NFL teams have specific obligations to their players. Teams are required to pay their players per their contracts. They are required to provide a reasonably healthy environment in a collision sport, though the specter of the coronavirus pandemic will make that infinitely more complicated. But beyond that, are NFL teams obligated to prepare their players for life off the field? When players take a wrong turn in a social sense, what can the league and teams do? What should the league and teams do, if anything?
The question is presented anew after Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson posted quotes over July 4th weekend on his Instagram account from what has been debunked as a meme that purported to claim that Adolf Hitler was not a racist. Jackson’s post was anti-Semitic in nature, whether he intended it to be or not.
In attempting to explain himself, Jackson made it even worse.
Team response was swift.
Both Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and general manager Howie Roseman are Jewish. The NFL followed with its own statement.
Whether the NFL can confidently address its own values of “respect, equality, and inclusion” right now is a matter for serious discussion in a separate arena, but it’s abundantly clear that Jackson, the 12-year veteran who is in the second year of a three-year, $27 million contract, is under considerable fire.
As you might expect, Jackson has attempted to clarify his stance.
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The “I post a lot of things that are sent to me” explanation doesn’t really hold weight, nor does the “I realize that Hitler was bad” angle. There’s no way for Jackson to put the toothpaste back in the tube here.
This is not the first time in recent years that the Eagles have had to deal with racist statements from one of their receivers. In 2013, video surfaced of receiver Riley Cooper at a Kenny Chesney concert, stating that “I will jump that fence and fight every [n-word] here.”
As one would expect, the apologies came fast and furious.
The consequences didn’t amount to much on a team or league level. Cooper was fined but not suspended, and he played with the Eagles through the 2015 season. Given that a guy who caught 169 passes over six NFL seasons is the definition of replacement-level talent, one wonders what will happen to a deep-ball talent like Jackson.
The Eagles are not the only team that’s had to deal with racial nonsense from its players of late. The Bills have had to create an unfortunate cottage industry in which it has to explain the actions of its quarterbacks.
Soon after Buffalo selected Georgia’s Jake Fromm in the fifth round of the 2020 draft, texts surfaced from March, 2019 in which Fromm said, “But no guns are good. They need to let me get suppressors. Just make them very expensive so only elite white people can get them haha.”
“Earlier today, we became aware of comments made in a text message conversation involving Jake Fromm in 2019,” the team said in a statement. “He was wrong and he admitted it to us. We don’t condone what he said. Jake was honest and forthcoming to us about the text exchange. He asked for an opportunity to address and apologize to his teammates and coaches in a team meeting today, which he did. We will continue to work with Jake on the responsibilities of being a Buffalo Bill on and off the field.”
Bills defensive coordinator and assistant head coach Leslie Frazier, who is black, had this to say:
“Jake seemed very sincere in his apology. And I think… we have a strong culture on our team. Those guys are going to be able to sift through what’s real and what’s not real. We haven’t been around Jake. We haven’t spent much time with him because of the virtual offseason we’re in. But he’s a teammate. I think over time, those guys… he’ll gain their trust. I mean, all of us. We make mistakes. And he acknowledged that — ‘I made a mistake.’ There are a number of us who could say the same thing at some point or another, especially in our youth. We’ve made some mistakes. You move on from it, and you grow from it. And that’s what we’re going to try and do. I’m sure as a team, to grow from it. I’m sure Jake wants to grow from it, as well.”
And this was Fromm’s mea culpa.
So, if we’re going with the “teaching moment” defense, it would be nice if there were actual teaching moments. That has yet to be determined.
As they say, “But wait… there’s more.”
In April 2018, just as he was preparing to be selected seventh overall in that draft by the Bills, Josh Allen had to step forward and apologize for a series of racist tweets, rife with the “N-word,” that he posted when he was in high school.
“If I could go back in time, I would never have done this in a heartbeat,” Allen told ESPN’s Chris Mortensen. “At the time, I obviously didn’t know how harmful it was and now has become.
“I hope you know and others know I’m not the type of person I was at 14 and 15 that I tweeted so recklessly. … I don’t want that to be the impression of who I am because that is not me. I apologize for what I did.”
Bills general manager Brandon Beane threw out a very similar line after Allen was drafted.
“This was a 14-, 15-year-old kid. I’m not making any excuse, but I know there are probably things I would be disappointed with myself in, that I did when I was 14 or 15, and he’s going to come in here and own it. He’s owned it,” Beane said.
Clearly, no NFL team wants to have to deal with his garbage at any time. So, what is the NFL’s obligation? What are the obligations of teams once they learn that they have players with repugnant viewpoints in their midst? Is it any more than issuing boilerplate statements and generic apologies and moving on to the field? Or will the league and its teams and its players actually use the “teaching moment” defense as a catalyst for education?
If we’re moving beyond the paradigm of covering one’s posterior, something has to change. If NFL teams and the league itself aren’t equipped to handle legitimate racial sensitivity training (and that’s a compelling argument), more must still be done beyond the news cycle.
