The speed at which news travels these days is breakneck. Unfortunately, though, that is also true about false narratives. For instance a fan posted a video on twitter that showed Raiders safety Trey Taylor picking up a Kermit The Frog puppet wearing a curly wig and wearing a Patrick Mahomes jersey.
You know, because people have long said that Mahomes’s voice sounds like Kermit. It does. He laughs about it. It’s funny.
Taylor thought it was funny too. The 23-year-old rookie put the puppet on his hand and played with it a bit. And the media has utterly lost their collective minds over it.
It quickly became the Raiders who had the doll. As if it was theirs.
The #Raiders appear to have a Patrick Mahomes Kermit the Frog doll at training camp. 👀
(🎥 @RaidersAQ)
pic.twitter.com/vaOs2TNrQh— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) July 25, 2024
If Ari had actually looked at the timeline of the fan who posted it, he’d see where he shows that he brought it to camp.
Out here at training camp with Patrick Mahomes pic.twitter.com/YDw4AXBmM6
— Q (@RaidersAQ) July 25, 2024
But that would require work and it would ruin all the fun. Others quickly joined the party, calling it “the Raiders Kermit Mahomes doll” which is to imply it was players on the team who were responsible for it. And that it was “dumb”.
Well I’m sure there was a dumber thing to do…but I can’t seem to think of it at the moment https://t.co/ljiLAdsPxR
— trey wingo (@wingoz) July 25, 2024
And why is it so dumb? Well, because it could provoke Patrick Mahomes and the champs.
As we all know, definitely nothing bad ever happens to teams that give Patrick Mahomes even the slightest reason to get angry. https://t.co/kZq0Qxukty
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) July 25, 2024
And that’s fine, if you think Trey Taylor playing with the puppet was a bad move. He’s a rookie. A kid. He’s never donned a Raiders game jersey or been part of this rivalry.
The problem is the lie that the puppet belongs to the Raiders. And it isn’t just tweets telling it. At least one site put that blatant lie in an actual headline about it.
New lows: Raiders bring 'Kermit the Frog' puppet to training camp, tease Patrick Mahomes https://t.co/EUuc7SmU8x pic.twitter.com/QRIETTaKMB
— Chiefs Wire (@TheChiefsWire) July 25, 2024
So, will Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs take the (click) bait and use this silly puppet as some kind of motivation in their games against the Raiders? Who knows. Maybe when you’ve won the last two Super Bowls you have to dig deep to find new motivations.
Seems to me their last loss coming to the Raiders on Christmas would be a much bigger motivation, so not sure this little puppet matters, really. But there’s sure a lot of folks in the media who *reeeeaally* want it to matter.
