When we first caught wind, via Nick Wright of 610 Sports, that Chiefs rookie receiver Jonathan Baldwin missed practice Wednesday due to some sort of an unusual issue, Baldwin’s agent, Rick Smith, said there was nothing to it.
“I guess the guy was bored,” Smith said via text.
Smith likely isn’t bored now as he deals with the aftermath of a guy who was regarded as another pass-catching problem child getting injured in a fight with veteran running back Thomas Jones, a man who commands respect and admiration in the locker room for his work ethic and dedication.
Kevin Kietzman of 810 WHB in Kansas City reports that Baldwin actually has a cracked thumb, not a broken wrist. Kietzman also reports that the trouble started a day before the Jones-Baldwin fight, when Baldwin got into a heated exchange with running back Jamaal Charles.
The problem apparently is Baldwin; Kietzman reports that "[s]ome vets indicate they can’t stand Baldwin’s sense of entitlement.”
That’s bad news for Baldwin and for the Chiefs, who presumably concluded that Baldwin’s character concerns weren’t truly cause for concern, even though Mike Mayock said that Baldwin has a “well-earned reputation as a diva.” Baldwin adopted a far more sheepish posture in the weeks preceding the draft, as evidenced by his visit to PFT Live.
The steep reduction in pay for first-round draft picks was supposed to undercut the sense of entitlement. We can only imagine how badly Baldwin may have been behaving if the rookie wage scale hadn’t been adopted.