A bunch of young men are about to enter an American professional sports league, so of course, their old tweets are surfacing. Quarterback Josh Allen, who many believe will be selected in the top few picks of this year's draft, is the latest to fall prey to this recurring trend.
Allen has apologized for his old tweets, which included several mentions of the word "nigga" and other racially offensive material. Immediate reaction indicated this incident could harm Allen's draft stock.
Top 5 draft team front office source to me on QB Josh Allen's tweets: "That's not going to be good. You can't go into a locker room w/ black players & that be cool with all of them. All it takes is one person taking it the wrong way...Different if he was already established."
There is a chance a team staged this rollout purposefully.
A theory two people in the past hour now have floated: another team plotted to have Josh Allen’s racially insensitive tweets put out just before the draft in order to increase the chances he would fall in the draft to that team.
New San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman, however, says he doesn't blame Allen, who was young and stupid at the time.
I asked new 49ers CB Richard Sherman what he thinks about old tweets from Wyoming QB Josh Allen that were unearthed: "He was a kid. If you gave most of us a platform early in high school, I'm sure our immaturity would have shown as his did."
Many espoused a perspective similar to that of Sherman.
So we’re all just going to pretend Josh Allen was being racist and not young, dumb, and trying to be cool? That’s what we’re going to do today?
Others, however, found the "he was just young" justification faulty.
This likely won’t hurt Josh Allen’s standing at tonight’s draft, which says quite a bit about today’s @NFL. Yes, I know that he did this in high school. But even then, folks should know that “If it it ain’t white, it ain’t right” is wrong. https://t.co/4SZlRBhBIK
I don't even have my pitchfork out for Josh Allen. He was a kid tweeting some dumb shit. But when you go to the "ah cmon. Whom amongst us didn't have a white supremacist stage growing up" defense thats when Im like ok wait a minute what the fuck is this
The draft will kick off (finally!) at 8 p.m. EST and will air on FOX, ESPN, and NFL Network.
