Ryan Fitzpatrick isn’t a big social media guy, so when news of his retirement from the NFL surfaced on Twitter last week, it wasn’t really his doing.
Fitzpatrick, a journeyman quarterback who was renowned for being a great teammate, had a neat way of making the announcement. After letting the proper channels know officially that he was calling it a day, Fitzpatrick and his son made a word cloud with every teammate he had in the NFL.
After finishing the tedious, hours-long process, Fitzpatrick texted the result to a bunch of the men named. Former running back Fred Jackson, who played with Fitzpatrick on the Buffalo Bills, was touched by the gesture and decided to tweet it out.
From there, word spread like wildfire. Fitzpatrick, appearing this week on the “Adam Schefter Podcast”, admitted that Jackson apologized for inadvertently leaking the news.
"I just sent it out to a lot of those guys and said thank you," Fitzpatrick said. "I got a text message from Fred jackson this morning that said ‘Hey, sorry that it blew up like it did. Sorry if you didn’t want me to do that.’ It worked out perfectly. Fred felt the need to post it and say thank you to me, that’s the world we live in now, it happens on social media, and it kind of caught a life of its own yesterday. But I’m happy that Fred was the one to do it."
Ironically, Fitzpatrick made that remark after spending minutes bemoaning humans’ addiction to our devices to Schefter.
Word eventually would have gotten out no matter what. That it came from Jackson putting Fitzpatrick’s generosity on display isn’t the worst way for it to be leaked.
By the way, Fitzpatrick said he thinks there were 856 names in that word cloud. Impressive work.
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