I’m certainly not reinventing the wheel by writing about football players who talk smack. I happen to love it though, and I don’t really care about what people think about people backing their shit up or whatever. I think it’s one of the great things that makes football football. The anticipation of week to week, between games, there’s not much to do but practice and talk to the media.
Of course, when talking to the media, words can get twisted…or strategically placed to cause some friction.
One has to be living under a rock if one is not aware that there are high expectations placed on the Jets this year. It’s easy to pick on them because they haven’t exactly won anything or made it far but not quite enough. Trust me, as a Jets fan, I am well aware of this concept. Even last week, the Twitterverse was blowing up at their play, only to come from behind and beat the Cowboys. For their opponent this week, the Jacksonville Jaguars, it would be a feather in their cap for beating the big green machine.
Then Jaguars WR Jason Hill had to say that Darrelle Revis is a product of the New York hype.
Oh, brother.
I suppose that Hill is one of those aforementioned rock-dwellers who is unaware that Revis is pretty a much of a product of his OWN hype and styling, and is one of the most popular members on the team (and on Twitter). How does Revis respond? Oh, that he basically doesn’t know “Who that dude is.”
Do I think it will spill over into the field? No. Because at the end of the day, these guys get paid millions of dollars to take their lumps in the media and on the field. But the funny thing to me, being with the spacing of games, is that a shit talker in the NFL is much different than the MLB, even NHL. I know that if someone were to say something about, I don’t know, Jose Reyes (like the Phillies did monumentally in 2008), the media would be all over it, dragging it all over. With the games being once a week, it’s just a build up, it’s done with as soon as the final gun goes off.
But it’s entertaining to sit and watch, both the game, and the pregame shit talk that occurs.