By JOHN MANASSO
FOXSportsSouth.com
Jan. 18, 2011
The bio on his verified Twitter account reads, "Atlanta Falcons Pro Bowl Wide Receiver, Car Enthusiast and founder of Playmaker Foundation."
You could possibly add "Apologist for the Falcons' Playoff Performance."
Only hours after the Falcons' humiliating 48-21 loss at the Georgia Dome at the hands of Green Bay --and after what must have been at best a fitful night of sleep --Falcons wide receiver Roddy White tweeted the following at 7:27 a.m. Sunday:
"I want to apologize to all the falcon fans for our horrible performance last night it was not good and I'm sorry."
Falcons fans on Twitter reacted to White's mea culpa with numerous sympathetic responses, despite the team's elimination as the NFC's No. 1 seed in its first playoff game of the 2010-11 campaign.
But Twitter has made White something of a lighting Rod (pardon the pun), and other football fans are still bitter about one of his earlier posts, from the week leading up to the Falcons' Dec. 27 game against New Orleans.
In referencing the Saints, White posted, "The grace of god gave them tht championship so tht city wouldn fall apart now and now they think they hot (expletive) in my chad voice child please."
White later apologized for any comments that might have been offensive to citizens of New Orleans. (The Saints and Falcons share a not-so-friendly rivalry.)
Apparently, not all are ready to forgive. At 2 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, someone under an account named DaRealCreoleRed (a Saints fan, no doubt) posted, "U need to apologize to all (the) who dats for talking (expletive) about our city," ending the post with, "Choke artists!!!!"
In the weeks before his Twitter faux pas, White explained what he liked about the site.
"You get to express yourself on Twitter," said White, whose following on the site has grown by almost 50 percent since the week of that Dec. 27 game to 29,686 as of Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern. "Things that you like, things that you don't like. Nothing can be held against you except for after games."
White, who is something of an ebullient personality, was subdued in the locker room after Saturday's loss to the Packers.
"The chances we did (have), we squandered them away," he said. "It's tough, man. They're a good football team, man. They did what they had to do to win the game and got crucial turnovers and kept us out of the end zone."
But on Monday morning, he was back to joking around on Twitter at the expense of a member of the New York Jets.
"In my bart scott voice Can't Wait until next year," White's post read, an apparent reference to the parting words Scott delivered Sunday in an intense post-game interview after the Jets' victory over the New England Patriots.
