No one had heard much from either of the parties involved in the now-infamous physical interaction between Dallas Cowboys star running back Ezekiel Elliott and a security guard at a music festival in Las Vegas, until Wednesday. Accuser Kyle Johnson spoke with KCBS-TV in Los Angeles about the incident and says he wants a “sincere apology” from Elliott, better than the one he received the night of the incident.
In describing what happened that night, Johnson seems to have a different interpretation than many – such as Cowboys owner Jerry Jones – who believe it was no big deal. As someone involved in the incident, Johnson is certainly justified to have a different take than those on the outside looking in, but this interview may be difficult for some to take at face value.
The original video does appear to show Elliott initiating physical contact with Johnson, although taken by a cell phone one cannot see Elliott’s arm come into contact. It is also clear from the video the amount of force exerted by Elliott would not constitute a violent act. Johnson does laughingly admit in the interview that he plays football and has suffered much worse collisions.
The bottom line remains Elliott was in the wrong and he needs to remove himself from these types of situations. That point must remain clear.
There are a few things to unpack from the interview, most notably Johnson seems to have received some level of coaching of what to say. One of the first things noticed is how Johnson casually nails Elliott’s height and weight when talking about the running back’s size.
“He’s 6-foot-0, 228 pounds, he’s a big dude.”
Surely, Johnson didn’t just look up his height and weight on the Cowboys official team website, where it has Elliott listed at 6-foot, 228 pounds exactly, right?
Instead of the security guard telling his version of what happened, it sounded much more like a scripted interview. As an outside observer, it felt like the interviewer framed the incident in a way to make Elliott look worse than he already does.
Later, the security guard originally says Elliott looked to be “slightly intoxicated,” then later adds that “his pupils were dilated, ya know, he didn’t seem to have any clue where he was.”
This does beg the question of how well Johnson could see Elliott’s pupils and why did his stance change from “slightly intoxicated” to being so drunk that he didn’t know where he was? That’s quite a difference in intoxication levels.
Unfortunately, Elliott has put himself in the position for this to be spun up. That’s on him. Some may feel the security guard looks like someone trying to profit off of his 15 minutes of fame and this is becoming an embarrassing situation for everyone involved.
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