What a weekend for our beloved Tampa Bay Buccaneers. As the draft came to a close Saturday afternoon everyone, or just about everyone became a professional general manager as well as a scout for NFL talent. Now as we all have our feelings for what was right and wrong with our picks, one thing I can tell you was wrong, was the reaction tweeted out by a 38 year old man from Houston.
See, a man doesn’t threaten people via tweets because of disagreements among who was selected, but unfortunately that is exactly what took place Friday evening. Mike Rogers, the man mentioned above tweeted a GIF from the movie Killing in New York. The movie has a scene in which a criminal shoots a cop in his car, and unfortunately Mr. Rogers used that GIF to describe what he would do next time he was in Tampa, to our own Jason Licht.
The NFL and the Buccaneers have now decided to take this threat seriously, as they should. With social media a tool as well as a weapon, we see people make these mistakes on a daily basis. We hold all of these draft prospects accountable to every tweet they have ever had. It’s time for accountability to be forced on the rest of society. Sure we all love a good GIF, a funny tweet, or a hilarious snap chat, but to use such an obviously inappropriate GIF and then pass it off on being in the moment and getting carried away is nonsense. Your a 38 year old man and your excuses are childish.
My issue besides the GIF is just the way we welcome new players to our team. Not only did he threaten Mr. Licht with an offensive GIF, he is essentially calling our players and draft analysis worthless because his draft board didn’t match the teams. Regardless of age, these players haven’t even played a snap and this individual doesn’t want to support them. I hope we learn our actions online do more than show words on a screen and have actual repercussions. This may not be a friendly take on this topic, but I hope the issue is resolved and stricter policies are put in place for people who do not understand how inappropriate their comments are.
