Someone is Lying and No One is Winning in This Ugly Chapter to the Myles Garrett and Mason Rudolph Saga

In an appeal with the NFL, Browns’ DE Myles Garrett alleged that Mason Rudolph called him a racial slur prior to last week's brawl on Thursday Night Football, sources told ESPN's Josina Anderson and me, an accusation the Steelers’ QB strongly denies.https://t.co/NUQfAJdo6B

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 21, 2019

Mason Rudolph’s attorney, Timothy M. Younger, now has responded to Myles Garrett’s accusations: pic.twitter.com/aQj5FxW2cq

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 21, 2019

I asked Browns DT Sheldon Richardson if Myles Garrett had ever told him what Garrett alleged about Rudolph in the hearing. Richardson said he hadn’t and said my question was the first he’d even heard about it.

— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) November 21, 2019

Just asked Baker Mayfield about Garrett’s allegation that Rudolph used a racial slur and he seemed pretty stunned. Said wasn’t something he’d heard, including from anyone on the team, until I just asked him

— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) November 21, 2019

Steelers DL Cam Heyward was very strong in defending Rudolph.

Said Rudolph came up to him at the end of practice and told him: “I did not say that.” pic.twitter.com/v5Q1lDJhBa

— Brooke Pryor (@bepryor) November 21, 2019

Myles Garrett’s statement about events from today and the past week: pic.twitter.com/Pysqcn5uAf

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 22, 2019

I haven't the slightest clue what was, or just as likely wasn't, said in sparking a scrum that probably shocked the world a little too much in reminding us that you need to be a certain level of savage to play football professionally. Anyone who either pretends or implies that they do is simply too lazy or biased to re-chisel a narrative that they had already set in stone. 

​So, while I find it odd that Myles Garrett seems to have conveniently stumbled upon his race card in the back of his wallet, like it was one punch away from earning him a free sub, a full week (or 3.5x the statute of limitations on topical stories in 2019) after Twitter was prematurely begging him to swipe it in expensing his temporary insanity, I'm about 60 shades of melanin away from being at liberty to tell someone how to go about dealing with even highly-disputed racism. I might wonder how none of the other large and predominantly black men within ear-shot happened to pick up on the alleged prejudice. I don't, however, wonder whether or not the guy who took to the podium to put forth an Oscar-worthy portrayal of the innocent victim after inciting the brawl in the first place (which is more a fact than it is even a remote justification) was shameless enough to do so in the aftermath of dropping an n-bomb, or something of the hate. 

Point being, while this is all hypothetical, what's not is not that every party is some level of guilty and all sides of this story suck. Myles Garrett for trying to club a quarterback over the head with a blunt object like he was trying to hunt-and-gather hypocrites. Mason Rudolph for being a disingenuous dickhead as the damsel in distress. The NFL for being a league whose braintrust calls for the type of blind and thankless faith of Mike Tomlin going empty backfield on 3rd and long with the blehest of bleh backup quarterbacks under center...

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league looked into Myles Garrett’s allegations that Mason Rudolph used a racial slur last Thursday night before the brawl “and found no such evidence.”

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) November 21, 2019

Obviously the slur of all slurs would make for yet another unforgivable ingredient in what was already a highly distasteful recipe for disaster. Unfortunately, it's inclusion (or lack thereof) is a secret that will never truly be accounted (or unaccounted) for, so we're forced to judge on what we definitively know. That, of course, being that we could exhaust every sightline in discussing this situation from every possible angle, ad nauseam, and never find one that wasn't a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad look for the variant degrees of any and all assholes and idiots involved, discrimination or no discrimination.

The most fair-is-fair and balanced account would be that a white player, whose job is literally made secure by black players, instinctually blurted something that reminds them that the tortured history of their ancestors isn't entirely in the past out of football-induced frustration and, in return, had his whole brain put at high-risk by the very thing that is used to protect it. You don't need to be a devoted subscriber to Disney+ to know that the closest thing to vigilante justice is about the furthest thing from the poetic justice of even a happy-ish ending.