AP Photo/Michael Conroy
After a series of offensive tweets from Josh Allen's past resurfaced just before the draft, Adam Schefter suggested that the timing may have been intentional.
- Josh Allen was projected as a possible top pick in the 2018 NFL Draft heading into Thursday.
- That talk has diminished since, due in part to a series of racially insensitive tweets from Allen's high school days that resurfaced late Wednesday night.
- Allen acknowledged the tweets and apologized.
- NFL insider Adam Schefter floated a wild theory that some believe the release of the tweets was an intentional move by a team later in the draft hoping that Allen would fall to them.
Quarterback Josh Allen is projected to be one of the top picks in the 2018 NFL Draft, but a series of offensive tweets that recently surfaced could give some teams pause before selecting him with one of the top picks in the first round.
The offending tweets were published when Allen was in high school, and he has since apologized for them and deleted them from his feed.
While the initial waves of criticism and subsequent criticism of the criticisms regarding Allen's language carried forth in a manner all too familiar in 2018, one bit of gossip made this story unique - NFL insider Adam Schefter reported that some believed the move to publicize Allen's past tweets came from inside the NFL.
The idea that Schefter is putting forth is that there was a team lower in the draft who found this information, and chose to time its release to tank Allen's draft stock at the last second to give that team a shot at snagging him.
It seems like a pretty odd public relations strategy. Following this train of thought means a team actively attempted to damage the image of the player that team hopes will be its future franchise quarterback. What's even crazier is the fact that Schefter, who is about as plugged in as it gets when it comes to NFL insider knowledge, thought the story had enough credibility to pass along to his 7.3 million Twitter followers.
Bad tweets from prospective athletes are almost a tradition at this points when it comes to the draft - it happens every year and follows a similar cycle. The idea that that cycle would be weaponized by a team to possibly force a player to fall to their pick in the draft still seems ludicrous, but if Schefter thinks it's a possibility, then maybe there is a chance that this is how it played out.
With this in mind, if anyone you love is on the precipice of joining a professional sports league, do them a favor and find their bad tweets before someone else does.
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A theory two people in the past hour now have floated: another team plotted to have Josh Allen's racially insensitive tweets put out just before the draft in order to increase the chances he would fall in the draft to that team.
- Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) April 26, 2018