{"id":11645,"date":"2017-01-31T12:14:08","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T17:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprofootball.com\/?p=11645"},"modified":"2017-01-31T12:16:20","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T17:16:20","slug":"raider-nation-let-marquette-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/2017\/01\/31\/raider-nation-let-marquette-king\/","title":{"rendered":"The Raider Nation Should Let Marquette King Be"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No punter in the NFL is discussed as often as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/K\/KingMa00.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Marquette King<\/strong> <\/a>of the Oakland Raiders. Some applaud his exceptional punting, some discuss his wacky personality, and others question if he&#8217;s a distraction to the team. During the week of the Pro Bowl, Marquette King didn&#8217;t do himself any favors.<\/p>\n<h2>The Raider Nation Should Let Marquette King Be<\/h2>\n<p>For those who have forgotten, when the Oakland Raiders and Denver Broncos met in Week 17, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/T\/TaliAq99.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Aqib Talib<\/strong> <\/a>ripped <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/C\/CrabMi00.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Michael Crabtree<\/strong><\/a>&#8216;s chain off of his neck. This is obviously not a very polite thing to do, and is consistent with Talib&#8217;s less than favorable reputation. To anyone that likes the Raiders, chains, or common decency, Talib immediately became a very unpopular player.<\/p>\n<p>But on the surface, things were actually fine. It was a jerk move, but all it did was add some more bad blood to one of the NFL&#8217;s oldest rivalries. Both teams will be fighting over the AFC West until the wheels come off the world, and all\u00a0Talib&#8217;s actions\u00a0did was make things more interesting. The Raiders have Crabtree and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/C\/CoopAm00.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Amari Cooper<\/strong> <\/a>to terrorize Talib and the Broncos secondary for years to come.<\/p>\n<h3>The Pro Bowl<\/h3>\n<p>Then the Pro Bowl happened. Marquette King was at the Pro Bowl, even though he wasn&#8217;t participating, and he ruffled some feathers. On social media, he showed himself hanging out with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/K\/KelcTr00.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Travis Kelce<\/strong><\/a>, the tight end of the Kansas City Chiefs,\u00a0who had mocked King earlier in the season.<\/p>\n<p>This upset some fans, but most people were willing to overlook it because it was between the two of them. Maybe Kelce and King made up, and it&#8217;s not really a big issue. Then King really made things interesting.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"und\">? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/QfOD0ef0ZQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/QfOD0ef0ZQ<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 AqibTalib21 (@AqibTalib21) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AqibTalib21\/status\/825906099257741312\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">January 30, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>The Raider Nation was not amused by King&#8217;s joke. And as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/players\/I\/IrviBr00.htm\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Bruce Irvin<\/strong> <\/a>and Crabtree unfollowed King on social media, it seemed like the Raiders weren&#8217;t chuckling either. King has developed a bit of a reputation as a troublemaker, but upsetting his teammates is a much larger offense.<\/p>\n<h3>Locker Room Blues<\/h3>\n<p>Unlike Raider teams of the past, this Raiders unit has a strong locker room. They have a few young leaders that will sort this out. Marquette King might have offended Crabtree by joking around about something that wasn&#8217;t funny or settled, but it&#8217;s none of the Nation&#8217;s business. One way or another, the Raiders will not let this stupid joke divide them. The fans don&#8217;t need to get involved in something that has nothing to do with football.<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/638122740\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 64.814815% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"margin: 0px; left: 0px; top: 0px; width: 100%; height: 100%; display: inline-block; position: absolute;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/638122740?et=eWcETWGxT5ZwuDIdT5PHAw&amp;viewMoreLink=off&amp;sig=ReLDUysJ7zXu7ECgJQfghhzflHauNLCKAaGUvHn-l1g=&amp;caption=true\" width=\"594\" height=\"385\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p style=\"margin: 0;\">\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Marquette King goofed up. He took a picture with Aqib Talib that has not settled well with members of the Raider locker room. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1347,"featured_media":11648,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1072,508,61,395,490,40,157,1011],"class_list":["post-11645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-raiders","tag-aqib-talib","tag-bruce-irvin","tag-football","tag-marquette-king","tag-michael-crabtree","tag-nfl","tag-oakland-raiders","tag-pro-bowl"],"modified_by":"Justin Patrick, Site Manager","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1347"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}