Michael Thomas tweeted an inaccurate snap at the New Orleans Saints quarterback. It’s a bad look for the team and Pro Bowl WR.
The New Orleans Saints season isn’t planned, which is a huge understatement. In their first year without longtime coach Sean Payton, the Saints were losing 4-7 and near the bottom of the non-competitive NFC South.
Some of the difficulties come from bad luck with injuries all over the team this season. There seem to be other aspects associated with the failure of the culture that were upheld in Payton’s departure.
A recent (since deleted) tweet by Michael Thomas is another example of this from this season.
Michael Thomas blames his poor performance on James Winston
First, Thomas sent this tweet:
Later, someone pointed out that Thomas hasn’t quite ripped it this season with fewer than 200 receiving yards in his three games. Thomas responded by saying, “Who was the QB?” With a few laughing emojis, he shifts blame from himself to the person throwing the ball.
A user on Reddit filmed the exchange and posted it:
Obviously, the answer to this question is James Winston. Andy Dalton, the current starter, did not appear until Week 4 after Thomas’ season effectively ended. Winston started the first three games of the year.
There is some truth to the claim that Thomas appears to be making. Winston hasn’t been a quarterback this year, which is a big part of why he was kept off the bench. Whether or not he lost his job due to injury as he claims is up for debate because his first three weeks were filled with a lot of the same issues we’ve seen time and time again from Winston.
However, the question is not whether Thomas is right or not. Sending a tweet like this is yet another breach in the armor that is the Saints’ locker room culture. It endangers the trust of colleagues and clearly exposes the cultural issues faced by the Saints.
Not only does it expose it to fans, but it shows opponents exactly how insecure the Saints locker room can be. The Saints will likely be out of contention in the postseason, but any chance they had of stringing together a run to close out the season is going to be much tougher now. Opponents know this is not a group of men on the same page at all.
In the era of Sean Payton, this is unlikely to be tolerated. The fact that it took weeks for the team captain to finally step up and present some discipline issues in practice should have indicated structural issues underneath what we saw on Sunday afternoon.
This is just another example of how when Payton left, culture left with him.
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