Chandler Jones Posted a Text Conversation with Mark Davis, Meaning His Weird Dynamic With the Raiders Has Achieved Terminal Velocity
You'd think that a relationship between a franchise and a player that's built upon the foundation of a $51 million, $32 million guaranteed commitment would be a smooth one. With admiration, kindness, respect, loyalty and mutual attraction baked in. But when that franchise is the Raiders and the player is Chandler Jones, it's been anything but for some strange reason.
These two have been feuding. Over what, no one seems to be certain. Even though much of the fighting has been done in front of the whole neighborhood:
To the point that even the guy who's signature is on the front of those texts is now taking the brunt of the public embarrassment:
First, let's address the obvious. Mark Davis capitalizing every word of his texts is an absolute savage move. I mean, does this look like the face of a guy who writes in headlines? Especially the kind where even the definite and indefinite articles and conjunctions all get the capitals treatment?
He certainly does. Which begs the question: Is there a setting for this? Or does he really take the time to hit the Caps upward arrow after every time he hits the space bar? Because that is no way for anyone to go through life. Especially a billionaire who lives in the most hedonistic city in the US. Guy, just go all lower case and spend more time inviting showgirls back to your insane mansion.
Punctuation aside, I don't see what is in the message Davis sent that should cause Jones to make it public. Seriously, what did he say that warrants posting in on the internet? Is this supposed to humiliate Davis? Because if anything I didn't realize he was this articulate. This could've been written by the late, great, Al Davis himself. The Raiders are important to me. But it's the players I care about most. I care about you. Much respect. Let's talk. Where's the lie here?
I've been working for Dave Portnoy for almost 20 years and while he's written some extremely complimentary posts that I will never stop appreciating, in all that time there hasn't been a fraction of this kind of soul-baring emoting. I wouldn't know what do with with it if he did. For sure my response wouldn't be "I'll put this on Instagram and whoo boy, is he going to look like a jerk!" There aren't a dozen working people in America who get messages like this from the person who owns the company. And the net effect is that this just boomerangs back at Chandler Jones and makes him look like the tool in all this.
Big picture: There's no way you can keep a guy on your roster who's so determined to get vengeance on you for whatever slight - real or perceived - he thinks he's been done. And you also can't communicate with him any more, because there's no trusting he won't do this every time.
A strange situation just keeps getting stranger. And I get the feeling we haven't begun to see how far this will go. Gird your loins.