Let me first make this very clear; I in NO WAY support any violent threats against another human being over a sporting event, bar none. End of story. That being said there are essentially two different Kyle Williams to true 49er fans now, Kyle the human being and Williams the 49er.
As a father myself I can only image how tough it is to see your son completely fail in front a national audience on TV at his profession. Apparently after Kyle Willaims was coming out of the locker room Daddy Williams (Kenny, GM of the Chicago White Sox) asked his son if he was "man enough to handle the situation." After Kyle met with the media we started to get some interesting stories circulating in the press, it seems Kenny was already spinning the story. Keep in mind that Kenny has dealt with the media in extreme levels with his own profession, he's had to calm wild rumors and deal with short tempered personalities, he knows how the machine works.
Immediately we caught wind that Kyle was receiving death threats. This was move #1 in trying to gain sympathy for Kyle. We have yet to actually see any such death threat via twitter or Facebook but apparently they were there. I believe that the threats were probably true but even Kenny Williams must know that when die hard fans get riled up in BIG GAMES lots of immature and dumb things can be said. I guarantee you Kenny's life has been threatened multiple times and he doesn't even play. The point is that any coward that goes on social media to threaten someone else is just that, a coward. A wanna' be gangsta'. A hard ass fool. The Williams family is part of sports upper echelon and is more than aware of this, they know that this is all talk and should just simply ignore it. Kyle will never be harmed physically over this and I doubt he even gets confronted in public verbally over it.
Kenny was then quoted as saying his son was playing with a "dislocated shoulder." Move #2 for sympathy. This simply was not true. Even Kyle denounced this injury saying "everyone's banged up this time of year." Point here is that Kenny was trying to paint a picture that his son was playing hurt and hurt BADLY, which was simply false.
Then the story about the NY Giants special teams "trying to put a hit on Williams" in the game got spun (somehow?) into a head hunting tactic to knockout Williams because of his prior concussion history. Move #3 for sympathy. We're supposed to now feel bad that a bunch of guys on a football field were trying to hit another guy on a football field... ?
Then we see support for Williams through his twitter feed from Kurt Warner, Deion Sanders, and Paul Walker (wait, Paul Walker?). If these guys are forgiving Kyle then shouldn't we? Problem here is THEY'RE NOT 49ER FANS.
I tweeted Kyle Williams right after the game, oh yeah, you bet I did. My tweet was this;
@KyleWilliams_10 if you need a suggestion for what to work on in the off season I got one...
My tweet is decent from my POV. If you consider what I wanted to say to the guy I think this was very appropriate. Sure, I'm makin' fun of him and his performance but I'm not threatening him, I'm not telling him to die, I'm not saying I hate him, but I am saying "hey, you screwed up" just in other words.
I posted on Facebook;
"49ers offense was bad, but I've never seen one guy single handedly help lose a team game like Kyle Williams tonight. Any ideas? Anyone?"
I still stand by that statement. You can throw out all the Leon Lett's and Scott Norwood's you like but no-one comes close to being the goat that Kyle Williams was in that NFC Championship game. Difference? He made the same mistake TWICE. There is no excuse for that on the professional level. I learned in pop-warner to yell "fire" on a punt return so everyone on the receiving team would know to get the hell away from the bouncing ball.
Sad thing is that had Williams not "fumbled" the punt the first time, the 49ers more than likely win that game in regulation and he never screws up in overtime. The 49ers defense came out in the second half and was as good as they had been all year!
I said there are 2 Kyle Williams to true 49er fans. There is Kyle the Human being. We do feel for him on some level that he doesn't have to deal with this in his personal life, and that obviously the threats are simply words from cowards that have no other way to channel there absurd emotions. Then there is Williams the football player. Williams is the goat. he let us down and we will never forget that because this team means so much to us. We've grown up watching this team and shared many important moments in our lives, with important people, cheering and rooting for this team. It meant something to 49er fans, it doesn't to those on the outside. So don't tell 9er fans they need to embrace Williams the football player because we won't. He hurt us, he hurt the team, and he hurt the organization. That's the reality. The only thing he can do is work hard and try to become a better player and maybe one day he'll do something special and we'll all love Williams the football player again. Hopefully he will, because if he were my son that's what I would want.
