Kyle Williams Still Complaining About ‘Death Threats’
Added on Jan 24, 2012 by Jack Thurman in
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Baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson heroically suffered through racially based death threats every time he took the field. San Francisco 49ers playoff goat Kyle Williams is still griping about a few over the line Twitter posts. Williams, as much as anyone, was personally responsible for the Niners’ playoff demise and claims he’s been taken about by the tenor of the fan discourse following his team’s overtime loss:
“It was kind of shocking. I kind of had been forewarned before I even got to the point where I could check it. I was forewarned by some of my family members and some of my friends that were there to not to look at the Twitter and the Facebook because it was going to be pretty bad.”
Williams ruminated on the changing nature of fan/player interaction in a social media world:
“Some people cross that line and don’t think twice about it … don’t think that there’s somebody on the other side of that line that may feel that or that may have to respond to that or may have to deal with that.”
“People just write blindly and I guess that’s to be expected with how open Twitter is and how open Facebook is. Again, there’s a line and some people cross it and some people have respect for it.”
Williams did give props to the ‘real fans’ who aren’t calling for his head:
“True 49ers fans have come to my support although they realize that I made a mistake, just like I realize it. I made a mistake in a key situation, but people realize I’ve busted my tail all year and I think my teammates realize that, too. Things happen in the game of football and you’ve got to bounce back from it. You’ve got to realize that you’ve made a mistake and own up to it.”
And despite the fact that Williams–and his father–have been using the ‘ow, my shoulder!’ defense ever since the loss, he claims he’s not using that as an excuse:
“You get dinged up in a football game just about every time you go out there. You’re never going to be 100 percent playing in the NFL.”
“I’m not looking for that or saying the thing that happened to my shoulder was the cause for any of it. I was fine to play, obviously I kept playing. That’s not the reason I fumbled by any means. I was trying to make a play, the guy got his hand in there and punched the ball out.”
The Niners’ loss sent the New York Giants to the Super Bowl where they are a +3 Super Bowl odds underdog to the New England Patriots.
