New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees has trained with Marines. He’s visited service members in the war zone, in his backyard and in places few visitors, much less Super Bowl winners, go to. Even his pregame psych-up chant is based on a Marine cadence.
So, when he fired off this tweet in response to the NFL’s handling of his teammates’ suspensions stemming from an investigation into bounties being put on opposing players, some might have seen it as out of character:
If NFL fans were told there were “weapons of mass destruction” enough times, they’d believe it. But what happens when you don’t find any????
— Drew Brees (@drewbrees) June 19, 2012
For those not following bounty updates, Brees’ Saints teammates are appealing the suspensions handed down by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after a league investigation implicated them in a scheme that would pay out bonuses to players who injured particular opponents. The league’s evidence has been questioned by some, and the appeal hasn’t gone smoothly, leading to sharp-edged legal statements from the players with gems such as this one, quoted in a USA Today piece: “We know what the NFL has publicly said we did, and the Commissioner has chosen to try to punish us and disparage our characters based on semantics, not facts.”
So, Brees saw a parallel. Less than 24 hours later, he saw a potential problem, so he tweeted again:
I apologize if the WMD comment offended anyone. Especially our military. There is no one I respect more than our service men and women
— Drew Brees (@drewbrees) June 19, 2012
Was the original tweet offensive? Did Brees need to apologize? Regardless of your stance, one thing’s the same across all these issues: Actions speak louder than tweets. Or words. Or 50,000 pages of evidence that shrink to less than 200 and then don’t appear to be particularly convincing. Even the most sensitive reader of the quarterback’s Twitter feed should keep his prior generosity to the troops in mind.
