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An emotional Buffalo Bills coach Sean McDermott acknowledged regret on Thursday for crediting the 9/11 hijackers for their coordination during a team meeting four years ago.
McDermott had cited the hijackers while stressing the importance of communication. Upon realizing how his message was being interpreted, McDermott said he called a second team meeting an hour later to apologize to his players. And he planned to do so again with his current team on Thursday, after an article posted on the Substack page of NFL writer Tyler Dunne, citing numerous unnamed sources, revealed what McDermott had said at the meeting during training camp in 2019.
“Not only was 9/11 a horrific event in our country’s history, but a day that I lost a good family friend,” McDermott said during an unplanned appearance in the Bills’ media room.
“As I mentioned to the team then that I regretted and apologized for me not doing a good enough job of communicating my point, I’m going to do the same with the team today,” he added. “So if there’s anyone new, they understand how important that is to me and my family because it’s an important event, a horrific event in our history.”
McDermott emphasized his point by tapping the podium several times. He paused on several occasions, choosing his words carefully while tears welled in his eyes.
The article cites McDermott as referencing “the hijackers as a group of people who were able to get on the same page to orchestrate attacks to perfection.”
Nearly 3,000 people were killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when hijacked planes crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
McDermott did not dispute what was reported about his comments during the meeting. He first became aware of the report through the team’s vice president of communication, Derek Boyko, and felt it necessary to address the subject right away.
“When Derek shared this particular piece, I said, ‘Stop right there…
Source link : https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/bills-coach-sean-mcdermott-apologizes-for-referencing-911-hijackers-in-team-meeting-4-years-ago
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Publish date : 2023-12-08 02:21:47
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