The truth about Kellen Winslow II

By STEVE KING

It — this — was coming.
That’s been evident for a long while — way longer than many people realize.
And now we’re here, at the end — at least for this part of the journey — as it did come, with former Browns star tight end Kellen Winslow II being sentenced Wednesday to 14 years in prison for multiple rapes and other sexual offenses against five women in Southern California.
It is a generational fall, begging the question: How can something like this happen to someone like him?
The son of a generational tight end by the same name, Pro Football Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow, Winslow II was an All-American — and then some — at the University of Miami, so much so, in fact, that his former college coach, then Browns head coach Butch Davis, took him in the first round, at No. 6 overall, in the 2006 NFL Draft. At 6-foot-4 and 251 pounds, he was what his father, and the man who was drafted by the Browns a year earlier in 1978, Ozzie Newsome, were in their day as the first of the new breed of tight end, matchup nightmares in that they were too fast to be covered by linebackers and too big and strong for cornerbacks. They were wide receivers in tight ends’ bodies, able to make big plays by running far downfield to catch passes.
And catch passes Winslow II did — in droves — especially during his first two full seasons with the Browns. After playing just two games in 2004-05 because of injuries, he got healthy and burst upon the scene in 2006 to catch 89 passes, tying Newsome’s Browns record, then added 82 more — for 1,106 yards — in ’07. After being limited again because of health issues in 2008, he was dealt to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, where, from 2009-11, he averaged 73 catches a year. He retired after the 2013 season with 469 catches for 5,236 yards. If he had done all of that with the Browns, then he would be second on the team in career catches, ahead of three Hall of Famers, and sixth in yards, just ahead of one of those Hall of Famers, Paul Warfield.
But all along, there were crazy things — brazen displays of discipline issues and even lewd behavior — to indicate beyond any shadow of a doubt that while this guy was excelling on the field, he was not doing exactly the opposite off it.
You can blame Winslow for that — and we have; you have to do so, for everyone is ultimately responsible for their own behavior — but there are so many others at fault here, too, his coaches and front-office others in charge, including those with the Browns, who were afraid to confront him, instead standing back and watching him destroy himself. It started at the youth levels, progressed to high school, then to college and finally to the Browns and several other teams in the NFL.
Now, could they have stopped that, and him, if only partly so? Yes, I’m convinced they certainly could have — no doubt ast all about it.
But the problem is that they — all of them — never even tried, hard enough and consistently enough.
And that, in some ways, is an even bigger crime.
For these people were adults. They knew better. They were charged with being authority figures for a boy transitioning into a young man and then into a full-grown man, and they were completely derelict in their duties. That’s inexcusable.
So,too, is inexcusable what happened on one of those rare occasions when someone dared to question Winslow. After being hospitalized with a staph infection in 2008, Winslow took Browns General Manager Phil Savage to task in a screaming rant outside the Browns locker room following a game, in full view of the media. The Browns were being hit by a rash of staph infections and Winslow, understandably so, was upset about it. But choosing that time and place to express his displeasure was an obvious lapse of judgment. Such things need to be handled behind closed doors. That’s protocol. It’s what happens in a professional setting. You don’t show up one of your bosses publicly.
Savage suspended Winslow for a week, but Browns owner Randy Lerner later apologized to Winslow and rescinded the suspension. Lerner also ended up firing Savage moments after the 2008 season ended, with Winslow still on the roster for two months until being traded to the Bucs by new head coach Eric Mangini.
Again, Winslow was being coddled instead of being corrected.
So, with all that then, is anybody at all — should anybody at all — be surprised by the sad events of Wednesday in that courtroom as the coddling — and looking the other way, either consciously or just subconsciously, of excusing, condoning, explaining it away, trying to rationalizing it or just the shrugging of shoulders in a “Boys will be boys” kind of way — stopped abruptly and completely and finally, and all the punishment that was never handed out for all those years, was, finally, done so in one big heaping dose.
Yes, that’s how it can happen that something like this can happen to someone like Kellen Winslow II.
And, by the way, in one final offering up of the truth, let it be said on the record that you, me and everyone else are responsible, too, for while we had seemingly had nothing to do with this specific fall from grace, we actually had a lot to do with it by helping to create a society where a heinous mindset like this can, and does, thrive, for years in plain view of us all without being even questioned, let alone stopped.

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