Former Steelers kicker Jeff Reed has been known to make a bad decision or two in his time. <fake cough> paper towel dispenser <fake cough>. After Sunday night’s game, Reed drew quite a bit of attention on social media after many fans said that he was thrown out of the Hall of Fame game for fighting with fans.
The following is a series of tweets from people at the game that night. After some digging, some of these people who are featured in stories on Deadspin, TheBigLead, etc… are Browns fans. I feel that’s worth noting.
https://twitter.com/OUtkean/status/630555156560674816
https://twitter.com/LRJenkinshungry/status/630603461877370880
EDIT- One of the fans at the game who claimed to have gotten into a fight with Reed, has since deleted his tweet and set his account to private. It appears that he got a little hungry for attention, or perhaps Jeff hurt his feelings…
He can delete tweets, but he can’t delete screenshots I take of stuff. 🙂
https://twitter.com/tomlade25/status/630567113321771008
https://twitter.com/tomlade25/status/630573225265774592
https://twitter.com/bbelden330/status/630577826329161728
https://twitter.com/bbelden330/status/630579827888771072
https://twitter.com/OUtkean/status/630566644633468928
So, based on the accounts from people in the stands, you might be inclined to think that Reed, being the bad-boy, partying, paper towel dispenser punching ruffian that he is, had a few too many beers and decided to straighten a fan or two out.
According to the former Steelers kicker, the media and observer reports from that night are completely false.
https://twitter.com/TheRealJeffReed/status/630796169191493632
He shared his version of the story on Facebook.
https://twitter.com/PaulZeise/status/630809158858743809/photo/1
https://twitter.com/PaulZeise/status/630809391403507712/photo/1
I could see it being a case where Jeff Reed is just trying to enjoy the game with his friends, and a couple obnoxious fans start trolling him about punching a paper towel dispenser, or pulling up shirtless rooster photos on their phones, and, after a while of trying to be polite, it escalates. The truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
Yesterday afternoon Reed told 97.3 The Fan that he called Mike Tomlin about the Kicker opening, but hasn’t heard back yet.