Perhaps it started before the NFL draft, when the “unnamed league personnel executives” began weighing in on Jadeveon Clowney’s pilot light. He apparently barely has one, said one behind the cloak of anonymity. Suddenly it become right for incomplete strangers to begin talking like a disappointed parent.
“Spoiled.”
“Lazy.”
“Never worked hard a day in his life.”
It certainly accelerated post-draft, when former Pittsburgh Steelers battering back and ESPN analyst Merril Hoge took after the Houston Texans No. 1 over pick, labeling him an “atrocious” football player.
Great athlete, he said. Not a very good practitioner of the concussive arts. Not a big enough heart. A one-trick pass-rusher.
Whatever the cause, it has happened: I find myself dearly hoping Clowney comes out this season and starts knocking down quarterbacks like a thresher does wheat.
I hope he pillages the AFC South, wins every kind of rookie award, brokers peace in the Mideast, adopts an entire orphanage and marries Miss America.
Seems like he has gone through a lot more of the personality and character assassination than the average No. 1 pick has had to endure. Much of it by people psychoanalyzing from afar, using a telescope to judge him at the cellular level.
I hope Clowney comes out this season and gives them all a sports hernia (the very condition that may have slowed him down coming into the draft).
Shouldn’t he be given the right to become a monumental bust on his own — if that is his destination — rather than to be so completely painted as one before playing his first professional down?
Granted Clowney doesn’t help himself sometimes. He just came out saying that a goal for this season is to sack Indianapolis’ Andrew Luck one time. Ideally, a player taken No. 1 almost solely on his ability to rush the passer should aspire to more than a single sack of a divisional nemesis.
Clowney’s own coach, South Carolina’s Steve Spurrier, didn’t help his guy after a disappointing senior season when he at times hemmed and hawed about his work ethic. At least that well-couched opinion was based on first-hand exposure.
How about this: How about we wait at least until he pulls a pellet gun on a pizza delivery man before declaring Clowney the second coming of Aundray Bruce (yes, the Falcons No. 1 in 1988 actually did that)?
Oh, wait, I know exactly the time I started feeling empathy for Clowney.
It was when Warren Sapp, confirmed lout, complained that he hadn’t seen Clowney play “the game with his hair on fire.”
That’s exactly when the outside conjecture jumped the shark. Having Sapp opine on an issue remotely associated with character is like going to Kim Kardashian for a book review.
It seems clear now that there are just some people in this world who will not be satisfied with this guy until his abundant hair literally does catch fire on third-and-long.
