Kyle Love has become and important, yet unheralded member of the Panthers defensive tackle rotation, sliding in behind three first-rounders and playing well without getting much attention.
But when he made highlights last week, it made him angry.
A video clip of Love with his head down on the Panthers bench made it look like he was asleep during their 52-21 loss to the Steelers, with ESPN featuring during its “C’Mon Man” segment during Monday’s pregame show. The only problem? He wasn’t really asleep.
“He’s actually pretty pissed, ‘cause he wasn’t asleep,” Panthers defensive tackle Kawann Short said, via David Newton of ESPN.com. “It’s just one of those things where the camera hit him on the spot when his head was down.”
Love responded to the attention on Instagram, writing: “People will believe anything about you as long as it’s negative, but anything positive getting questioned.”
The lesson is, sideline video is easy to take out of context at times. At least the Panthers’ social media team didn’t use the clip and dub snoring sounds over it, because teams would never dream of doctoring their own promotional videos. That would be unethical.
