Detroit Lions team captain Dominic Raiola got blindsided with an unfair shot off the field and he still doesn't know where it came from.
"You are a complete fraud," the general manager of another NFL team snipes anonymously at Pro Football Weekly's website.
The GM, responding to an earlier comment by the Lions' center, says that if Raiola "spent as much time working the other muscles in his body as he does his jaw, he might have had the chance to be an average backup."
That's unfair, the national magazine's editor says, and shouldn't have been posted Tuesday in a website area called Audibles.
"This was not done right," says publisher and editor Hub Arkush in an email published by the Detroit Free Press. "That was over the line."
The back-forth began Oct. 8 when the GM, granted anonymity by the magazine, slammed the Lions and named four players he sees as overrated: Martin Mayhew, Jim Schwartz, Ndamukong Suh and Cliff Avril.
The captain responded, calling the executive a "coward" for taking shots anonymously. That led to Tuesday's post:
"I saw Dominic Raiola called me out, asking who the aimless, anonymous GM is who criticized the great Lions. ‘Who is this person?’ It’s the guy who rejects you every time he watches your tape and thinks you are a complete fraud. It’s the guy who didn’t think you could play when you came out of college and still doesn’t think you can play now. . . . If he spent as much time working the other muscles in his body as he does his jaw, he might have had the chance to be an average backup. You can put that in print.”
The editor's apology came in an email to a complaining reader, which that person forwarded to the Free Press.
"This was not done right. The original commentary on the Lions was fair and reasonable, as was Raiola’s reaction. But when Raiola called our critic out and we allowed him/her to take a second, personal and yet still anonymous shot at Raiola, that was over the line.
"You have my promise, we will do better. . . . I would like the chance to apologize to [Raiola] personally as well."
