Washington Redskins wide receiver Jabar Gaffney has historically lacked couth in his Twitter updates (he’s had the account since Nov. 18) but a firestorm of messages sent from his account Thursday evening caught national attention.

Gaffney’s account began what multiple media outlets called a “meltdown” at 6:03 p.m. with a derogatory statement directed to his cousin and former Florida Gators teammate Lito Sheppard. The account then sent out a number of other tweets including:

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“4-12 is my anniversary woke up and couldn’t find my soon 2 be ex wife anywhere. [Expletive] dat [expletive] I can’t wait till its final in a few weeks” “Feelings are for suckas Neva Eva again. Black heart dead soul!!! Get it how u live & I’m outta here”

Should one be confused that the tweet about Sheppard was in conjunctions with those about Gaffney’s wife, the account set out to clarify the situation. “My beef wit Lito don’t got nothing to do bout a girl he just a person I don’t [expletive] wit he lame to me so don’t hit me up wit that. #Realtalk. Ain’t nobody [expletive] my wife but for anybody saying any slick [expletive] better watch ur girl and not let me get hold to her.”

Three hours after the final tweet on the subject, Gaffney took to Twitter and claimed that the previous tweets were sent by someone who hacked into his account and impersonated him.

“The last thing I actually tweeted was about my tatt anything else wasn’t me,” he wrote. “This is the real Jabar and my acct was hacked that wasn’t me saying all of that so disregard whatever u read. Anybody that knows me for real knows if I said it or not I’m not on no twitter beef so believe what u want.God bless u all I got Lito number if I wanna tell him something I can call him up I just saw him the other day. My girl we handle our business in house so I respectfully ask u all not to come at me sideways and let me handle my business. And last thing if I said something I’m a man and will admit to it never been scared of nobody so all the big bad people in the world #Growup.

“I don’t even tweet so why would one of my 100 tweets be about a dude I grew up with or about the girl I’m married to get a life people. But this me saying this don’t [expletive] disrespect my family. And me and my boy Lito are cool. End of discussion hope y’all had fun with it. I’m super educated and blessed by the man upstairs and just so this never happens again I’m deleting tweeter so now if u c my name it’s fake.”

Whether Gaffney’s account was “hacked” or not, claiming that the tweets were not his was certainly a necessary move on his part. He is owed $2.65 million in the final year of his contract with Washington and was already considered to be a potential roster casualty heading into the season after the Redskins acquired a number of wide receivers in free agency.[/EXPAND]