The Facts:
Javon Walker was attacked and beaten early in the morning on a Monday in Vegas.
He lost a significant amount of cash and jewelry in the attack.
He was hospitalized and treated for his injuries.
There are lots of prayers,/thoughts/condolences earmarked for delivery to Walker.
The Thoughts:
There will be much more "stuff" reported as the days and weeks pass. We'll hear that he was mugged, kidnapped, robbed by 'crews', rolled by hookers, ad nauseum. We'll have to forage through that mess as best we can. But I have a difficult request to ask of Broncos fans.
Please consider withholding your prayers/thoughts/condolences in this instance.
A hard lesson was concretized for us these past seasons, and I am troubled to think we might not have learned, unequivocably, what it was. This lesson says that a man cannot be split by Solomon, cannot be asked to be two halves meant to appease two sides for two reasons. Shanahan learned this.
After a season that saw a divided locker room and a divided team, we have spent the offseason marvelling at how this team seems to have healed, seems to have sewn up an incredible gash that threatened to separate the soul from the body. We wait with eagerness and anticipation to see whether the patient can survive the rigors of a season, and find that a gash between the fans seems to be healing as well. Under the Broncos banner we are uniting again, and revelling in the fact that we are no longer being asked to separate what we value from what we want. They are one and the same.
Do not think that we have the luxury of looking at Javon Walker as either a human being or a football player. They are one and the same. And too, do not forget that it was not Walker the football player that was excised in our attempt to heal, but Walker the person. We miss the football player, the 69 for 1084, just like we miss all of the values that he could bring as a person, but he could not maintain a split between who he wanted to be and who we wanted him to be anymore. When we parted ways it was justified. In the wake of that cut and cuts like it the surgery was finally sincere and complete: a complete team, a complete community rallied around it. Don't betray that.
On the other side of the coin Javon found a home with Incomplete Inc., setting his chances of survival back terminally in many of our opinions. But that, and more, is his problem. Its his problem, and it is not enviable. Leave it at that, and save your energy and your efforts. Don't cast pearls and get nothing in return. But this is just my advice, nothing more.
Your energy is needed here. Where it might do some good.