Michael Thomas Tweeted a not-so-subtle shot at a New Orleans Saints quarterback. It’s a bad look for the team and the Pro Bowl WR.
The New Orleans Saints season has not gone to plan, which is a massive understatement. In their first year without longtime head coach Sean Payton, the Saints are a losing team at 4-7 and near the bottom of the uncompetitive NFC South.
Some of the struggles come purely from poor luck with injuries all over the place for the team this season. Other aspects seem to be related to a failure of the culture being upheld in Payton’s departure.
A recent Tweet (which has since been deleted) by Michael Thomas is another example of just that from this season.
Michael Thomas blames his poor performance on Jameis Winston
First, Thomas sent this Tweet out:
Later someone pointed out that Thomas hasn’t exactly torn it up this season with sub-200 yards in his three games. Thomas responded by saying, “who was the QB?” with some laughing emojis, shifting blame from himself to the person throwing the ball.
A user on Reddit screenshot the exchange and posted it:
The answer to that question is obviously Jameis Winston. Andy Dalton, the current starter, didn’t appear until Week 4 after Thomas’s season was effectively over. Winston started the first three games of the year.
There is some truth to the claim Thomas seems to be making. Winston has not been a great quarterback this year which is a big part of the reason he was benched. Whether or not he lost his job due to injury as he claims is up for debate because his first three weeks were riddled with a lot of the same issues we’ve seen time and time again from Winston.
Whether or not Thomas is right is not the question, though. Sending a Tweet like this is another chink in the compromised armor that is the Saints’ locker room culture. It puts the teammate trust in jeopardy and clearly displays the cultural issues the Saints have.
Not only does it display it for fans, but it shows opponents exactly how untrusting the Saints locker room is. The Saints are probably out of postseason contention, but any chance they had at stringing a run together to close the season will be even more difficult now. Opponents know this isn’t a group of guys on the same page whatsoever.
In a Sean Payton era, it’s unlikely this would have been tolerated. The fact that it took weeks for a team captain to finally step up and call out some of the discipline issues in practice should have signaled structural issues beneath what we saw on Sunday afternoons.
This is just a further example that when Payton left, the culture left with him.
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