One of the wilder sports stories of the year came full circle on Wednesday when San Francisco 49ers running back Jeff Wilson Jr. met with the media, and it was absolutely worth it.
In case you missed it the past week, Reds outfielder Tommy Pham was suspended for three games after he slapped the Giants Joc Pederson before the series opener in Cincinnati. It turned out that the entire altercation stemmed from a fantasy football argument about IR etiquette (and some GIFs about the Padres that Pederson sent into a group chat).
The NFL player that was name dropped in the whole ordeal was Wilson, and he couldn’t hold back the smile when he was finally asked about it. His reaction was great.
#49ers Jeff Wilson Jr. thanks #SFGiants Joc Pederson for “taking one for the team” in #FantasyFootball dispute with #TommyPham pic.twitter.com/xtQ6SJ27Wb
— Cam Inman (@CamInman) June 1, 2022
Speaking to reporters, Wilson said:
“That was crazy, man. Actually Robbie (Gould) was the first person that told me about it. And man, I was just like that was crazy. I guess I was just honored to be in the conversation. Shout out to Joc for having me on the team and taking one for the team.”
So good.
It did sound like Pham was the one who had Wilson, and Joc was calling him out for similar IR maneuvering with Wilson.
Joc shares details of what happened in his fantasy football league that started his altercation with Tommy Pham today pic.twitter.com/d9NBTwPVoG
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) May 28, 2022
Either way, one of the two had Wilson on the team. It was pretty outrageous that Pham resorted to slapping Pederson over a player who had 79 carries and two touchdowns in 2021, which probably made the whole feud so puzzling to begin with.
[mm-video type=video id=01g40pw6g5gcckmvkbdp playlist_id=01f09p3bf720d8rg02 player_id=none image=https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/video/thumbnail/mmplus/01g40pw6g5gcckmvkbdp/01g40pw6g5gcckmvkbdp-1143e36c4239eb10ec343b4aa0aa6d96.jpg]