Each Sunday, tempers tend to flare (just ask Dennis Green) along losing sidelines throughout the NFL. After a week spent preparing for one game, a loss can come as a crushing blow. It can take players hours, sometimes even days to get over it. The frustration goes home with players. It joins them for dinner on Sunday night and breakfast on Monday morning. And, sometimes, it finds a vent in their social media accounts.
Case in point: After suffering an overtime defeat against the Cowboys, Redskins wide receiver Jabar Gaffney was in no mood for a for mocking tweet from a Cowboys fan reading: "lmao 3-9."
Gaffney not only found the tweet inflammatory, he pointed out that it was incorrect, telling the fan, "we 3-7 dumb [expletive]." He could have let it go there, but Gaffney then tweeted, at the fan, "3-7 ain't a record to be proud of I’m just proud I ain't you get a life or kill urself"
Although Gaffney deleted the tweet, it continued to circulate via retweets:
For obvious reasons, this was a poor choice of words by Gaffney, who has the watchful eye NFL Commissioner overseeing him along with all of his Twitter followers. With his tweets earning unwanted attention, Gaffney attempted to backtrack:
Well, that's an interesting interpretation of the first amendment.
According to the Washington Post, Gaffney joined Twitter just last week at the urging of teammates. It only took a few days for the star to learn that everything he writes on the website is open to scrutiny.
"Cowboys fans, that's how they are. I was just telling the dude, 'Y'all won, all right? Leave me alone," Gaffney said in the Redskins locker room on Monday. "'Don't talk to me.' That's all it was."
No word on whether Gaffney will be fined for the incident, but considering that Jets head coach Rex Ryan was docked $75,000 by the league for yelling an expletive at a fan that was videotaped and went viral, it's a safe bet that the Redskins wide receiver should expect a call from Goodell in the near future.
The tweets capped off what was already an up-and-down game for Gaffney; He had a season high 115 receiving yards but his team lost and he was caught on video accidentally slapping a fan in the face while celebrating.