Eagles running back Kenneth Gainwell’s halftime break in Week Eight included a foray into social media.
A screenshot of an exchange involving Gainwell’s reply to a DM from the locker room circulated on social media. Someone wrote “hold onto the football you fucking bum” to Gainwell after a fumble against the Commanders and Gainwell replied “lil boy don’t text me.”
Head coach Nick Sirianni said at his Monday press conference that the team has spoken to Gainwell about avoiding similar entanglements in the future.
“Of course, we talked to Kenny about that,” Sirianni said. “These guys have some time away from us when we get into the locker room where they sit down at their locker. They do whatever is going to take their mind and just calm it. This is part of these guys’ lives, is some of that stuff. He’s sitting at the locker. Should he respond to somebody that’s DM’ing him? No, he shouldn’t respond to that guy or that girl at all. And so, yes, of course we talked to him about that, to be locked in and focused and not worried about outside noise. He knows he made a mistake responding back to that person, who I’m assuming is an Eagles’ fan and then took a snapshot and posted it. That’s a whole different set of issues if he’s an Eagles fan. I won’t even get into that. Yeah. I’m done. I’m not even going to say any more. Yeah. Go ahead, next question.”
The NFL sent a memo to teams late last season reminding them that players and coaches are not permitted to use, wear or possess electronic devices that are not issued by the league during games. Steelers linebacker T.J. Watt said he was fined by the league after saying he checked his cell phone in Week 18 of the 2021 season to see if he had been credited with a sack that would have given him the single-season record in the category and the 2022 memo said players can be fined the minimum amount of $5,305 for an infraction.