One week ago, the Vikings recinded their waiving of Erasmus James for the purpose of trading him to the Washington Redskins for a conditional seventh-round selection in the 2009 NFL Draft. You would think that James would be happy to get a fresh start, and be working himself back into shape to meet that goal.
Nope.
Instead, he's been crying like a baby about his time in Minnesota.
“Coming in as a first-rounder there’s a lot of pressure on you,” James told the paper. “A lot of guys think because you’re a first-rounder, you’re going to come in and start. … And that’s the worst thing to come in as, especially as a rookie with people like that, because you can’t get any help. It’s kind of like you fend for yourself. It’s nice to be around older guys who are not out there to say, ‘Hey, there’s this new guy coming in.’ It’s not like that at all. You can learn from these guys. I’m real excited about that.”
Oh, please. I'm going to do my best Paul Harvey impression here and remind everyone of. . .dramatic pause. . .the rest of the story.
James was taken in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft, as was former Viking and current Jaguar Troy Williamson. The Vikings had a pretty big need at defensive end, pretty much like they have since Chris Doleman was traded to Atlanta, and one would have thought that James would have been able to come in and make a serious impact.
And that, in fact, might have been the case. . .if he hadn't decided to hold out and miss the first 19 practices of training camp in 2005. Call me crazy, but maybe that's what put the veterans off a little bit. Well, that and the whining he did about the rookie hazing he received from the Vikings in training camp.
Hey, imagine that. . .the guys at camp gave a hard time to a guy that obviously came in with a completely skewed sense of entitlement (which is usually how one misses the first 3+ weeks of training camp) and decided he needed to sit at home and hang out while everyone else was out sweating their asses off during two-a-days. The nerve!
Seriously, there was a part of me that was sort of holding out hope for this guy, that he could get himself turned around. Now? Not so much. For a guy that spent three years taking up a roster spot and producing a whole lot of nothing, Erasmus James seem to have a lot of people to blame for his problems outside of himself. Usually you get what you pay for. . .and, as we all saw, the Washington Redskins didn't pay much.