Should the Bills Be Worried about LeSean McCoy?
By Brad Hemmer
As LeSean McCoy is part of an investigation relating to a fight on Super Bowl Sunday, in Philadelphia. It now seems like charges against McCoy are inevitable, though McCoy’s lawyer has said he will turn himself in if charges are filed.
The altercation was between McCoy, former running back Jasper Brinkley, and former Pitt player Tamarcus Porter and off-duty police officers. The off-duty police officers filed reports immediately, and will likely press assault charges.
The report states that off-duty officers Darnell Jessie, Roland Butler and Sergeant Daniel Ayers purchased four bottles of champagne that evening. When Butler “moved to another location with his bottle,” Porter, who was with McCoy “approached him and tried to pull the bottle from his hand.”
According to the report, “an argument ensued as to the ownership of the bottle,” at which point McCoy, Brinkley and Christopher Henderson “assisted [Porter].” During the ensuing altercation, according to the report, Butler was knocked to the ground and “punched, kicked and stomped about his body and head multiple times.”
All of the men involved were kicked out of the club by security. The off-duty officers sustained multiple injuries including a fractured jaw, multiple lacerations, and various other injuries.
Should the Bills be worried about LeSean McCoy? No, they should not be, not now, and most likely not ever. If you want the real headline from this story, it won’t come from the mainstream media. The headline should not be “LeSean McCoy involved in altercation with police.”
The fact that the men McCoy fought with were off-duty police officers has no relevance to what happened. He was in a bar fight, that’s it, it was not with uniformed police, so that shouldn’t even be a part of this story.
Obviously the Bills don’t want to hear stuff like this involving a star player, but things could be much worse. He wasn’t driving drunk, there was no domestic violence, there were no drugs involved, it was simply a bar fight.
Unfortunately the fight was with off-duty police officers, which the media has ran with. Also unfortunately for McCoy, his crew seemed to have done all the damage, but that is to be expected with three professional athletes fighting anyone else.
For now, unless other major revelations come from this story, the Bills should take it for what it was, a bar fight. McCoy will surely say all the right things and apologize, and there will likely be no suspension. In a few months when the Bills need McCoy this will no longer be a story, and he will be healthy on the field.