It was Brandon Jacobs’ wife Kim who first alerted him some fantasy football nut had threatened the Giants running back and his family on Twitter if he didn’t perform well against the Vikings Monday night at MetLife Stadium.
Asked if the tweet that read: “If you don’t rush for 50 yards and 2 touchdowns tonight it’s over for you and yo family,” shook up his wife, Jacobs scoffed: “She wasn’t afraid. She’s a gangster.”
Nevertheless, Jacobs is miffed by the growing number of incidents in which so-called fantasy football followers threaten or criticize players over social media for either poor performances or not tweeting about injuries.
The cowards behind the keyboards are “a huge problem, no question,” Jacobs said on Wednesday. “Fantasy football is something fans can connect themselves to us as players, but some people take it way too serious and way too far.”
Jacobs was a late scratch from Monday night’s game with a lingering hamstring injury, and didn’t find out about the tweet, from someone named Andre Rayner, until he got home. It is just the latest in a number of incidents around the league in which players have been accosted by fantasy football fans over social media.
Jacobs said he didn’t take any extra security measures to protect himself or his family after Rayner later tweeted the threat was not serious.
“It was just a kid being dumb,” Jacobs said. “Later he tweeted he was only joking. But when you say stuff like that and think it’s a joke, it’s a problem.”
A Giants spokesman said any investigation of the threat is a league matter.
While with the 49ers last year, Jacobs received a message that read: “Hope you die a horrible death,” while he was recovering from a knee injury.
Jacobs made it clear, he isn’t necessarily opposed to fantasy football, but overzealous fantasy folks ruin it for the real players.
“For the people that understand us and what we go through every day, they know fantasy [football] is fun for them,” Jacobs said. “But for those that take it too serious, us as football players don’t owe you all nothing. It’s up to you to manage your team the way you want to manage it. The only owners and general managers I owe anything to is Jerry Reese, the Mara and the Tisch families. Everybody else I don’t concern myself with.”
The fantasy football craze isn’t isolated to just social media. Jacobs said it is difficult to get through a meal at a restaurant without someone coming up to him and talking about their fantasy team. It’s becoming a turnoff to those who play the game for real.
“I just think, it has disconnected a lot of [players] from dealing with fans because it’s all people ever talk about,” Jacobs said. “You sit down and eat at a restaurant and people say, ‘Yo, I got you on my fantasy team. You’ve got to do something for me this week,’ while I’m trying to enjoy my dinner. That’s a huge problem, if you ask me as a player, because players don’t want to deal with that. Players don’t want to hear anything about fantasy football because we’re not living fantasy football.”
Jacobs said the only fantasy football he has participated in was earlier this year when he was unsigned and hoping he could return to the Giants for whom he played for seven seasons before wasting a year in San Francisco last season.
“I was living fantasy football in August and my only fantasy was I want to go back with the Giants,” Jacobs said. “That was my fantasy football.”
To all those fantasy owners out there, Jacobs didn’t practice on Wednesday and isn’t sure if he’ll play against the Eagles.
“My hamstring is getter better,” he said. “I’m just going to let the trainers and coach [Tom] Coughlin talk about it and deal with it as they want to. It feels good though.”
Tweet that.