The Bills selected quarterback Josh Allen with the seventh pick of the first round to cap a day that saw Allen fielding a lot of questions about tweets featuring racially insensitive language posted to his account while he was in high school.
Among those questions was how Allen will be received in the Bills locker room and one of the veteran members of the team addressed that issue as well. Linebacker Lorenzo Alexander said he will “extend some grace and wait to get to know the kid and see how he develops” and urged teammates to do the same, but added that Allen needs to know he is going to “have to at some point” talk to Bills players about the tweets.
“He’s gonna have to have a good answer,” Alexander said on the team’s radio program. “I’ve listened to a couple of interviews, and I think it’s gonna come from the heart, and he’ll be fine. But he’s gonna maybe have to work a little bit harder from certain people in the locker room, but I don’t think it’s an issue, because that’s who he was and not who he is.”
Alexander said defensive end Eddie Yarbrough, who played with Allen at Wyoming, had positive things to say about Allen and cited Richie Incognito’s time in Buffalo as a sign that the locker room is “mature enough” to deal with uncomfortable things from the past.