With Jets coach Rex Ryan cutting his “F” bombs from umpteen down to two in the second episode of Hard Knocks, we had to look elsewhere for entertainment.
Enter cornerback Antonio Cromartie.
Talking one-on-one with the camera, he listed his children. The process unfolded like something from a quiz show, with head scratching, straining, and possibly guessing.
Now, Cromartie blames the whole thing on HBO.
Cromartie tells Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post that the first-year Jet rattled off the list of his kids’ names on the first take, and that the director then instructed him to do a second take.
One that would make him look, you know, dumber.
“Nah, I didn’t have trouble,” Cromartie said. “I mean, they asked me to pause. I had nailed it the one time before, but they had to redo it and they just told me to pause between each one of [the names].”
HBO’s contends that the scene was shot in one take. “The show is factual, it’s real, and it’s not manufactured,” HBO spokesman Ray Stallone told Hubbuch.
So if Cromartie’s contention is true (and we doubt that it is), it means that Cromartie wasn’t too dumb to know the names of his kids without using a lifeline or two -- but that he was too dumb to realize that he was allowing himself to be made to look too dumb to know the names of his kids.
We’re not sure which is worse.
Meanwhile, we wonder when Cromartie will explain that he was instructed by someone from the Chargers to pause before trying to tackle Shonn Greene during the 2009 playoffs.
