Brandon Jacobs faults fantasy football for death threat
Brandon Jacobs isn't blaming Twitter for the threats he received against himself and his family this weekend. He's blaming fantasy football.
Jacobs received tweets that said if he didn't rush for 50 yards and two touchdowns "ITS OVER FOR YOU AND YO FAMILY" and "THAT'S YO LIFE BRUH AND IM NOT PLAYING".
"He's just a kid being dumb," Jacobs said, brushing off the legitimacy of those threats. "Later he tweeted saying he was only joking. When you say stuff like that and think it's a joke, that's a problem. It's a good thing he was where he was at the time."
The real issue in Jacobs' mind isn't the proximity that Twitter gives fans to players, but the seriousness with which fantasy football is taken by many.
"Huge problem, no question," he said. "It's just a game they play on a computer. I think sometimes fantasy football is good, but sometimes I think it has disconnected a lot of players from fans. That's all people ever talk about. You sit down to eat at a restaurant and people say, 'I have you on my fantasy team, you have to do something for me this week.' I'm trying to enjoy my dinner, you know? It's a huge problem, if you ask me. Players don't want to deal with that. Players don't want to hear anything about fantasy football. We're living in fantasy football."
Jacobs said he has no problem with people who play in a fantasy football league with their friends for fun. "It's cool to have people like that being involved that know what it is and don't take it too serious," he said.
But, as Jacobs learned this weekend, there is also a darker side.
"Some people take it way too serious and way too far," he said. "To the people that take it too serious, us as football players don't owe you nothing. It's up to you to manage your team the way you want to manage it. The only owners and general managers I owe anything to is Jerry Reese, the Mara and Tisch families. Everybody else, I don't concern myself with."
Of course, Jacobs isn't the only voice on the matter. Terrell Thomas said he enjoys playing fantasy football and even has teammate Rueben Randle on his fantasy team. He also acts like a fan on Twitter sometimes.
"You have to be realistic," Thomas said. "I'm a big Lakers fan. When they lose, I'm not betting on the games or anything, but I'm a fan of the Lakers so I'll talk bad about a player. I'm not going to 'at' that player [make a comment directly to the player] and say, 'You [stink]' because I know what they go through . . . It's just part of the new generation."
