Well, at least Colts owner Jim Irsay isn’t the only guy whose words have been unfairly manipulated this week by the inherently awful and corrupt sports media.
Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III believes that his comments about trying to bait defenders into penalties for sideline hits were misconstrued.
“Some people think I’m aiming to draw penalties and that’s not what I said,” Griffin told Redskins.com, which sort of makes it a press release. “I was asked about the hits on the sideline and the guys not being afraid to take the 15 yards for unnecessary roughness.
“I told them that against the Cowboys, I was just trying to run out of bounds and some guy hit me. Some guys will take that, some guys don’t really care. It’s just up in the air.
“Some guys will take the penalty and some won’t take the penalty. You’ve got to use the sideline as your friend. I’m not using the sideline to try and get penalties.”
But here’s what Griffin said on Wednesday, with emphasis added: “I think I was trying to draw the penalty on [Lions defensive back] Rashean [Mathis] there and he’s a smart player. He didn’t hit me. Good for him, move on from that. . . . With Rashean, I kind of stopped well inside inbounds to try to get him to hit me and he didn’t. He said, ‘I’m not taking that penalty, Griff,’ and I said, ‘I got you, man.’”
Those words were recorded and transcribed by the Redskins.
So how were Griffin’s comments misconstrued? He said what he said. (The next argument from some in the media likely will be that his comments were “taken out of context.”)
Why can’t people own their statements? Though it’s not bright to trade an extra hit (which could cause an injury for 15 yards) and it’s clearly unwise to alert game officials to the practice, he said what he said. Saying something different now doesn’t change that.
Maybe he misspoke, and that’s fine if he did. But claiming that he misspoke would require an admission that he said he tried to bait Mathis into a penalty. Blaming the media for “misconstruing” something that wasn’t misconstrued permits the team and the player to sell with straight faces the notion that he never even said it.