Bengals’ Andrew Whitworth: Bengals-Steelers fight is NFL’s fault
Cincinnati Bengals offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth didn’t hold back after Sunday’s game when asked about his team’s pregame fight with the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Following the teams’ Nov. 1 meeting, Steelers linebacker Vince Williams made a slew of threats at Bengals linebacker Vontaze Burfict in four now-deleted tweets, and Whitworth believes that the NFL’s inaction in disciplining Williams was a big reason Sunday’s fight escalated.
“I’ll get in trouble for this, but this is the NFL’s fault,” Whitworth said, via ESPN.com. “The bottom line is … I love the Pittsburgh Steelers, I love Mike Tomlin, but they had a player that made a death threat to one of ours after the last game about spilling his blood in the streets, and everyone saw it, and the NFL did nothing about it.
“And so they allowed there to be that kind of animosity and that kind of thing around.”
Burfict and Williams were in the middle of the pregame scuffle, which amounted to little outside of pushing and words exchanged. But it turned out to be the undercard of the day, with the Bengals losing the game, losing Andy Dalton to injury and Whitworth losing his cool a bit with his postgame comments against the league.
Is he right? Well, the league says it investigates anything it considers a possible violation of the law, which a death threat — serious or not — certainly could entail. We don’t know whether the NFL looked seriously into this, but Whitworth, a former NFLPA rep, clearly is assuming it dismissed it too quickly.
Williams tweets came after Burfict celebrated a big hit against Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell in the first meeting between the two teams. On the play, Bell suffered a season-ending injury.
“How people react to hits, that’s happened throughout the league since the game began,” Whitworth said. “How Vontaze reacted to Le’Veon Bell getting hurt, it happens in the game. [Burfict] had no clue [Bell] was that hurt. It could be a sprain. It could be anything else.
“But when you allow guys to talk about barbaric things off the football field, and in this day and age of our country? And you allow guys to talk about things like that, it’s on Roger Goodell and the NFL. They should have done something. They should have stepped up. They should have made sure that players know that kind of attitude and that kind of character is not involved in the league. That’s their fault. It’s on their head.”
The worst part for Whitworth? The part where Williams said he would “paint” Burfict, threatening violence against him, with the NFL not reacting.
“That involves when someone’s with their little kid in the street, that they have to worry about if someone’s going to walk up on them and do something to them outside the game of football,” Whitworth said.
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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Eric_Edholm
