Williams was upset after Burfict celebrated his tackle that left Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell with a season-ending knee injury. The tweet, which has been deleted, said, “I catch Vontze on south beach im painting that boi on sight.”
What did you think of the pre-game scrum?
Whitworth: "I'll get in trouble for this. It's the NFL's fault. Bottom line is I love the Pittsburgh Steelers, I love Mike Tomlin, but they had a player that made a death threat to one of ours after the last game about spilling his blood in the streets and everyone saw it and the NFL did nothing about it. And so they allowed there to be that kind of animosity and that kind of thing around. If it was any other issue they would step up because that would be fan voted. People would like for them to do it. But in this issue they blew by it and tried to let it go. But the bottom line is the tweet was sent out. Everyone saw it. So there's a lot of animosity, a lot of heat. Football's football. But when you start threatening what you're going to do to another player off of the football field and in the streets, to me that's Roger Goodell and that's the NFL's fault."
Did this not surprise you?
Whitworth: "You can't allow people to be barbaric and not expect them to have reaction like that. At the end of the day that goes beyond the game of football. That involves when someone's with their little kid in the street, they've got to worry about whether this person's going to walk up on them and do something to them outside of the game of football. When you're in charge of the league, that's on you to do something about it to make sure guys know that you can't do that kind of thing. So it's on the NFL. It's on Roger Goodell's head."
Does it feel like the game was chippier than usual?
Whitworth:"No. There's a lot of passion, there's animosity. But at the end of the day, how people react to hits, that's happened throughout the league since the game began. Mike Mitchell reacting last time we played them to a hit, you know what, people are going to argue about that because that's football. If you're on the wrong side of that, you always argue that. How Vontze reacted to Le'Veon Bell getting hurt, I mean it happens in a game. He had no clue the guy is that hurt. It could be a sprain. It could be anything else. But when you allow guys to talk about barbaric things off the football field in this day and age of our country, it's on Roger Goodell and the NFL. They should have done something. They should have stepped up. They should have made sure players know that kind of attitude and that kind of character is not involved in the league. That's their fault. It's on their head."
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