Last Thursday marked the 2018 NFL Draft; and, like many Americans, Wyomingites were eager to see who their favorite teams selected for the upcoming season.
Here in Laramie people were interested in what team would select the Cowboys’ star quarterback Josh Allen.
“Everyone I knew had plans to watch the draft,” freshman Nicholas Schriber said. “It didn’t matter if they were die-hard football fans or only knew about Josh Allen because he was from Laramie, everyone knew about and wanted to watch the draft.”
When it was announced that the Buffalo Bills had traded draft picks to get a lower draft pick in the first round, it was immediately speculated by on-watchers that they had done this to select Allen No. 7 overall.
Moments later it was announced that Allen had been picked up by the Bills, the seventh pick overall in the draft.
“I remember everyone jumping out of their seats, cheering, and hugging each other the second it was announced,” Schriber said. “I remember my friend shouting, ‘at least he’s not going to the Browns!’ and I feel like that’s how most fans felt.”
The sense of community was very high all throughout Laramie on Thursday, as many bars, restaurants and places on campus held viewing parties for the draft.
At the Buckhorn Bar in downtown Laramie ESPN hosted a viewing party and filmed people to capture their reactions.
“I was at a graduation banquet in the Gateway Center during the draft and they had it streaming on multiple projectors throughout the room,” senior Cameron Skinner said. “Every time a team was about to announce their pick the whole room got silent and everyone pulled their phones to film the reaction.”
While all of Laramie was celebrating the drafting of Allen, most people around the country were focused on the controversy surrounding Allen that had arisen the day prior to the draft.
Less than 24 hours before the draft was set to begin it was revealed by Yahoo Sports that one of the top prospects in this year’s draft had posted tweets that were perceived as being racist and homophobic. In a day where social media is a huge facet of daily life and when professional athletes are watched very closely for what they say; these tweets call into question Allen’s ability to represent an entire franchise adequately.
“You got to be extremely careful,” Allen told a reporter from The Buffalo News. “If I could go back and tell my 15-year-old self not to do it, I would absolutely do it. I’ve learned a lesson, a valuable lesson.”
Over the last several seasons the NFL has come under fire for players protesting social injustices to people of color in our country by kneeling during the National Anthem. So it would come as no surprise that Allen is being expected to address his new teammates on the issue of his racially insensitive tweets.
“It deals with chemistry and trust,” Lorenzo Alexander, Bills’ linebacker and oldest player, told The Buffalo News. “Especially with the quarterback, who’s deemed a leader, you want to be able to have all those things, trust him, have respect for him, be able to follow him into battle. The better relationship you have translates on the field.”
Allen certainly rues his decisions as a 15-year-old and seems willing to admit his fault and address his new team.
“It’s something that I wouldn’t be afraid or ashamed of doing,” Allen told The Buffalo News.
“He’s owning it,” Alexander told The Buffalo News, “and that’s what you want to see. We’ll move past this. We’ll look back and it won’t even seem like it was as big as it was made out to be.”
The Bills will kick off their preseason against the Carolina Panthers at home on Thursday, August 9 at 3 p.m. EST.
