Earlier this month, Eagles linebacker Nolan Smith Jr. was arrested for speeding and reckless driving after being clocked at 135 miles per hour.
On Wednesday, coach Nick Sirianni was asked whether he addressed the situation with Smith, and whether he had an “overall message” to the team about it.
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“Obviously, any conversation I have with any player will always stay private,” Sirianni said. “With that being said, we address everything. We talk about everything. When it’s appropriate to talk about it with the individual, we talk about it with the individual. When it’s appropriate to discuss it as a team, I’ll choose to discuss it as a team. Yeah, it’s important.
“Obviously, what’s so important is that we learn from our mistakes not only on the football field, but in the community as well and we try to get better from those things. Everything that we go through is a teachable moment on the field, off the field. That’s a big part of getting better.
“Like I said, everything we address, it’s just a matter of how we do that with our players, but that’s why it’s so important that you’re in constant communication with your players [and] have good relationships with your players. Not that every conversation’s going to be lovey-dovey. There’s hard conversations, there’s tough conversations, there’s conversations where you laugh, there’s conversations where you cry, there’s conversations where you go through a process of that.”
While plenty of players get cited for speeding, 135 mph is an extreme speed. It puts not only the life of the player at risk but also the lives of others. And, while Smith’s incident occurred in Georgia, sports teams that rely on local residents for their money and support should ensure that no one employed by the franchise is potentially putting those residents at risk on the highways.
It’s one thing to wag a finger. It’s quite another to create real disincentives. And it’s something the league should take far more seriously than it does.
