Are you surprised that Patriots fans taunted Torrey Smith about his dead brother?


Torrey Smith lost his brother in a motorcycle accident earlier in the year, in fact it was right before the Patriots-Ravens game in Week 3. Smith erupted in that game with six catches, 127 yards and two touchdowns.

You may have heard by now, but apparently some Patriots fans taunted Smith about his brother's death after the Ravens defeated New England for a second time that year.



Obviously these fans represent a minority of Patriots fans. The lot of fans of this football team aren't horrible people, but the select few mentioned above are and they're the ones that have gotten the spotlight.

What is notable though is that Smith points to this being the first time he's gotten so many tweets from fans on that. Of course, it being the AFC championship game, the losing fans were probably feeling a little more bitter, and probably a little drunker too. Obviously, that's no excuse.

What's even more disturbing is that this isn't the first time Boston fans have been connected to some pretty downright despicable behavior involving an athlete and following a loss.

Last year, when the Boston Bruins were eliminated from the playoffs on a goal by the Washington Capitals' Joel Ward, he was bombarded with racist tweets from fans on twitter.

Two incidents isn't enough to call this a trend, but it is disturbing that Boston fans have acted so outright classless following losses twice in less than a year. If you thought what Terrell Suggs was saying about the Patriots was bad, what these fans were saying to the players was 10x as worse.

Making fun of someone's dead brother or a person's race is obviously taking things too far. Boston is often hailed for being a city that - like many other cold weather towns - cares so deeply about its sports teams. While that's a great trait, it has it's downside too. Sad to say but, while I'll emphasize again that those tweets don't represent the Patriot fan-base, I wasn't surprised that it was coming from Boston fans.

Let's all remember that this is just a game. It's entertainment. Some fans need to straighten out their priorities if they're going to take losses that personally.

Credit to Torrey Smith for having the class to just handle that inexcusable behavior with a calm and simple tweet. An attitude maybe fans everywhere should consider adopting when it comes to their team losing. But especially Boston fans.

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