The Kansas City Chiefs official account deleted their recent post.
The Kansas City Chiefs might have clinched home-field advantage Sunday over the Atlanta Falcons, but that wasn’t the main story on Monday morning.
A since-deleted tweet from the Chiefs’ account has been at the subject of backlash after commenting a landlord “coming for rent” picture after the game. Yes, while safety Tyrann Mathieu is nicknamed “The Landlord”, it’s one of those tweets that in the climate around COVID-19 might not be best this season.
Fox Sports’ Emmanuel Acho took to Twitter, talking about how tone-deaf the post was. Other websites around the greater Kansas City area also commented on situation.
Attention social media teams— this is why diverse opinions & verbiage matter.
— Emmanuel Acho (@EmmanuelAcho) December 28, 2020
I understand some call T. Mathieu, “the Landlord”, but every possible implication of this tweet is utterly negative & perpetuates stereotypes. Let’s all be better. pic.twitter.com/sjBtnSHA3j
Should the Chiefs deserve backlash?
Any other time than the middle of a pandemic, it might make sense to tweet something along those lines. However, the system the country currently is in, it becomes a problem for those affected in multiple ways.
The Chiefs have yet to release an apology or statement on the situation.
There’s a time and place for everything and hopefully, the social media staff will see this as a learning lesson for the future.
With a sky high unemployment rate and many Americans facing eviction (especially more diverse areas of the country), the Chiefs tweet did not have its intended result. Once the social media staff realized this, they immediately deleted the tweet from existence, instead considering the harm it could do by reminding those down on their luck of their current predicament.
By no means did the Chiefs intend to offend, and getting rid of such a public statement was obviously the right call.