And he was doing so well . . .
Yet, alas, the book of Ezekiel added another chapter and verse in the wee hours of Sunday morning.
The key word in this week’s story is “handcuffed,” as in Cowboys’ Zeke Elliott handcuffed, though not charged in Vegas incident.
Millions of people, maybe even the NFL commissioner, will read that headline and stop at the word “handcuffed.”
This is the world we live in. Short attention span theater. We skim. We swipe left. We move on.
Everybody complains about “click bait” headlines, but we’re all fish. If it wiggles, we bite.
Sigh. And he was doing so well . . .
If you’ve been following the Off-Season Chronicles of Ezekiel Elijah Elliott, you had to be encouraged, as story after story emerged of Zeke helping old ladies cross the street, comforting a young fan who’d been struck by a rogue hockey puck, and paying for the funeral of a young football star who had been killed by a stray bullet.
I’m not sure where checking in at the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas fits into the reclamation of Elliott’s public persona, but he was there. If you haven’t seen the video of Zeke’s 3 a.m. foray near the gates of the music festival, you’d better get with it. By the end of Tuesday, it’s probably going to have over a million YouTube views.
After all, the story has all the right click-bait ingredients:
1, a Dallas Cowboy
2, an inebriated athlete
3, handcuffs
Of course people are going to look at the video.
What happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas, but apparently the paparazzi at TMZ never got the memo.
In olden times, lawyers (and journalists, frankly) chased ambulances.
Nowadays, cell phone videographers chase celebrities.
The video from the Vegas parking lot shows someone, video rolling, following Elliott’s footsteps from a would-be safe distance. Zeke is wearing a Lakers LeBron James jersey. His girlfriend is wearing . . . well . . . next to nothing, which is apparently the dress code at the EDC festival.
Zeke is also wearing a fanny pack. Feel free to talk about that amongst yourselves.
The TMZ photographer wasn’t thrown off by Elliott’s tipsy journey . He/she stayed in dogged pursuit and, sure enough, suddenly there was Zeke beard-to-nose with a rented security guard, and then lazily lowering his right shoulder into him, like the way Emmitt Smith used to block for Quincy Carter.
The guard fell into a metal barricade and both tumbled backwards.
Real police officers, standing nearby, slapped the zip-tie cuffs on Elliott and walked him to a neutral corner. According to reports, Zeke was released when the security guard “declined to press charges.”
I’m going to guess they didn’t even go through Elliott’s fanny pack. That’s how inconsequential this was.
According to the Las Vegas newspaper, more than 150,000 attended the three-day Electric Daisy Carnival last weekend. Police reported 12 misdemeanor arrests and 51 felony or gross misdemeanor arrests.
But guess which non-arrest made national headlines?
At Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters in Frisco on Monday, Stephen Jones was asked to respond to the Elliott incident. Son of Jones declined to comment, other than a vague “We have nothing but respect for Zeke, and that’s all we can really say at this point.”
The internet, however, had to plenty to say, of course.
I don’t usually like to aggrandize the public comments at the end of stories and YouTube posts, but a sampling of America’s fine work deserves mention here:
From a YouTube viewer named Jesse Sanchez, “Zeke’s downfall will be liquor and booty. Can’t handle either one of those without drama.”
From somebody named tabascoeater3, “Why his girl booty all out?”
From Poncho Gomar, “You’re all missing the real story. What’s up with Zeke and the fanny pack!?!”
And from General Tso, making a note of the LeBron jersey, “This is a bad look for the Lakers.”
Somebody else suggested that TMZ really stands for “They Manhuntin’ Zeke.”
There is truth in all of those wise observations.
I get it. Elliott is 23, he’s got a little NFL spare change to spend, and he wants to enjoy life like all the other kids.
But he needs to be careful. Being around drunk people can make you drunk. And occasionally stupid. There’s a St. Patrick’s Day video in Elliott’s past that should have reminded him of that.
It’s not fair that TMZ is shadowing Elliott and other prominent athletes, but when Zeke and his contemporaries are out on the town, they’re low-hanging fruit to the gotcha video scum.
The real concern in this incident is how NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his morals police choose to view it. If Goodell, who’s been unreasonable before, elects to see it as a formerly suspended Elliott violating the spirit of his double-secret NFL probation, look out below.
What, now the NFL is going to start policing concerts and music festivals?
Zeke needs to be smarter, of course, though the Electric Daisy Carnival wasn’t like an appearance on Jeopardy. Most of all, he needs to acknowledge that whenever he steps out in public, he is going to be watched – and likely recorded.
He’d better pack a lean fanny pack, in other words.
And he was doing so well . . . .