FOXBORO, Mass. — After stirring up controversy while the Patriots were playing the Texans last Sunday with some inflammatory tweets, Brendon Ayanbadejo clarified his remarks after the Ravens beat the Patriots.
On Jan. 13, Ayanbadejo tweeted, “New England does some suspect stuff on offense. Can’t really respect it. Comparable to a cheap shot b4 a fight. Are you watching the game pats vs texans? If so you see the hurry snap offense catch em b4 they set up. It’s a gimmick.”
The Ravens linebacker wasn’t referring to the team’s hurry-up offense, which Baltimore also runs, but one specific play where they’ll get the snap off before the defense is set.
“It was taken out of context because if you know what no-huddle is, I wasn’t referring to their no-huddle. I was referring to a couple plays that they run during the course of the game,” Ayanbadejo said. “There’s no-huddle, there’s two-minute offense, there’s four minute offense, but what I was talking about was none of the above and it’s a play they run a handful of plays a game and they take advantage of it. And there’s a couple other teams in the NFL that run it as well.”
Ayanbadejo apologized for his remarks during the Texans-Patriots game later in the week via Twitter, saying “I made selfish comments on twitter last night that reflected poorly upon myself, my teammates, and the organization. For that I apologize.”
The 36-year-old special teamer made some more comments on Sunday night that may decrease his fan base in New England even more. It seems that many Patriots fans got on Ayanbadejo via Twitter after his comments, but they didn’t understand the point he was making.
“If you know football then you can go and if you watch New England Patriots you’ll go and you’ll find it,” said Ayanbadejo. “But their fans don’t really know football too well because everyone got on me about their no-huddle offense and what I was saying is the gimmick. They obviously have a great offense, they have a great no-huddle offense and one of the most powerful offenses in the league and they have been for the course of their coach’s tenure and that wasn’t what I was referring to.”
Ayanbadejo didn’t record any statistics during Sunday’s Ravens-Patriots game. He’s been in the league since 1999 when he signed with the Atlanta Falcons as an undrafted free agent out of UCLA.
Photo via Facebook/Brendon Ayanbadejo
