Privately, the Seahawks expressed “extreme disappointment” to defensive end Frank Clark for his recent Twitter misadventures. Publicly, coach Pete Carroll was a bit more muted.
“Frank did not handle that real well,” Carroll told reporters at the team’s rookie minicamp on Friday. “And I think he has done a nice job to recognize and made his statement of apology. He has definitely learned from that, and sometimes that lesson for other people as well can be valuable, and I’m hoping that Frank will do a nice job communicating that to guys in the locker room. I’m glad that thing’s behind us.”
Of course, it’s not behind them if Frank Clark hasn’t communicated his contrition to the satisfaction of the locker room, which may not appreciate Clark’s aggressive message to a female reporter who dared link to a column from two years ago regarding his domestic violence incident. And it won’t truly be behind Clark until he makes himself available to questions from the media, which he’ll be answering in his own words and not via the second-take apology that someone else possibly wrote for him and instructed him to post on Twitter.