Deion Sanders is totally a giant baby.

Tony Romo, who Deion Sanders has been quite fond of criticizing over his career, took a snark shot during the Cowboys-Chiefs game about Deion Sanders infamous poor tackling. It was probably the easiest joke in the world. There is no player ever in the league that is as synonymous with “business decisions” as Deion Sanders. He’s a self-admitted non-tackler. Every fan and player of football knows Deion Sanders for a few things: Primetime, High Stepping into the Endzone, Hall of Fame lockdown CB, and not tackling. Deion Sanders not tackling is a football meme, a fact so well known that Tony Romo’s joke wasn’t even particularly inspired. It’s a joke every single one of us has made.

All of this makes Deion’s super serious egotistical response to the zinger as soft as all hell. This would be the biggest bitch move in sports of 2017 if Kevin Durant hadn’t gotten caught defending himself on twitter with fake alt accounts he made.

I hated Deion Sanders when I was growing up. He was a Cowboy, he was loud, he was obnoxious, and worst of all, he was good and backed it all up which made everything worse. There is a reason we all still cling to the “business decision” criticism, it was the only real crack in the dude’s game. He was, and still is, basically the epitome of the perfect heel. If he’s on your team, you love him. If he’s not on your team, you hate him with the passion of a thousand suns.

After I grew up a bit and became more of a football fan instead of just a Giants fan, I realized Deion’s value and hated him less. I respect him a lot as a football player. I respect him as an athlete. I respect the absolute fuck out of his showmanship. Sports needs people like Deion, especially football, which can get so stuck in a rut of “Do your job, act like you’ve been there” stuffiness. We need the Cams, the OBJs, the Richard Shermans, the Marshawn Lynchs to balance out the Matt “literally made of white bread” Ryans. Deion is one of the all time great football players and personalities.

So I liked Deion for a while. I still found his egotisitcal schtick irritating, but I respected him for a while, partially because I figured he was smart enough to essentially be playing a part Skip Bayless style. Playing up the PRIMETIME stuff as part of a schitck. I…don’t know if I believe that anymore. I think Deion Sanders really is an egotistical narcissistic baby who can’t laugh at himself. The more I see of him on TV, on bit parts in TV shows, the more I fully believe he is exactly the thin-skinned full-of-himself jerk we watch on TV. So I respect Deion Sanders for a lot of things, but I do not respect his character. Deion Sanders probably jerks off to pictures of himself. Clothed pictures of himself, because he likes a challenge.

This was pretty much the epitome of that fragile narcissism. Like, this response was so shamefully soft that I’m almost positive Deion would actually call me out somehow if this comic and blog ever came across his eyes, even though I should mean literally nothing to him. Lots of people would back him up because he was “one of the greats”, but Deion sawft. There are so many ways he could have come back at Romo. He could have ignored the small off-the-cuff joke with ease, nobody would have given it a second thought. He could have come back with another zinger, like “I didn’t need to tackle I was too busy running the other way” or specifically zing Romo back with a comment of how he would have caught Romo’s many picks. He could have just laughed at himself and gone “served me and my rings pretty well, I’d say”. So many good avenues to open a friendly zinger war.

Instead he gives the angriest serious comeback he could do and it made him look pathetically thin-skinned.

I loved it. Please call out Deion Sanders more, Tony.