So Letroy Guion drank a little (and I really mean a little) more than he should have before driving and now everyone wants to cut him.
Why?
Is he suddenly not a good football player? The guy had a turf war in his backseat when he got pulled over in Florida, then got suspended for PEDs, but you want to cut him for having a sip too much before driving (on his birthday)?
He’s still the same football player he was before and they’re not going to ask him to drive sober on the football field (unless I missed a big rules change). So let’s dust off this age-old debate: why cut a good football player for non-football stuff?
I’m not saying they won’t cut him, and I’m absolutely not condoning drunk driving, but, come on, Wisconsin is suddenly the anti-drinking crowd?
Let’s look at what really happened. The law in Hawaii states you get a DUI “if you drive or are in physical control of a vehicle with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08% or higher, regardless of whether your driving ability was actually impaired”
Note that you don’t actually have to be impaired to get a DUI.
Hawaii, like Wisconsin, has a BAC limit of 0.08. Wisconsin used to be 0.15, but that doesn’t matter to the law – the limit in Hawaii right now is 0.08.
You know where Guion was?
0.086.
I’ll best most guys in his locker room have driven at 0.086. You think your buddy Brett Favre never drove around with a 0.086? No, not our dear Saint Brett!
Please.
Guion was 0.006% over the legal limit. If you’re in Wisconsin reading this over breakfast, there’s a good chance you might he over 0.086 right now. If you’re reading over lunch, those odds double.
I’m not condoning what Guion did, I’m asking for a little less of this pot-kettle nonsense.
It’s not like he was fall down drunk, slurring his words and struggling to keep his hands on the wheel, puking on himself and falling out of the car when he opened to door (because I wouldn’t be writing this article if that were the case). Being 0.006 over the legal limit sounds more like a guy who was having a good time on his birthday (nothing wrong or illegal about that), waited around the party till about 4 am, when he thought his system was clear (since it’s really hard to tell if you are at 0.08% or 0.086%), and learned the hard way that he was wrong.
Smart?
No.
Safe?
No.
The type of thing that makes him a worse football player or makes his teammates like him less?
No.
I know all the social justice warriors are like “But he could have killed somebody!”
Yes, driving under the influence can kill someone.
You know what else can kill someone?
Driving with a cell phone.
Eating red meat.
The Clintons.
I’m not condoning drunk driving, I’m just saying let’s not overreact and blow this up. I don’t see what a DUI has to do with playing football – which he does quite well.
Heck, more than half of you probably drive with a 0.086 and didn’t even realize it.
For a normal sized person, a 0.08 is 2 or 3 drinks in an hour. That’s a glass of wine with dinner and a double martini after dessert. Those probably aren’t the drinks of choice for my readership, but you know that clip is not something to get worked up over and start being all holier-than-thou. You know darn well that after a Packer game, the streets are flooded with drivers over 0.086 – and today those drivers are tsk-tsk-ing Letroy?
Get over yourselves.
Again: I’m not condoning drunk driving, I’m saying let’s not overreact.
In the day and age of Uber and Lyft, it’s easier than ever to avoid this. It’s also easier than ever to eat right and exercise, but look how few people do that.
People do dumb things. That doesn’t make them worse football players. There’s probably a line at what’s acceptable. Personally, I think it’s a less cut-worthy mistake than his past transgressions, less cut-worthy than Adrian Peterson whipping a little boy bloody and physically and emotionally scarring him for life, but I’ll understand if this is the straw that broke the camel’s back and he guts cut.
But if he does get cut, it will be because he’s a distraction, unlike Colin Kaepernick, who just sucks.
You’re way off on this one. He’s not getting cut due to an OWI. He’ll get cut because he’s moonlighting as a multi-state pharmacist, acts as his own armored transportation service when moving his product and ill-gotten-booty from state to state, apparently can’t find a bank in the entire midwest that takes cash and therefore needs to carry $190,000 when commuting to his other locations, and when he basically got a warning as a first timer(not because anyone believed his story but because it was a traffic stop and not a drug sale that led to his arrest), he promptly gets caught using peds, and now he has an owi. I believe I’m missing another incident that went unpunished, but no matter. This is more than enough shenanigans for TT to run him out of town . 3 legitimate problems will lead to him getting cut:
1. He’s violating McCarthy’s availability rule, almost annually now, and he’s out for at minimum of a quarter of the season each time he gets suspended. (he was already looking at 4 games this year. how long will he sit on the shelf after this minor setback?)
2. When he finally does hurt someone, the question will be: Why was he still on your team after receiving his third strike? This is no longer isolated, it is a pattern, and a demonstration that he is unable to learn from his mistakes. Two of the 3 incidents are significant violations of the law, and both drunk driving and drug dealing are very serious. After getting caught in two potentially criminal acts, I guarantee this is not the last time you will see his name on the court docket. In the end, THAT’S the reason he’ll be cut from TT’s perspective.
But more relevant to the way the rest of the NFL truly works, the 3rd reason might be equally important.
3. He’s a 3-time loser, and is not a pro bowl talent. The liability for keeping him around now exceeds the talent he brings to the table. See Kaepernick, Colin, Rice, Raymond. For comparison, Mixon, Joseph.
If we don’t have to pay him or use a roster spot while he misses most of this season suspended, I could see keeping him as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency type player. It’s possible that in a playoff run we tolerate activating him late if there’s a rash of injuries(who am I kidding? Of course the packers will have a rash of injuries). If we do hold onto him for that purpose, he will not be returning for the following season.