants, no? This also hearkens back to some of Sullivan’s articles on Stevie Johnson – and saying that he needed to be grateful that papa NFL brought him into the world and could take him out, which again was so chock full of “In my day you’d be..” it sickens me.
Dareus hates when media bring it up, but if he’s going to take shots at the team, I feel justified in revisiting his indiscretions over a six-month period:
He was suspended for a quarter of a game late in 2013 for being late. One day later, he was tardy again and was suspended for a half of the season finale. In May of 2014, he was stopped for speeding in Alabama and charged with two drug felonies.
Later that month, he spoke at minicamp and swore he was not a “trouble” guy. Just two days later, he crashed his car on Milestrip Road in a street racing incident. Police said he lost control of his Jaguar, crossed two lanes of traffic and hit a tree, 10 yards from the entrance to a restaurant.
The drug charges were expunged when Dareus agreed to enter an NFL program and host a free camp. He pleaded guilty to non-criminal charges in the street crash. Roger Goodell suspended him one game for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.
He got off easy. Goodell could have come down harder on Dareus for street racing two days after vowing to be a good boy, but perhaps he had more pressing issues on his plate at the time. At any rate, Dareus will miss the opener against the Colts, which could cost his team dearly.
This is a funny thing to me; Jerry has spent years calling the Bills a laughingstock or a joke or insert-title-here with impunity. But now that Dareus has stepped out of place, it is Sullivan’s duty to remind him (and the reader) of all of Dareus’ misdeeds to bring him down to Earth. After spending years hiding under the umbrella of “voice of the voiceless” to now become the voice-of-the-teams-whose-owners-wouldn’t-let-me-talk-to-the-GM-that-one-time is a volte face I’m dizzy reading.
I also applaud the point made on Dareus’ racing leading to an accident 10 feet away from the entrance to a restaurant. That level of detail was missing from your article on Ryan O’Reilly hitting a Tim Horton’s while under the influence. Oh, you didn’t comment on how a player JUST got a new contract and then embarrassed his team? Must’ve been busy that week I guess. Though if Evander Kane had…y’know. Mind you, Sullivan also called for Miller’s demise earlier than some because he cited that Miller’s wife being in La La Land was a distraction.
As Dareus points out, this is a negotiation, a game within the game. The Bills have only so much money to throw around. He should be thankful to be offered a deal that a News source pegged at over $90 million over six years.
Dareus wants to be paid the same as fellow defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh, who left the Lions and signed a six-year, $114 extension with Miami in March, making him the highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL.
“I’ll say, ‘Thank you, Suh,’ ” Dareus said Thursday. He should thank Suh, who drove up the price for defensive tackles in the league. A year ago, I was thinking Dareus would command in the $40-$50 million range. We’re well beyond that now.
Predictably, Dareus was already backpedaling by Saturday. The Bills are contending that he’s not worth as much as Suh, and they’re right. Dareus has made the Pro Bowl and put up some terrific sack numbers. He’s also been lucky to play alongside Kyle Williams, Mario Williams and Jerry Hughes the last two seasons, which has made his job easier.
A number of things here. First, for the Bills, a team who prides itself on “not negotiating in the media”seeing the Buffalo News having the numbers for the extension is quite a cowinkydink. Also, that number’s misleading – out of that 90 million, whatever is guaranteed should matter, not the window dressing.
Third, if Jerry Sullivan thought that Dareus was going to accept a 5 or 6 year, 50 million dollar contract that’s more on Sullivan not being aware of the contracts in the NFL. Geno Atkins‘ contract is the closest I could correlate to Sullivan’s numbers and even that is a stretch. Finally – the Dareus is lucky to be with Mario, Kyle and Hughes is a weak argument, as all four are in a symbiotic relationship. Though in Jerry’s world Hughes, Dareus and Mario Williams couldn’t call for Pizza without Kyle there to dial.
Talent and Character Evaluator Extraordinaire
Dareus is a freakish athlete, remarkably agile for a man his size. But he isn’t nearly as good a run defender as Suh. He’s been a defensive tackle for some of the worst run defenses in Bills history. A year ago, Suh led a Lions run defense that was nearly a yard per carry better than Buffalo’s.
There’s always a risk involved with big contracts. The Dolphins took a chance on Suh, who has a history of dirty play on the field. Teams are willing to look past personal issues in the name of winning, but you can’t blame the Bills if they’re taking Dareus’s past into account.
What Jerry leaves out is that Suh has been on some of the worst pass defending teams in the NFL, a stat more important with the league becoming pass-happy. Or that the yard per carry difference could’ve come in the games the Bills shut down Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers back to back. Or that Dareus was out for most of San Diego and all of New England. Oh, and Kyle Williams was also on those lines, but since Dareus was lucky to have him as a teammate does that excuse Kyle’s role as well? I guess Sully forgot to check out Pro Football Focus piece on how Dareus was the best run-stuffing DT in the NFL last year. Way to conveniently miss that.
He also overlooks the fact that SUH STEPS ON DUDE’S HEADS AT WILL. Off the field he’s a great dude that’ll make you home-made ice-cream. But on it he *might* murder you.
Dareus isn’t a bad man. His problems have been more a question of bad judgment and immaturity. He has kept out of trouble for a little over a year, leading people to conclude that he’s grown up. Of course, we said the same things about Patrick Kane.
The Bills have to take judgment into account if they’re going to make Dareus a $100 million man. If he could be late one day after being disciplined for lateness, or crash his car in a street race one month after a speeding violation led to a drug arrest, can you really trust his judgment after getting a monster contract?
AND HERE WE GO. So we have Jerry Sullivan, who has kept quiet about the Kane situation comparing Marcell Dareus to him for the purposes of this article. With zero context. So, let’s provide some for Jerry. With Jerry’s own words.
Jerry on Dareus losing family members and that affecting him during the time of his arrest for synthetic marijuana:
My mother died a month after Dareus’ brother was murdered in 2012. I’d be insulted if anyone used it to justify any indiscretions on my part
— Jerry Sullivan (@TBNSully) May 7, 2014
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsJerry on the death of Patrick Kane’s grandfather:
His eyes are a little wider nowadays. When you lose a close family member, it sharpens your perspective. The world seems more alive, the little things more precious. He and his grandfather were very close.
To continue, consider that throughout Kane’s alcohol fueled run ins with the law, Sullivan penned articles decrying Kane the best that Buffalo has produced with zero inclusion of his public foibles up until then. But now Jerry wants to loosely insinuate a man (Dareus) that has had zero violent run ins with people (unlike Kane) upon receipt of an extension would go down that road? Sure. But that is the protection you get when you are one of “Jerry’s Kids”, which is what I call any of the athletes that get housed under his sphere of protection should anything go wrong for them. Call it their grit, their ability to persevere, call it at times their lack of pigment – Papa Jerry sees no wrong.
The Bills have to take judgment into account if they’re going to make Dareus a $100 million man. If he could be late one day after being disciplined for lateness, or crash his car in a street race one month after a speeding violation led to a drug arrest, can you really trust his judgment after getting a monster contract?
It certainly doesn’t help when Dareus talks about “dime a dozen” and hints at leaving town if the Bills don’t pay him what he thinks he’s worth. Of course, he should keep in mind that the Bills could slap a franchise tag on him and keep him off the market in 2016. You never know how a player will react to the big money. Some lose the passion that motivated them when they were playing for the deal of a lifetime.
I’m not ready to give Dareus the benefit of the doubt, and maybe the Bills are grappling with the question as well.
Chances are, Terry Pegula will bend, and Dareus will get a contract that shows him the proper level of respect. Then he’ll smile for the cameras, say he’s looking forward to finishing his career in Buffalo and insist his comments were taken out of context.
In the meantime, fans, be generous. Every little dime counts.
Jerry started his article as I’ll end mine: there is a crisis on our hands and it’s the testicular fortitude of the op-ed writing at the News. It’s easy to jump on the athlete that wants money. It is harder and takes more nuance to broach the issues inherent in a sexual assault case, but Bucky tried and I give him props for doing so. Jerry merely uses it as a throw-away line to further diminish Dareus. So to recap – Mario’s fridge, Stevie Johnson, Marcell Dareus are players Jerry Sullivan must write about as cancers to a team because of their selfishness. Ryan Miller is “soft” at goalie because his wife relocated. Patrick Kane (prior to and after sexual assault allegations), Ryan O’Reilly, Richie Incognito are just some boys having fun.
Maybe, one day down the road, Marcell can lead the Bills to a Lombardi, so he can get a “get-out-of-judgment-card” like Patrick has?
I’ll be picking up Patrick Kane at Imperial Pizza on Abbott Road at noon. Don’t think I’ve ever touched the Stanley Cup.
— Jerry Sullivan (@TBNSully) August 24, 2013
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We would all be a lot happier ignoring these death marches through misogyny and racial dog whistles and I’m going to do my level best to pretend that they don’t exist in the future. In the meantime, the next time you see one of ‘Jerry’s Kids’ in trouble and Jerry nowhere to be seen (or read), be patient. There’s always another player not kissing the feet of his league that needs to know where his place is.
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