Youthful naivete? A "celebration of work''? Congrats on the birth of a baby?
Why were some members of the Seattle Seahawks, who won the battle on Sunday with a Week 18 success against the Cardinals while losing the war due to having failed to qualify for the 2023 NFL playoffs, smoking postgame "victory cigars'' in the locker room?
That depends on who is doing the explaining ... though a Super Bowl winner in Seattle, former punter Jon Ryan, said on social media that he is "shaking with anger'' at the action, which to him creates a rather nonchalant look in the wake of overall failure.
Maybe that is overly dramatic, though, given the assorted explanations.
Some Seahawks are claiming the celebration was in honor of safety Julian Love becoming a new father. But Love himself conceded that the cigars were also "to celebrate your guys, your work all season." And veteran leader Bobby Wagner frankly went in another direction, saying the behavior stems from the "youth" on the team.
"I'm old-school, so it was nice to get a win, but we didn't make the playoffs," Wagner said after Seattle's 21-20 win. "We didn't do what we needed to do early on, so it's a lot of mixed emotions. But you understand you got a young team, and as they progress in their career, they realize how hard wins are to come by, so it's a balance."
The fact is, just as with handshakes and smiles and jersey exchanges and prayers after games, certain gestures can simply be gestures. Not ever player is going to punch his fist through a wall following a disappointment ...
But that doesn't mean players aren't disappointed, aren't invested, don't care.
Ryan's opinion deserves respect. But when he wrote, “The Seahawk way is a bit different these days, I guess''? It creates the impression that every single guy who competed in Super Bowls for the Seahawks - as devoted and passionate as those teams surely were - reacted the exact same way to winning and losing.
And that wouldn't be human. And therefore it is not true.
More must-reads: