Dwayne Haskins passed away

[Bob_The_Cat]

My question would be, if you know that someone was troubled and had been committed to self-destructive behavior, do you save those comments for a day/a week/a month, til after they’ve died to mention them? What’s the timeline? Ideally, someone would confront the player while they’re alive, or the analysts would have the balls to bring it up before then.

Just curious what people’s ideal timeline is to mention these things were a problem, if at all.

I work in branding & brand design, and I primarily have worked with a sports agency as well as individual players. From my personal experience working directly with players, as well as things I’ve heard through the agency / seen helping run social media accounts for players, there’s a few things I’ve realized:

1. A large portion of professional athletes don’t take criticism well, especially from anyone outside of their inner circle. I can’t imagine a single player would listen to an analyst, and especially one that is not a former player.
2. Most professional athletes have been catered to their entire life. The one’s that have troubling patterns of behavior have likely been enabled since high school because they were always the star athlete.
3. A lot of guys just don’t want to hear it. I watched a projected second round draft pick go undrafted and miss out on the NFL because of problematic off-season behavior, and multiple people within the agency and in his family tried everything they could to get him to realize what he was doing to himself. It didn’t hit him until his name didn’t get called on draft day and no teams called to sign him as a UDFA.
4. If the writer puts this business out while Haskins is alive, he/she gets cut off by the organization and gets chastised by the player’s family, friends, etc.

To be honest, if the analysts and writers talked about everything they knew in regard to player behavior, we’d never talk about the game. I know I haven’t been privy to everything that has occurred In the agency and with some of the players I’ve worked with, but I’ve heard enough and been around enough players to have a good sense of how many behave and take criticism.