What a way to spend the summer!

I hope he’s a beast on the field!

I guess I’m just still reacting to things like this because of Darrent’s death. Darrent made the right choice to leave the party that night, but still ended up shot. I guess I feel like that should have sent a real signal to young player that going out to these clubs and parties as an NFL personality can be dangerous even if you make ALL the right decisions.

As I said, maybe I’m a square, but if my boss was paying me piles of cash to do my job and keep a clean record, I’d park my ass at home with a good movie. :)

However, we don’t know whether or not he had any idea about the other guy’s cocaine. Maybe he knew, maybe he didn’t. But my experiences with people with cocaine is that they don’t tell nobody, and they especially wouldn’t tell a guy like Marcus Thomas “Oh yea, I got a bunch of coke in my truck, wanna come?” Drug users hide, and Thomas is a big name with a lot of money. Guys from his past are going to want to be close to him, and I can only HOPE he’s actively staying away from the ones he knows are users.

But I am not going to make assumptions that he knew or didn’t. Personally, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s still in the exact same position he was already in: a screwup and he’s out, so it really isn’t any different. I’m not big on pre-judging, I think the media does way too much of that for us and it’s too easy to dive right into the opinions. C’mon. Look at the situations where we’ve seen the tape and then read what media people had to say about it? We know how much they get wrong, either deliberately or not (how many people reported that Elway told Cutler to shut up?) and in situations like this, I’m just not going to buy into media dumping on him.

Maybe he shouldn’t have been down there partying at all, but it’s the early offseason. If he’s going to party, ever, that’s the time to do it. Y’know, maybe this just taught him that anything he might do is dangerous, but the very nature that makes some of these guys the top level competitors that they are is the very same nature that makes them do some questionable things here and there.

But I’m still not going to dump on a guy for going out and drinking, especially for a guy who had the sense to get someone to drive him home and then it turned out he got the wrong guy to drive him. I’m not going to make assumptions about what he knew and what he didn’t. That’s not fair to him or the team.

I know that some of these athlete have a hard time breaking ties their old negative influences – whether that’s friends or other groups they were involved with before ‘making it.’ I know there is a strong desire to not turn your back on your ‘peeps’ or ‘forget where you came from.’ But there are some fine examples of players that came from humble background (read: Rod Smith), that proved you can have a long and successful football career without any arrests, disciplinary action, suspensions.

I’m of the strong opinion that each person is responsible for his/her actions, and it’s time some of these players stop giving excuses (like it was the other guy’s drugs) and start making better overall choices (like not going to the club and getting drunk in the first place).

In this case, I’m willing to jump behind Thomas and support him (and Marshall for that matter) this season… but my patience is just starting to wear thin with guys that just can’t seem stay out of the news.

Anyhow, there’s a pretty big difference in getting busted for smoking weed while in college, and getting arrested for a heavy narcotic as an adult professional. The latter tends a leave a much longer lasting impression, even if he wasn’t charged. Hopefully it will.