Why Can't Anyone Realize Laremy Tunsil Was the Victim?

A driver speeds past you on the interstate. He’s driving a bit too fast for the conditions. A mile later, he’s forced off the road by a drunk driver and careens into the ditch. A line of rubberneckers trickles by the accident scene, ignoring the person at fault, instead making cracks about the victim. He was, after all, an imperfect driver.

This is the Laremy Tunsil situation. He’s a flawed human being and those flaws are no secret. Not to the public at large and certainly not to NFL teams that spent the last seven months turning over every rock in his past. But he was not the catalyst for his draft night fiasco. He was not the one who set out to derail what should have been the best night of his life and turn it into a roller coaster ride of embarrassment.

A video of the offensive lineman smoking something out of a gas mask popped up on his Twitter page 13 minutes before the first round began. We posted the clip. It was newsworthy. The timing, combined with the fact it showed up on his account, made it impossible to ignore and, predictably, it played a role in the actual draft.

Tunsil’s earning potential went up in smoke. His dreams of a magical night to celebrate a lifelong dream morphed into a nightmare.

Mission accomplished.

The suspension of empathy is crucial to enjoying the NFL. Not thinking about the toll on the players allows fans to celebrate bone-crunching sacks and goal-line stands. On Thursday, America got a special treat: being afforded the opportunity to dehumanize one of game’s future stars before he even had a team to call home.

What happened to Tunsil was painful to watch but we love a good car accident. The bloodier, the better.

Once considered a contender for the No. 1 overall pick, he dropped all the way to No. 13 and the Miami Dolphins, who walked away with the steal of the first round. He acquitted himself well in a difficult interview with NFL Network’s Deion Sanders and for most of his larger media availability until another question about leaked material caused him to stumble.

Tunsil was adamant in stating he was hacked — both on Twitter and Instagram. This is one of the exceptions to the rule where most believe him. Torpedoing your own reputation and bank account is a choice no sane human being would make in a similar situation.

I believe him. And because I do, I realize that he’s the victim. An imperfect victim perhaps not equipped to handle such a moment, but a victim nonetheless.

Viewed through that lens, last night’s events are sickening.

NFL teams should do all of their due diligence before committing millions of dollars and entrusting the future to a draft pick. A prospect is entitled to nothing. If a team doesn’t believe Tunsil is worth the risk after studying the totality of his circumstance, they shouldn’t draft him.

But this isn’t about a few individual teams passing over Tunsil because a video purportedly showing him using a mostly harmless recreational drug happened to go viral at the wrong time. This is about the stunning stupidity of the punditry and public at large, the quest for a one-liner at the expense of basic human decency and intellectual honesty.

The worst possible thing the gas mask footage yielded was proof Tunsil smoked marijuana at some point. This is being paraded around as some sort of fatal character flaw. Tell that to the legislatures in Colorado and Washington, states that have yielded two out of the last three Super Bowl winners.

Mild drug use is not abnormal behavior for a high school or college student. Tunsil’s major judgement error was letting himself be filmed. The hypocritical moralizing is more toxic than whatever was emitted from the mask.

The NFL and the discussion that surrounds it is painfully self-serious. That’s why it became open season on Tunsil’s character and the shooting gallery rushed to villify.

Keep in mind that Jameis Winston was the first pick in last year’s draft. Keep in mind that Joey Bosa, who was suspended for marijuana-related reasons while at Ohio State, went third overall and escaped scrutiny. Keep in mind that the Baltimore Ravens, the same team that employed Ray Rice and Ray Lewis, boasted about taking Tunsil off their draft board altogether before knowing how long ago the video was shot.

Tunsil has made mistakes. He may continue to make them. He could turn out to be a bust.

But, it feels wrong that the reaction to watching his dreams was so devoid of empathy. Few paused to consider the ridiculousness and unfairness of the situation. Tunsil had already been Crying Jordan’d into oblivion before the realization set in he was the victim of a damaging act of aggression.