Vikings left tackle Bryant McKinnie has gone into damage-control mode after being kicked off the NFC Pro Bowl squad.
“Had to withdraw from Pro Bowl!” McKinnie tweeted Saturday afternoon. “I’ve been playing thru pain the last month and need time 2 let my body heal.”
This begs the question: Why did he accept the invitation in the first place? Plenty of McKinnie’s banged-up teammates declined the opportunity to go to Miami.
“Been having some problems with my feet and ankle and I gotta give it a break,” McKinnie replied minutes later to a question on Twitter. “I had a long season + my body is hurting.”
Perhaps most interestingly, McKinnie then gets into it with Willis McGahee on Twitter. McGahee, his former college teammate, tweeted to McKinnie that his explanation was “b*ll sh*t.”
We don’t doubt that McKinnie is sore after an 18-game season. But he is obviously not sore enough to stop clubbing, and clearly did not inform Pro Bowl coaches that he was injured. Mark Craig of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that McKinnie did not withdraw from the Pro Bowl on his own. He was dismissed. So McKinnie isn’t too banged up to lie, either.