Brandon Marshall: A Not-So-Tough Guy

With the NBA permanently temporarily cancelled, the sports world has been partially devoid of stupid comments made by professional athletes.  Statistical analysis proves that NBA athletes provide sports media with the vast majority of empty threats, unsubstantiated claims and worthless guarantees,* so it shouldn't come to a surprise that it's been a relatively quiet autumn so far.  That being said, we can always count on the NFL to pick up the slack with the NBA on hiatus - this week, it was Miami Dolphins WR Brandon Marshall who grabbed the headlines when he said he intends to get ejected during the second quarter of this Sunday's game against the New York Jets.  Here's an excerpt from Marshall's rant (more information via ESPN here):

"I'm not joking. I'm serious," Marshall told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. "They're going to fine me. It's probably going to be like a $50,000 fine. But that quarter and a half that I'm out there, I'm going to play like a monster."

It's not completely clear why Marshall said what he did.  If we give him the benefit of the doubt, we can assume he was trying to come up with a witty rebuttal to the various people claiming that "he hasn't played with enough emotion in the first four games."  Or perhaps he's trying to pump up his teammates by showing them that he will do whatever it takes to inject some life into a winless team.  It's also possible that this could also be tied to Marshall's confirmed case of borderline personality disorder.  Then again, Occam's Razor would suggest that the simplest answer is the correct one, so perhaps Marshall is just an idiot.  Regardless of Marshall's intentions, I'm willing to bet that the end result will not be a good one.

First off, by publicly proclaiming his intentions to start a fight with various members of the Jets defense, Marshall has put a bullseye on his uniform for all of the referees and opposing players to stare at throughout the game.  When a player makes a public threat like this one, fans aren't the only ones reading it - you better believe that the refs will be looking to flag Marshall for even the smallest offenses, and that every Jets player will be looking to plant the wide receiver on his backside at every opportunity in order to provoke him into doing something dumb.  Additionally, Marshall's comments add yet another distraction to the locker room of a winless team already dealing with injuries (QB Chad Henne is out for the season) and other problems.

Brandon Marshall probably wants to show the world how tough he is by announcing his intentions to get into a fight during Sunday's contest.  But true football fans know that a truly tough player would never abandon him teammates by intentionally risking ejection or put his already-disadvantaged team in an even bigger hole by turning himself into a target for penalty flags.  If Marshall really wants to become the "monster" he says he can be, it's time for him to stop talking and start producing.  If the admittedly-talented Dolphins WR can focus his energy on the field, instead of continuing his history of becoming a distraction off of it, he might have a chance to do something that would really prove that he's tough - lead his winless team to a win over the heavily-favored Jets.

*I made this up, but is seens entirely believable, doesn't it?