I want to be very clear.
I understand why Jason Witten at the time praised Greg Hardy. He was an NFL player and didn’t make decisions on personnel.
Hardy was going to be on the time whether he liked it or not, so he had to make a choice. He could either speak on how he felt, or he could be a company man and here is what he went with.
“I think more than anything I think everybody knows (I’m against) domestic violence,” Witten said. “That’s unwavering. That’s something that I lived, my family lived. But that guy is a teammate of mine, so I think you have to look at it from that standpoint. As coach (Jason) Garrett says, it’s our job to invite those guys in and create a standard of how we do things. I think he’s done a great job since he’s been here. It’s not my job to decide who comes in. I’m a tight end. But I’ve been really pleased how he’s approached it and how he goes to work and what kind of teammate he’s been. The day he got suspended, the next day he’s in there working out, so I think that’s kind of the mentality he has, what kind of work ethic (he has) and what he’s trying to prove in Dallas.”
“I think when you add the guy like that and then he gets suspended and you never know how it’s going to come out,” Witten said. “The guy works his tail off. Our job is to welcome him and show him the way we do things and embrace him as a teammate, and he’s done everything that you want. He’s a hard worker. Obviously he’s a talented player. I think he’s learned a lot from what he’s gone through in the last year. He’s had a good offseason.”
Tonight during Monday Night Football when asked about Reuben Foster, Witten said the Redskins shouldn’t have signed him, he has a zero-tolerance policy against domestic violence, and Foster didn’t deserve a second chance.
He said the Redskins used horrendous judgment in signing Foster, so what does that make the Cowboys?
What Witten didn’t do is address why he was so accepting of Hardy. He didn’t have to go out of his way to praise Hardy. He could have gone the no comment route or just said he had nothing to do with personnel decisions and didn’t have anything else to say.
What Witten did was soften the blow for Hardy, because if Witten was praising him, he must have some redeemable quality. If Witten didn’t feel this way, that would mean he is a liar, but beyond that, he was willing to put his morals aside to appease Jerry Jones and frankly that might be worse than the hypocrisy of his comments.
He needs to address this immediately and explain himself.
Furthermore, it was poor taste for ESPN to bring all this up at the beginning of the 4th quarter of what at the time was a close game.
You want to talk about that pregame or halftime fine, but a turnover and whole drive were missed because they were talking about this.
Just terrible all the way around.
