CHARACTER DRAMAS
Teams, TV replace old problems with new ones
BOTH TV and NFL teams are in the same leaking boat. They can’t find better, hire better. Or is there a critical shortage of credible humans?
When Jets general manager Mike Maccagnan was interviewed by CBS’ Ian Eagle during a preseason game last summer, Maccagnan said he has taken care to sign players of “good character” from other teams. Sounded good.
The next month, Maccagnan, perhaps stuck for alternatives, signed tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins, released by the Buccaneers after his second DUI arrest in three years.
But in NFL-relative terms, dangerous public lawlessness does not disqualify one from multiple second chances.
This week, the Jets signed wide receiver/kick returner Lucky Whitehead after the Cowboys, of all teams, deemed him a risk-too-far after it came to light — erroneously, it turned out — that he was wanted on a shoplifting warrant.
But the Cowboys made it clear Whitehead wasn’t worth the trouble either way. He previously had been late for team meetings and, most interestingly, made news this month after he said on social media his pit bull had been dognapped — allegedly by gun-centric gangsta rapper Boogotti Kasino — for a purported $20,000 ransom.
Whitehead’s acquisition by the Jets appears mothered by necessity. Last season’s kick returner, Jalin Marshall, has been suspended for the first four games as per failure of the NFL’s drug testing. Marshall, an Ohio State man, might have been the only NFL player who didn’t know Adderall is a controlled substance on the NFL’s banned list.
So one dubious character was replaced by another, and Maccagnan’s claim to find and sign those of “good character” didn’t last long, if it had a chance from the moment he spoke it.
Last season, Mike Pennel, Packers nose tackle and Colorado StatePueblo man, was suspended from the first four games, then from the final four games, both for failed drug tests. Genius at work. The Packers released him. Now? He is with the Jets.
Back to TV, where one of the worst hires in broadcasting history — Ray Lewis, by ESPN, which got what it deserved before dumping him — this summer has been hired by NFL-partner networks.
First, FOX, and now CBS-sibling Showtime, the latter adding Lewis to its weeknight, issues-heavy “Inside the NFL.”
Surely, host James Brown will ask Lewis, a University of Miami man who was unable to speak discernible English on ESPN, why, if he had nothing to do with that double-homicide in Atlanta in 2000, he chose to reach a financial settlement with the victims’ families.
Perhaps Brown — speaker of wisdom, seeker of truth — will begin slowly, asking Lewis how he possibly could lose his can’t-miss-it white suit, the one he was last seen wearing and which reportedly was soaked in blood.
But that is plasma under the bridge. Perhaps Lewis, career concussionist who, despite repeated fines for excessively brutal, illegal hits to the head that left opponents’ brains scrambled, then refused to speak a word of regret, will be CBS’ and FOX’s go-to-guy on issues of NFL players who now regularly live and die with brain damage.
Yep, national networks continue to find Lewis irresistible, thus the most preposterous, insidious choice to have a post-NFL career as a TV football analyst — a man who fractures English after a career spent trying to fracture skulls and a TV presence quickly and easily ignored as just another “name” ESPN hire — now has two other TV gigs.