A current NFL player who may or may not know something about whatever former Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston may or may not have done to Erica Kinsman decided on Tuesday morning to share some opinions on Twitter about recently-former Florida State quarterback De’Andre Johnson, who was kicked out of school after video surfaced of Johnson brutally punching a female at a Tallahasse bar -- a punch that came after the woman hit Johnson first.
The tweets were quickly deleted. I saw the first two before they disappeared: “What I want to know is whats happening to the girl that clearly his De’andre first? It’s never right to hit a girl at all. But they have to get some kind of consequence as well. Yall can’t keep letting females provoke guys in all ways then walk free. Like?”
The folks at WNY WaterCooler have the text of Darby’s responses to various Twitter handles, in which he says he was “speaking the truth,” that he “said nothing wrong,” that Johnson’s “career could be done,” and that he’s “confused” by the criticism he received.
Eventually, Darby became sufficiently confused (or unconfused) to punt, wiping out all of the tweets and his responses but not erasing this retweet of a response to his message: “bad tweet cuz your an NFL player and will take back lash. Both deserve punishment but he has to be a bigger/smarter person.”
And that’s the message that makes the most sense. Unless an elite athlete is under attack by another elite athlete (or by a non-elite athlete with a weapon), the elite athlete needs to disengage and, if necessary, flee. The non-elite athlete who punches or hits or otherwise strikes the elite athlete can then be prosecuted.
If punches are traded, both can be prosecuted, in theory. But the one who does the most damage is likely to suffer the greater consequence -- especially if the one who inflicted the most damage ultimately suffered none.
The fact that Darby, who attended the Rookie Symposium last month, doesn’t understand this means that the NFL’s new domestic violence training protocol needs to do a better job of instructing players to disengage and, if necessary, to flee when under attack by someone who isn’t actually able to truly harm them.