It is probably wise of wide receiver Martavis Bryant to generally steer clear of social media. Followers of his Twitter account will no doubt be aware that his posts are relatively infrequent if you compare them to many other plays who are far more engaged in the social media realm.
The embattled Bryant has recently applied for reinstatement after serving one year of an indefinite suspension. The requirement for application to be reinstated was that he serve the suspension for at least (roughly) a year. He wasted little time from the point of his eligibility to submitting his application for reinstatement.
I would not hesitate to guess that he knows better than anybody the long road that he still faces ahead of him. It’s not as though he is the first player to serve an indefinite suspension. But the success rate for those who return has been admittedly somewhat spotty.
He knows that he has quite a lot of detractors at this point, which was no doubt the fuel that drove his rare resurfacing on Twitter last evening. “I don’t need nobody to believe in me”, he wrote. “I know I believe in me”. He added that he also has his family and his agents behind him.
“I will show everyone and that’s on my kids!!”, he concluded in his first Tweet. Though it is somewhat ambiguous, I gather that he is referring to the fact that he wants to succeed for the sake of being able to provide for his children and to set an example for them.
A brief moment later, he Tweeted again, writing that “you can’t stop what God gave me the ability to do”. I don’t think there are many who would argue that Bryant brings to the table an impressive array of natural abilities that he has already put to good use on the NFL level.
The question has been whether or not he can remain on the field by following the league’s substance abuse policy. He has already missed 23 games—including this year’s playoffs—because of drug issues, and I hope that this is a fact that he is as aware of as anybody else.
Many believe that Bryant’s absence was felt from the Pittsburgh Steelers’ offense last season. The number of injuries that mounted at the wide receiver position certainly made it no easier to hide the shortcomings that became apparent with him out of the picture.
There are many already who have wiped their hands of him. Others look to him as the savior that will help take the Steelers to the next level. No doubt there was some migrations from the former group to the latter over the course of the past year.
It’s ultimately up to nobody but Bryant what his future holds. He seemed to be abundantly aware of that fact in an interview with Sports Illustrated last month. We should know by the end of March what his status is for the 2017 season, and then we’ll take it from there.
