Giants teammates Jason Pierre-Paul and Prince Amukamara said they have no hard feelings about the now infamous “ice bath” video that punter Steve Weatherford posted on YouTube.
After learning of the existence of the video on Sunday, coach Tom Coughlin addressed the issue with his players on Monday morning.
“He said something to the whole team,” Pierre-Paul said. “He explained the situation, what is going on and he told us not to do anything like that where we can harm our team. We understand the concepts that Tom Coughlin was telling us. That was basically it. It was nothing to harm Prince. Me and Prince are family. All these guys in the locker room are family. I would never try to hurt one of my teammates.”
Coughlin will speak with the media this evening and hopefully expand upon the message to the team.
On Sunday the Giants' coach was just learning about the video, but said he knew there was some “inappropriate” content in the vidoe. In all likelihood Coughlin was referring to the language some of the players were using. The video has been taken down from YouTube because of the website’s policy on publishing hazing videos.
When asked if he thought he was being bullied, the second-year cornerback Amukamara said the incident wasn’t appropriate, but it wasn’t hazing.
“No, not at all,” he said. “Last year was pretty fun and pretty memorable but this year I just know that it is out of love. It is how we communicate with each other. I am not trying to push anything under the rug. I know that we did take it too far and someone could have gotten hurt.”
Part of the concern from Coughlin’s perspective was that Pierre-Paul put Amukamara’s health at risk by tossing him into the ice bath. Another issue for Coughlin -- and this might be the bigger concern –- was that the video was published in the first place.
Weatherford apologized via Twitter on Sunday before doing so again with the media on Monday morning.
“It’s just disappointing because I pride myself on being a good example, obviously that was a lapse in judgment,” Weatherford said. “Everyone in this locker room loves each other, we all get along great, it was simply horsing around.”
Veteran DE Justin Tuck later said that Amukamara was laughing about the incident soon after being thrown into the ice bath. He only seemed upset, Tuck said, because he was just dunked in “30-degree water.”
“We all went through grade school, middle school and we understand the difficulties of growing up and being accepted,” Weatherford said. “This had nothing to do with anything like that.”
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