A quick recap, in case you’ve lost track, of Antonio Cromartie speaking his mind in recent weeks: In advance of the Jets’ playoff game against New England, he called Tom Brady an “asshole.” Then once the Jets’ season ended, he called out both the league and the players’ union over the CBA negotiations. And then when Ray Lewis and Darnell Dockett criticized Cromartie for those comments, he tweeted that he doesn’t “give a who” about the two of them.
Which leads us to Matt Hasselbeck, who reportedly tweeted the following yesterday: “Somebody ask Cromartie if he knows what CBA stands for.”
At some point, that line disappeared from his Twitter feed, but not before Cromartie learned of it, leading to this response: “Hey Matt if u have something to then say it be a man about it. Don’t erase it. I will smash ur face in.”
Which in turn led to this, from Hasselbeck: “Sorry for the joke man. No hard feelings. DB’s & QB’s have a hard time getting along I guess sometimes. Lol.”
Maybe some athletes really don’t understand that Twitter can make them look foolish, or can lead to them being misunderstood. (Perhaps Hasselbeck meant his tweet as a joke, or perhaps he meant it as a joke with a hint of truth to it, and regretted making it public. Or maybe he meant it as neither. Nuance can be lost in 140 characters.) But there’s not a ton of nuance in what Cromartie says, be it in a press conference or via Twitter — even if we don’t believe that he’d literally hit Matt Hasselbeck in the face over a tweet. And if the CBA negotiations drag out as long as they’re expected to, it’s likely we’ll be hearing some more from Cromartie this off-season.