Tone Deaf Toney

November 4, 2021

Categories: Florida Gators, NFL

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Former Florida Gators WR and Giants Wide receiver Kadarius Toney stepped in it when he fired off a tweet, Wednesday night, telling people to back off Henry Ruggs III for killing a woman with his car.    

Here is what Toney decided to tweet.  

There are so many layers in these 120 plus characters I would need to bring in a psychologist to try to decipher the internal struggles within Toney.  He is backing his colleague but it’s a huge miss and makes him look clueless as to the scope of what took place.  Ruggs didn’t steal a car, he didn’t get caught with drugs and he didn’t bring a loaded fire arm into a public setting.  He got drunk, drove his car at at speed at which a commercial airliner takes off and ran into a woman so hard that her gas tank exploded and she was burned alive while being unable to get out.  

So where does this lack of perspective come from?  It comes from a variety of places.  Athletes are shielded from the media in college and never learn the nuances and speaking structure needed to talk with and to people as they become adults.   In the past two months along I have come across multiple stories in which a 7th and 8th grader has been offered a college football scholarship.  Imagine having an major college football program offer you a full ride at the age of 13.   You tell me how that young man’s reality is going to have a single ounce of perspective?   There is a reason why 13 and 14 year olds can’t win the lottery, drive a car or drink scotch, they aren’t emotionally or pyshically mature enough to comprehend their decisions.  Coaches should see this.  But they either don’t or don’t care. 

With Ruggs’ his former teammate David Carr took a different approach in discussing the former Raider.  

Loving is not condoning and supporting is not justifying.    Carr handled this the best way a good human being can.  I don’t know what type of professional media training the NY Giants provide their players.  I know Toney did not get any strong training at Florida to prepare him for life as a professional in a media driven sport. 

But he is an adult now and works for a billion dollar company in a soon to be trillion dollar business.  Maybe someone should look out for him and tell him there is a delete feature on his account.  

POST EDIT

Since his initial tweet Toney has decided to double down.

Pride is one of the seven deadly sins for a reason.  The lesson here is to be prideful in being a good person.   A 23 year old woman is dead because of Ruggs recklessness.   Someone close to Toney needs to be there for him right now and show him how to handle things as an adult since every coach and every leader along the way has failed him up until now. 

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