The Buffalo Bills are a team in dire straits.
Following a Week 1 drubbing by the Baltimore Ravens, the Bills decided to find out on Sunday if rookie QB Josh Allen was up to the task of cobbling together a respectable showing on offense despite an O-line and receiving corps that seem to be assembled from assorted vagrants seeking work outside a local Home Depot.
Sadly, despite a decent performance, Allen was unable to perform any such miracle, and the Bills fell to the Los Angeles Chargers 31-20.
But the real story of the day was on the other side of the ball, as Bills cornerback Vontae Davis was so fed up with his team’s lackluster performance that he decided to retire. In the locker room. At halftime.
Yes, this team is so bad that it’s causing grown-ass men to walk away from multi-million dollar salaries, presumably so that they can devote the rest of their afternoon to apologizing for the shame they’ve brought upon their families by being associated with the 2018 Buffalo Bills.
We kid the Bills because it’s so incredibly easy, but obviously, Davis is the one who’s at fault here.
We’re sure it’s tough getting geared up for the second half on a sweltering day when your team’s odds of winning are about the same as a Buffalonian’s chances of not suffering a minor coronary event during 50 cent wing night at the Anchor Bar.
But no matter what the job, you don’t just up and abandon your co-workers in the middle of an already-stressful shift.
Perhaps Davis’ situation had abruptly become intolerable due to some irreconcilable beef with management.
But even if that were the case, a moment’s contemplation would’ve brought him to the obvious conclusion that it’s not his bosses that he’s screwing over by slipping out the back door.
Davis’ move was unprecedented in its thoughtless narcissism, and thankfully, one of his teammates didn’t hold back in expressing his frustration.
“Coming out they said he’s not coming out, he’s retired,” Bills linebacker Lorenzo Alexander told the press following Sunday’s game.
“Pop Warner, high school, college, pros. Never heard of it. Never seen it,” Alexander said, according to ESPN.
“And it’s just completely disrespectful to his teammates.”
Yes, it’s hard to imagine Davis’ snap decision/temper tantrum didn’t have at least a mildly negative impact on team morale, but this is 2018 — a time in which hot takes go viral, while reasonable assessments of nuanced situations are as thoroughly neglected as a Buffalo native’s rapidly escalating blood pressure.
And so, the moral purists of Twitter were quick to lash out at anyone who rightly observed that Davis sounds like the worst kind of self-absorbed diva.
There’s such a culture of wokeness surrounding the NFL these days that your more sanctimonious fans will happily pat an egotistical multi-millionaire on the back for sticking it to the man with a completely self-serving gesture, as though he’s some dusty, overall-clad hero in a Steinbeck novel.
The fact of the matter is, the NFL is an almost-impossibly problematic organization, and its owners are mostly money-grubbing robber barons enriching themselves at the expense of players who often suffer profound physical damage over the course of their brief, brutal careers.
But leaving your colleagues in a lurch is never the answer, especially in a situation that’s so often and so rightly likened to actual combat as an NFL game.
Basically, Davis exhibited behavior that we would chastise an 8-year-old for, but because we live in the hot take economy, millennial Twitter is examining this random dick move through the lens of Marxist labor theory.
Don’t get sucked in by such nonsense.
The NFL is bad, and the Bills are bad, but that doesn’t mean Davis is good for walking away from both in the most petulant way imaginable and flipping a massive middle finger to his teammates in the process.
If you’ve ever worked in retail, hospitality, or any other field where you’re part of a crew, we don’t need to tell you that skipping out mid-shift and leaving your team short-handed is an act of supreme douche-baggery.
This has been your daily reminder that everything associated with the NFL sucks out loud.
And no, we’re not just bitter because our fantasy teams are sh-tting the bed.
Okay, maybe we are, but that’s beside the point.