One month to the day after the NFL made a decision that defied our lying eyes, the league once again is telling us something other than what common sense makes clear.
September 25, Tua Tagovailoa had a “back” injury, not a head injury. October 25, Mike Evans signed something at the behest of a pair of game officials, but they did not ask him for an autograph.
It’s downright Orwellian. 2 + 2 is 5. Even in post-truth America, it’s stunning.
After seeing the league’s official position that the interaction between “Jeff Lamberth, Tripp Sutter, and Mike Evans did not involve a request by the game officials for an autograph,” we asked a simple and obvious question.
What was it, then?
The response: “We won’t have any further comment.”
All due respect (i.e., here comes the insult), it’s ludicrous to expect people to accept the league’s position that the officials weren’t requesting an autograph without any explanation. We can see the evidence. To borrow the league’s standard for overturning a call on the field via replay review, it’s clear and obvious that they give Evans a a white card and he writes on it.
If, for example, a video camera captures images that suggest I was letting the air out of the tires on my neighbor’s car and I say “no, I wasn’t,” my neighbor would want to know a little more than that.
“I won’t have any further comment.”
That wouldn’t go over well with my neighbor. The NFL expects it to go over well with us.
They say the coverup is worse than the crime. I didn’t really care much about this specific crime, or whatever it was. Now, I’m definitely here for the coverup.
I may be alone on this, but I don’t care. Already, reporters directly or indirectly on Big Shield’s payroll are simply passing along the official position without calling bullshit. Even if I stand alone on this, I’m calling bullshit.
And it’s not enough to say, “Ask Mike Evans.” He did nothing wrong. The rules don’t prohibit him from giving autographs to officials. It shouldn’t be his responsibility to say anything about it -- just as it shouldn’t have been Chris Jones’s duty to tell the world whatever he said when he was flagged for using bad words in a moment that likely influenced the outcome of a game.
It’s for the league to be transparent. In the absence of transparency, people will become curious as to whether there was chicanery.