Fred Davis returned to Redskins Park on Tuesday and apologized publicly for oversleeping and missing the third and final day of the team's minicamp earlier this month.
"I want to start by apologizing to [Redskins owner Dan] Snyder, Coach [Jim] Zorn, the players for making a minor mistake, just not waking up on time, something that was irresponsible of me," said Davis, whom the Redskins drafted in the second round out of USC. "I can't believe I did that. I overslept. I felt really bad. It's something that won't happen again ever."
I've said that I thought that too big a deal was made about this in the media—the incident was discussed and written about ad nauseum for the entire following week. He didn't drive drunk, he didn't make it rain, he overslept.
He also denied that he was out in downtown Washington that Saturday night as was rumored at the time.
"I didn't even go out," Davis said. "I was at the hotel the whole night. Just being on my own, it was probably a mistake on my part."
At the risk of being hypocritical by making something out of what Davis said about what I said was an overblown incident, something in his statements bothered me.
Oversleeping and missing an NFL minicamp practice is not "probably" a mistake, it's not a "minor mistake", it's a Class A, big-time, screw up. A high-school type mistake. A calling consecutive timeouts when you should know that doing so will result in a penalty kind of mistake.
Just because the media shouldn't go on about it for a week doesn't mean that Davis didn't commit a doozie. A biggie. Nothing probable or minor about it.
I don't necessarily expect Davis to come crawling on his hands and knees begging for mercy or anything like that. And, at this point, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he knows that he messed up in a major, major way.
At least he didn't say something like, "I'm sorry that this happened" and distance himself from the responsibility for the happening.
As a star athlete in high school and at a high-profile university like USC, Davis wasn't asked to apologize for much of anything. I'll forgive him if his skills in doing so aren't very polished.
Still, his take is something to file away to see what happens if he should be called upon to apologize for something again.
Hopefully, that won't happen any time soon.
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