During week 11’s Thursday Night Football game, an ugly incident happened in the dying moments of the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns.
Mason Rudolph was hit by Myles Garrett after he threw a pass. Rudolph was pissed and went after Garrett, tugging on his face mask. Garrett responded by removing Rudolph’s helmet and hitting him in the head with it. If you haven’t seen the video by now, take a look at it. It’s pretty frightening.
Garrett was subsequently suspended indefinitely by the NFL. He appealed the suspension but it was quickly upheld.
In an investigation of the incident, Garrett insisted that Rudolph called him a racial slur which sparked the entire thing in the first place. This claim came about a week after the initial helmet-swinging brawl.
The NFL responded by saying that they found “no such evidence” that supported Garrett’s claim.
I’m going to say this before I give my opinion on the whole situation: I am very well aware that I, a white male, am about to give an opinion on something race-related.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s think critically about this for a second before calling Rudolph a racist.
The NFL mic’s up every quarterback in the league during games to acquire audio for NFL Films purposes. So if Rudolph did in fact utter a racial slur at Garrett, they would be able to track down that audio right away. Garrett said “I know what I heard,” so if he is telling the truth, this is a major problem not only for Rudolph, but the NFL as well; it would seem like they were trying to cover it up
The second part that raises my suspicion of this story is the fact that Garrett came out with this accusation about a week after the incident. What was the thought process here? In my experience as a Jew, if I was faced with any type of anti-semetic comment, I wouldn’t wait a week before telling the world what happened. The second a microphone was placed in front of my face, it would be the first thing that left my mouth.
No one can say for sure what was said between Rudolph and Garrett. Maybe Rudolph did say something. Maybe Garrett is lying. Or maybe Garrett misheard Rudolph.
I won’t come out and call Garrett a liar, but let’s pump the breaks on calling Rudolph a racist for something we aren’t 100 per cent sure he said.
