Myles Garrett has been all but universally condemned for striking Mason Rudolph with Rudolph’s own helmet last Thursday night. Multiple teammates, including Baker Mayfield and head coach Freddie Kitchens, reacted negatively and condemned Garrett. The incident has also garnered almost unanimous condemnation in media, the NFL community and the public at large. Garrett himself apologized to his team, the Steelers, Mason Rudolph and the NFL as a whole in a statement made after the game.
Garrett – who had already recorded 10 sacks on the season – has been suspended for at least the remainder of the season.
As stated before, the overwhelming majority of reactions have been negative. Just about everybody and their mother agrees that Myles Garrett was wrong for swinging an NFL helmet at a helmet-less player. This isn’t hard, right?
There have been discussions about whether Rudolph deserved a suspension for his role in the brawl, which is warranted. Garrett has also recieved support and praise from those who attest to his character before this incident, including Chris Long, who had a thoughtful take on the whole situation.
But again, it should be easy to agree on Garrett being in the wrong no matter what, right? Swinging an NFL helmet at someone after a questionable hit, with seconds left in the game, crosses every line, and Myles Garrett should be universally condemned for it. He should be, but woke Twitter gonna woke Twitter.
There has been a not so small segment of Twitter that is making the issue about race and arguing that Rudolph wasn’t suspended because of “white privilege”.
Everyone knows you can’t have a complaining about white privilege session without a weigh in from an elitist, millennial white dude.
No weigh in from Jemele Hill? Didn’t see that one coming.
Anyways, this line of thinking is the end result of being 100% consumed by a narrative and only seeing things through that lens. The amount of leaps in logic and common sense that have to be made in order to reach these conclusions is truly astonishing. Skirmishes break out after just about every play in the NFL, yet woke Twitter wants to demand Rudolph be suspended? I personally could see justification for a one game suspension for Rudolph, but that would only be because of how high profile this incident has become. The bottom-line is that Rudolph didn’t do anything abnormal and that it was Myles Garrett who took this thing way too far.
That isn’t to say that Myles Garrett is a terrible human-being who should never play again or be charged with assault, because that’s absurd too.
Almost everyone, regardless of race, believes that Myles Garrett crossed the line and should be punished. It’s abundantly clear that those who seek to extract racism narratives out of something like this are going to play the race card no matter what, and it’s old.
Other tweets went further and justified Garrett’s actions due to Rudolph’s pro Trump social media likes. Rudolph was also accused of saying the n-word, which seems to be an excuse for any act of violence against white people in woke land.
My favorite right here.
It should come as a shock to no one how big tech operates at this point. There are two sets of rules; one for left leaning individuals and another for right. Straight up threatening violence is OK if it’s against the right people where as questioning how a court can force a child to transition will eventually lead to a ban.
Trust me bro, plenty of us really just wish you would.