Chiefs receiver Dwayne Bowe saW his dollars go up but his numbers go down in 2013. Even worse than the dip in on-field production was an off-field incident that resulted in a November arrest.
Bowe thinks it goes with his high-rent, five-year, $56 million territory.
“Everybody’s aiming for you and waiting on you to get into trouble,” Bowe recently told WHB 810 in Kansas City, via Adam Teicher of ESPN.com. “People try to persuade you to do things to get you [in trouble]. That’s the only bad thing once you sign. The world wants you to fail. That’s the hard part about it. When you sign that [contract] . . . you’ve got to live right. That’s the hard part. You’re trying to live right and the police [are] after you, everybody wants a piece of Dwayne Bowe and I had to learn that the hard way. That’s how it is.”
Of course, plenty of other players have made plenty more money without feeling persecuted. Bowe seems to think his geographic location is an issue, and not just for law enforcement.
“It’s not them, it’s everybody,” Bowe said of the police. “When you’re in a town where there’s not a whole lot going on, bad media is good media. You’ve just got to stay calm and stay collected like I [am] now and just move in silence.”
He wasn’t silent about his arrest for marijuana possession.
“The people close around me and my team and the organization know I had nothing to do with that,” Bowe said. “I was being profiled. It will all come to light in February. It wasn’t a distraction because my teammates know and my family knows. I was being watched and being followed.
“Whoever knows Dwayne knows the truth about it and knows what kind of guy I am. I just can’t wait until it’s all over so the world will know instead of [just] the people that are close to me what really happened.”
The Chiefs stood behind him, in part because they had no real choice. His contract paid a $15 million signing bonus, and $4.5 million of his 2014 base salary is fully guaranteed. The rest of it becomes fully guaranteed on March 14.
Next year, the Chiefs have a bit more flexibility. For now, though, if there’s anyone in Kansas City not out to get Bowe, it’s the NFL team that plays there.