Its 2015 and if you made it a week on Twitter without being pissed off about a story that has nothing to do with you, then congratulations. At this point, I don’t know whether to shit or go blind when it comes to all the news that is out there when it comes to off the field activities. Yes..I’m talking about the Buffalo Bills. In the last 5 days or so, we’ve seen Ronald Darby give his expertise on domestic violence, Duke Williams not understanding that if a girl doesn’t respond to two of your messages to meet out, they aren’t interested…and Aaron Kromer being a giant meat head.
When these stories hit the airwaves, everyone starts to pontificate their hot takes and then it ultimately becomes reaction to the reaction. I’m as guilty as the next guy. Sometimes I feel folks are looking for any reason to bastardize players while others will be the first to stick up for the player because they represent a deeper love for them and that’s the Buffalo Bills. I tend to think that both these view points really effect the opposite ends of the spectrum. It feeds into it and I think sometimes when you read something that’s the opposite of what you think, it fuels your angst towards the situation. Again, reaction to the reaction X10. If folks on twitter didn’t follow anyone and just came on there to spit their take and mic drop without seeing their mentions, there would be a lot less discord.
I think the best bet is to really just take all of these instances and not just roll your eyes, but realize if there really is severity in each of these stories. OK, the Kromer thing is bad. Unless a teenager is threatening to stab you with a knife that they just pulled, you don’t hit them. Period…especially over lawn chairs. Call the fucking cops. You obviously don’t threaten to kill their family over the use of lawn chairs. Maybe the teenager is lying and making shit up, but when you are someone in the public eye like Kromer, you need to think about not putting yourself in these situations. Anyways, its not looking good and if that stuff is true, he needs to be fired.
The Darby stuff is bad, but is it really something to be OUTRAGED about? He’s obviously a young man whose sticking up for his former teammate and will hopefully figure out that he’s wrong down the road. Young people are dumb sometimes. I was an idiot as a 22-year-old and couldn’t articulate my way out of a paper bag. Maybe I rationalize better with the younger folks because my views on life at 35 are completely different than when I was 22, so, I get they are dumb sometimes because I was dumb. Should Darby be talked to? Yes. Should he be chastised and destroyed? Probably not. Duke Williams? Whatever. At this point, it could have been a lot worse since every other day there’s something new that a player attached to the Bills is fucking up which leads me to having a hot take about it.
For better or for worse, this is the world we live in now. Everyone’s business is out there. You couldn’t pay me enough to have a Twitter or Facebook page as an athlete. Everyone is up your ass whether you are a star player or just the 52nd guy on an NFL roster. Plus, everyone on social media is a giant asshole (Present company included).
I’ve made this comment 200 times in the past, but if Twitter/24 hour news cycle was around during the 90s Bills era, we’d have serious fucking issues. I’m talking they may have broken up the team if half the stories I heard about them was fact. In 2015, you can’t hide from social media and the press anymore. I think at times, that line of thinking which I possess makes it harder for me to get all bent out of shape about players fucking up in 2015. And that may lead to the biggest narrative as a fan…
This doesn’t mean shit in the locker room.
Do you think a player is gonna take Ronald Darby to the side and yell at him about his hawt takes on Domestic violence? Probably not. You think Fred Jackson is going to care about Duke Williams DMing a girl? These guys don’t care. They care about winning and if Ronald Darby and Duke Williams helps them win, the players aren’t going to care what you do on Twitter. The 90s Bills had a bunch of knuckleheads on their team who weren’t very nice off the field by some accounts, but when they were in the locker room, they gelled. We forget…there’s football character and there’s life character you have after leaving the stadium. The latter doesn’t really matter for football teams. Players and most fans care about one thing when it comes to being a fuck up off the field:
How many games could this guy get suspended for?
That’s the bottom line. When Marcel Dareus got in trouble, that’s the main thing I cared about. I wasn’t about to cut my best player over street racing and smoking fake pot. Its hypocritical, but that’s how you base things when it comes to firing players. If the roles were reversed and Dareus was Kromer, I’d probably play the “Let the judicial process play out before we fire anyone” because, well, he’s way more important to this team than the fucking OL coach.
And when it comes to the outrage for these folks getting in trouble…its July. When football season starts, everyone will forget about this. They’ll lose the whole high integrity narrative because they’ll want to talk about how bad the QB is because that’s going to be what most Bills fans care about. That’s the 24/7 news cycle. By tomorrow, this will be forgotten and will only come back when Kromer gets fired or is cleared of charges. That’s where the eye roll for me comes into play. All this anger just seems to dissipate as time goes on.
I think we all lose when it comes to really wanting to make a difference in society because ultimately all we care about is winning on the field or telling the other guy with the hot takes to shut up.
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