Posted by ESPN.com's Mike Sando
Terence Newman's deer-in-headlights comments about Cowboys teammate Roy Williams weren't particularly inflammatory by societal standards. Neither did they appear to be mean-spirited. The context is what magnifies them. Players almost never make those types of comments about teammates. I cannot recall an equiavalent phrase in a decade covering the NFL.
Newman provided additional context today, as noted by the Dallas Morning News:
"It's hard to find a DB who hasn't had a bad day. That's all I'm saying. It happens. The same thing was said to me my second year. I didn't say anything about it. I didn't play very well. At times, I looked like a deer in the headlights. I mean, that was Bill Parcells' comments. I'm not going to argue, I was bad."
Going into a locker room and asking one player about the struggles of another can be awkward. Sometimes the struggling player is within earshot. Often you'll hear a player in Newman's position talk about how a teammate is battling through adversity, or you might hear something about how the struggling teammate needs to fight through it.
We've occasionally seen teammates at odds -- think Jeff Garcia or Donovan McNabb vs. Terrell Owens, or Peyton Manning vs. Mike Vanderjagt -- but you almost never see players drop deer-in-headlights-type descriptions into their everyday assessments of the men who line up next to them. Teammates generally defend each other from the harsh opinions of outsiders.
