Written by Des Bieler at WashingtonPost.com
For many weeks before the NFL draft, Laremy Tunsil was viewed as a likely candidate to be the No. 1 overall selection. However, the Mississippi offensive lineman apparently tumbled down teams’ boards in the wake of a video that surfaced just before Thursday’s first round kicked off.
The video showed someone smoking marijuana through a bong attached to a gas mask, and it was posted on Tunsil’s verified Twitter account. That account was deactivated within an hour, but the footage clearly made an impression on NFL executives, as one team after another passed on chances to draft him.
The footage was posted online by another Twitter user:
By the time the Tennessee Titans, who had been linked to Tunsil with the No. 1 pick but subsequently traded to a lower position, moved back up and into the eighth spot, only to draft a different offensive lineman, it was clear that Tunsil’s stock had taken a huge hit. NFL Media’s Ian Rapoport reported that several teams had taken Tunsil off their boards altogether, but the lineman was finally selected by the Miami Dolphins with the 13th overall pick.
Tunsil claimed his Twitter account had been hacked, and given the damage the video caused him — potentially costing him millions of dollars — some observers were inclined to find that plausible. On Tuesday, Tunsil was sued by his stepfather, Lindsay Miller, who contends that he was attacked by the lineman in June and subsequently defamed when Tunsil claimed that he was acting in defense of his mother.
“It was a mistake, it happened years ago,” Tunsil said onstage at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago after being drafted, reiterating that his Twitter account had been hacked. He declined to identify a possible culprit.
“How this came out today, I don’t understand,” Tunsil’s college coach, Hugh Freeze, told ESPN. “I don’t know how. He doesn’t deny it. He owned it.”
To continue reading this article, click here.
