A Grain of Saul: Don’t feel bad for Tiquan Underwood

Life isn’t that bad for Tiquan Underwood, so the pity party can stop now.

Just 24 hours… Life isn’t that bad for Tiquan Underwood, so the pity party can stop now.

Just 24 hours before Super Bowl kickoff, the New England Patriots wide receiver was cut from the team to be replaced by a defensive tackle who didn’t see a single snap.

The move, which drew national attention, was one of the many sub-plots of the Super Bowl this year.

Underwood ended up getting his 15 minutes of fame for handling his release with class, and the Twitter world came out with an “unreal” amount of support, as Underwood described it.

He had 7,000 followers the day before he was cut, and 12,000 by Sunday’s kickoff.

After being released, Underwood tweeted, “Good Luck To The New England Organization, The Coaches, & All My Teammates… #PatsNation.”

Some people felt bad for Underwood because he had just gotten finished shaving the Patriots logo onto the back of his head for Super Bowl week. Some felt bad because he was a third-year vet whose dream of stepping onto the field during the Super Bowl was thrown away just hours before kickoff. Some were baffled by how he could still root for a team that turned its back on him on the eve of Super Bowl Sunday.

“It’s going to be different watching the game on TV, knowing that you put in the time, put in the reps to be a part of the game,” Underwood told Mashable.com. “But I get to sit back and watch as a fan now, and I’ll be rooting for the Patriots.”

Because Bill Belichick, the Patriots coach, took so long to release Underwood, many believed the timing of the decision occured to prevent the possibility of Underwood being picked up by the Giants off waivers and giving New York information about his former team.

A CBSSports.com columnist said, “He was released because Bill Belichick had to be the smartest guy in the room, even if that meant gutting a nice kid like Tiquan Underwood.”

But I’d caution his readers to slow down and remember a few things:

First of all, Bill Belichick is the smartest guy in the room. He doesn’t have to be, he doesn’t want to be — he is. He has three Super Bowl rings and five appearances in the last 10 years, and just because he’s been bested by Eli Manning the last few seasons doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what he’s doing anymore.

Secondly, I think it’s interesting that nobody talks about Alex Silvestro — you know, the defensive tackle Belichick brought up from the practice squad?

Why don’t the headlines read: “Bill Belichick makes Silvestro’s dreams come true!” Why isn’t anyone tweeting about how awesome it is that Silvestro got called up to the biggest game of his life just 24 hours before kickoff? Instead, popular opinion’s decided that Belichick is a heartless coach whose players are expendable.

People can harp on the fact that Silvestro didn’t play all they want, because Underwood wasn’t going to see a snap either. The Patriots needed depth at the defensive tackle position, and if they would have had somebody go down up front, Silvestro would’ve been ready to go and Belichick would have been praised as a genius.

Here is a reminder for everyone: This is the National Football League. Underwood didn’t get cut from his high school team the day before the State Championship because they didn’t have enough seats on the bus — —he was replaced on a professional sports team by a player that was deemed more important than him for the most important game of the year.

It wasn’t like Underwood was thrown under the rug and forgotten about.

As ESPN insider Adam Schefter reported, if the Patriots had won, Underwood would still have gotten both his Super Bowl ring and his Super Bowl bonus, simply because he was active for eight games during the season.

And you wonder why he was still rooting for the Pats to win?