Early Wednesday morning, TMZ Sports posted a video that showed Redskins wide receiver Terrelle Pryorcursing at and flipping off a group of Chiefs fans at Arrowhead Stadium after the Washington/Kansas City Monday Night Football game earlier this week. Pryor got so upset at the fans that, at one point, he took his helmet and appeared as though he was going to swing it at one of the fans. Eventually, he thought better of it and retreated to the Redskins’ locker room rather than engaging with the fans any further, but it was definitely one of the tensest situations we’ve seen recently involving an NFL player and fans.
Initially, it seemed as though Pryor was upset with the Chiefs fans because they could be heard dropping F-bombs on him. One fan also called Pryor a "little p*ssy." But Pryor claims it went even deeper than that. On Wednesday night, he posted an Instagram video explaining exactly why he was so upset with the Chiefs fans. According to him, they sent the N-word in his direction multiple times throughout the course of the game on Monday. It actually got so bad, he said, that an NFL employee had to stand near him during the game to make sure things didn’t escalate while the game was going on.
Redskins beat reporter Craig Hoffman posted the message Pryor put up on Instagram on Twitter on Wednesday night.
"Being called a Nigger several times to the point where an NFL employee had to step to me and stand by me the whole time from 2nd quarter on is the exact reason why guys are kneeling during anthem," Pryor wrote. "I choose not to kneel because as a team we decided to be one and stand…but as I walked in tunnel hearing someone call me a nigger and say F you to me…me flicking the person off is more deserving. I do apologize to my teammates and the organization. But at some point you keep calling us The N word…we going to start acting up."
The NFL hasn’t issued any kind of statement about the incident involving Pryor and the Chiefs fans yet. But if what Pryor is saying is true, then this is likely going to turn into a much bigger issue and story than some people might have originally believed. And the NFL is going to have to come up with a way to, at the very least, try and police NFL stadiums better to stop players from being subjected to this kind of crap. It’s not exactly a secret that some sports fans do, unfortunately, toss around racial slurs at games. But rather than simply posting an NFL employee up next to Pryor, shouldn’t the league have tried to identify the fans using the N-word during the Redskins/Chiefs game and ejected them from the stadium immediately?
It’ll be interesting to see how the NFL decides to handle this in the coming days. It initially appeared as though Pryor would probably receive a fine for his role in his altercation with the Chiefs fans. But that shouldn’t be the case anymore, and rather than disciplining him, the NFL should spend some time talking to Pryor and other NFL players about how they are going to handle racist behavior from fans moving forward.
