Call me behind the times, but I can't stand Twitter. I generally have no interest in reading about what most people are doing as it is, and I have even less interest when it involves the terrible grammar necessary to limit their tweets to 140 characters. But one recent tweet - something coming from Buffalo Bills wide receiver Steve Johnson following his dropped would-be touchdown pass against the Pittsburgh Steelers Sunday - got my attention like the proverbial fire alarm in the night:
"I PRAISE YOU 24/7!!!!!! AND THIS HOW YOU DO ME !!!!! YOU EXPECT ME TO LEARN FROM THIS??? HOW???!!! ILL NEVER FORGET THIS!! EVER!!! THX THO ..."
I know it's not so rare for athletes to thank God after performing well, but this might be the first time I've heard of someone blaming him for messing up, and something about it just doesn't ring right. I don't mean to belittle Johnson's relationship with God, but it just seems difficult to believe that God caused him to alligator arm the pass and let the ball slide through his hands.
This is a player who has been granted many physical attributes that other humans can merely dream about. He is 6 feet 2 inches tall, 202 pounds and runs a 4.59-second 40-yard dash. He can jump nearly three feet high and has been sufficiently lucky to avoid enough serious injuries that he's playing in the NFL. Compared to the more than one-quarter of a million high-school seniors playing football in America, Johnson is one of the less than 1,700 players currently on an NFL roster.
Forgive me for being cynical, but it's obvious that Johnson has been granted some abilities and chances by God - or genetics, or fate or whatever you want to call it - that most people do not have. To blame God for dropping a simple pass simply doesn't make sense.
Johnson's tweet reminds me of an old joke I once heard about a little old lady who was trapped in a flood. She climbed to the top of her house, but the water kept rising. First her neighbor came by in a canoe, then the police in their boat and finally the National Guard in a helicopter. All of them told the lady to climb on and save herself, but she refused, claiming that God would not let her drown. But the water rose over her house, and the old woman drowned. When she arrived in heaven, she confronted God and asked how he could let such a religious woman drown. "Not save you!" God cried. "I sent you a canoe, a boat and a helicopter! You have to meet me halfway!" Come on, Steve. After all he's given you, take some responsibility and meet him halfway.
Another thing that bugs me about the tweet is that Johnson doesn't think he can learn anything from this event. How about the simplest thing: how to catch a football. As an athlete, I know that physical mistakes sometimes happen. They're unavoidable. It doesn't matter how good you are; everyone dribbles a ball off their foot or bobbles a ground ball. But what separates the great athletes from the good ones is the willingness to practice until those mistakes happen as infrequently as possible. Johnson dropped five total passes Sunday; did God cause all of them? What Johnson should be learning is how to show up at practice an hour early, take out the Jugs machine and catch balls until his hands are red. Maybe then he won't need divine intervention to catch a touchdown pass.
I think, though, what ultimately rubs me the wrong way most about Johnson's tweet is his narcissistic belief that God cares so much about Johnson's stats that he would knowingly cause him to drop the touchdown pass. What, was God playing against someone who owned Johnson in his fantasy football playoffs? If Johnson is angry enough with God to tweet his anger, how livid does Eric LeGrand have a right to be? The Rutgers
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