Washington Commanders defensive coordinator Jack Del Rio is an avid Twitter user. And sometimes, those tweets create controversy. Recently, Del Rio responded to a fan’s criticism of himself, head coach Ron Rivera and team president Jason Wright hilariously. While some believed Del Rio’s tweet was unprofessional, it was harmless.
This week, Del Rio responded to an article regarding the Jan. 6 attack on the United States with the following tweet.
Would love to understand “the whole story “ about why the summer of riots, looting, burning and the destruction of personal property is never discussed but this is ???#CommonSense
— Jack Del Rio (@coachdelrio) June 7, 2022
On Thursday, after Washington’s OTAs, Del Rio met with the media, and unsurprisingly, they questioned him about his tweet and Twitter usage.
Del Rio offered the following answer.
“Anything that I ever say or write, I’d be comfortable saying or writing in front of everybody that I work with, players and coaches,” Del Rio said. “I express myself as an American. We have that ability. I love this country. I believe what I believe, and I’ve said what I want to say. Every now and then, there are some people that get offended by it. It’s a slow news cycle, so I guess Mike Florio picked something up yesterday and talked about it. It’s not the first time Mike and I disagreed about things. It’s okay.”
Del Rio referred to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk writing a story on the defensive coordinator’s tweet.
Later, in his chat with the local media, he was asked about any of his players possibly taking issue with his tweets.
“Oh, if they are and they want to talk about it, I’ll talk about it with anybody,” Del Rio answered.
“Yeah, no problem. At any time. But they’re not. I’m just expressing myself, and I think we all, as Americans, have the right to express ourselves. Especially if you’re being respectful. I’m being respectful. I just asked a simple question. Really, let’s get right down to it. What did I ask? A simple question. Why are we not looking into those things if we’re going to talk about it? Why are we not looking into those things? Because it’s kind of hard for me to say— I can realistically look at it, I see the images on TV, people’s livelihoods are being destroyed, businesses are being burned down. No problem. And then we have a dust-up at the Capitol. Nothing burned down, and we’re not going to talk about— we’re going to make that a major deal. I just think there are kind of two standards, and if we apply the same standard and we’re going to be reasonable with each other, let’s have a discussion.”
Del Rio’s comment about the “dust-up at the Capitol” had him, once again, at the center of controversy Wednesday with many offering their opinions on social media.
Regardless of how one feels about Del Rio or his Twitter usage, he stands by what he tweeted, which means more non-football questions for Rivera and his players.