Jets receiver Santonio Holmes, who was widely criticized for his selfishness and lack of production during the team's late-season collapse in 2011, wants to focus on the positive this year -- and he wants the media to do the same.
"If you guys want to be, and this is for the New York media, if you guys want to be a part of our team and want to feel so important, be there to support us, not to try to break us down," Holmes said on an NFL.com podcast (as reported by the New York Daily News). "Because [there’s] not one day that we all step in that locker room and we try to break each other down, that we talk bad about the way that person played because it affects the team the way one person plays if they don’t play to perfection.”
Holmes, who caught 51 passes for 654 yards last season, was referred to by one teammate as a "cancer" in the locker room and was benched in the season-ending loss to the Dolphins after an argument in the huddle. In the offseason, he has worked to repair his relationship with quarterback Mark Sanchez. Now, he wants the media's support.
“If the New York media wants to be a part of our team and wants to continue writing about us, write positive things, stay away from the negative, because it doesn’t do anything good for our team that you want to report all the negative things that happen and that’s all you want to talk to us players about,” Holmes said. “We live for one thing and that’s to play football and not to entertain you people in the media.”
Read more about that story and others, plus check out videos, trivia and more, at Thursday's Morning Mashup [1].
Links:
[1] http://leeinks.weei.com/sports/2012/07/19/thursdays-morning-mashup-jets-wr-santonio-holmes-wants-media-to-support-team
[2] http://www.weei.com/category/boston/general