Malcolm Jenkins, on the WIP Morning Show today:

“At the end of the day, we’re all here to do a job. So, whether you feel like Chip can go have a beer with you, or you feel like Chip is not really a good friend to you, it doesn’t matter. I think Chip does a great job of explaining what he want’s us to do, how we’re being evaluated and guys can hold themselves accordingly. Now, the one thing I will say about Chip is he’s not really a big fan of guys who want to be individuals. He’s very very much about the team sport and guys being uniformed and really putting the team first.”

I think that’s perfect. We don’t know much about Boykin (he didn’t seem like a showy, flashy guy), but LeSean and DeSean were always me-first type personalities, if not players. You could read it in their quotes, see it on their social media accounts, and sometimes watch it play out on the field.

Evan Mathis overplaying his hand was a me-first trait.

Cary Williams was just an asshole. Me-first?

Chip wants team guys, plain and simple. You can argue whether that works in the NFL (it may not)– but it seems like a much more plausible explanation for the departures and comments instead of “Chip’s a racist.”


Now, is that me-first type personality often derived from hip hop culture? Maybe, yeah. DeSean is clearly interested in his image as a baller. LeSean, too. It’s why Twitter and Instagram can be so telling. Tweeting pictures of girls, cars, parties, etc. shows where the focus lies. It’s more I than we. DeSean was the type of guy who would go home after a game and ‘gram his big play with an indistinguishable audible chest-bump. Uh, yeah. 10 mode. He is the type of guy to miss OTAs because he’s on a private island. It has nothing to do with skin color. Is that hip hop lifestyle more synonymous with black players? Yeah. But it’s not restrictive. White dudes are like that, too (Johnny Manziel). But it just so happens that Chip parted ways with two high-profile, me-first black players who are deeply engaged in a particular lifestyle. So we get the race issue.