Shedeur Sanders is Getting Torched for the Most Tone Deaf Post in Internet History
When you're in your early 20s, it's hard enough to have college football figured out, much less life itself. It's got to be especially tough when you're a household name thanks to the father who just so happens to be your head coach. Especially at a big school with a proud tradition. Even with the advantages that come with that same dad/coach bringing you into this world in life's red zone and facing a 1st & goal, that has got to be a tricky situation to have to navigate.
One thing we can all agree on though, is that when you're coming off a horrific performance like the one above, the worst way to sail through those tricky waters is this:
... followed by this:
What I don't know about being an athletic legend's kid could fill a library. But I have spent some time studying how the NFL draft works. And if part of your plan is to impress personnel departments so they'll select you, this is not the way to go about it. When you handle adversity by splitting early like you're trying to beat traffic and blaming your teammates, that sets raises more red flags than May Day in the Soviet Union. No matter whose DNA you've got. The smart thing at time like this is to say nothing:
But getting back to the DNA thing, when your father has spent decades as a media superstar, as good in front of the camera as he was on the field, it's likely you were born without the "Stop Talking for a While" gene. That seems to be the case with Shedeur. Because he followed that disastrous press conference with the one of the worse pivots of all time. From trying to blame his teammates for his failures to inspiring them with this minimalist attempt at rallying his troops:
As pep talks go, it's not exactly Bill Bob Thornton:
That one will make you run through a wall. If I'm blocking for Colorado Saturday, this Tweet wouldn't inspire me to run through the paper banner at the end of the tunnel.
More to the point, it's about the most tone deaf, wrongheaded, obtuse and badly timed thing he could've posted. It's so wrong on so many levels, if he came out and said his phone went missing and somebody posted this in order to destroy Colorado football and his draft prospects, I'd believe him. Because it's easier to accept than the idea that an almost grown man who's quarterbacking a BCS program could be irrational enough to type this and send it.
And the reaction is pretty much what you'd expect. It's been and an NBA-style dunk contest ever since this turd dropped. And while there are many good ones taking a flamethrower to Sanders, my personal favorites are the ones that made use of his open-ended sentence and finished the thought:
Though I do respect the ones that offered suggestions of what to work on:
Some are more direct:
But as usual, it's the memes and GIFs that win the day in the Thunderdome that is X:
Having said all this, part of me admires the sheer audacity it takes to play so horribly, blame your offensive line, and then Tweet about working hard next week, like it's something you haven't tried up until now. And I'm hoping the reaction Sanders is getting doesn't discourage him from doing more of this as the season goes on and the blowout losses accumulate. But then again, I don't think we've got anything to worry about. That music won't promote itself.