Josh Allen: “That is not me; I apologize for what I did”
The Josh Allen image reclamation tour is in full gear, hours before the start of the 2018 NFL Draft.
After tweets from his account when he was in high school emerged late last night, Allen’s trying to convince the teams he’s hoping will draft him that he’s not the same person that sent the messages with racially insensitive language.
“If I could go back in time, I would never have done this in a heartbeat,” Allen told Chris Mortensen of ESPN. “At the time, I obviously didn’t know how harmful it was and now has become.
“I hope you know and others know I’m not the type of person I was at 14 and 15 that I tweeted so recklessly. . . . I don’t want that to be the impression of who I am, because that is not me. I apologize for what I did.”
The tweets, which were posted in 2012 and 2013, have since been deleted. He told ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith early this morning that the tweets were references to rap lyrics and television shows.
Allen told Mortensen he thought he had gotten all the offensive messages out of his account a year ago, but he obviously missed a few. He also said some could have been written by friends in high school, as they’d often swipe each other’s phones and send messages. (It’s the high school version of “I was hacked.”)
I have a mixed reaction to this apology tour
it was nice to admit he was a dumb teen doing dumb stuff (we all were at one time), so that is understandable and something everyone can pretty much relate to
but then he torpedoes his own message by saying some of his stuff could have been written by others, which to me is oh so lame
I'm sure there will be more reports, more apologies, and probably some revisionist history ... but the cynic in me says he is only really sorry for possibly reducing his big NFL payday and endorsement deals