The new Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen will need to build bridges in the locker room after offensive tweets he made in high school emerged.

The tweets came to light hours before Buffalo selected Allen seventh overall on Thursday in the NFL draft. Some posts contained the n-word, while another said “If it ain’t white, it ain’t right!”.

Allen said the “white” comment was a quote from the sitcom Modern Family, and that one of the uses of the n-word was from a Rick Ross song. He also expressed regret over the tweets: “I’m not the type of person I was at 14 and 15 that I tweeted so recklessly ... I don’t want that to be the impression of who I am, because that is not me. I apologize for what I did.”

On Friday Bills team captain Lorenzo Alexander, who is African American, said he would give Allen the benefit of the doubt but that other members of the team may not feel the same way. The majority of players in the NFL are black.

“What I’m gonna do is extend some grace and wait to get to know the kid and see how he develops,” Alexander told the Bills’ official radio program on Friday. “And that’s how you got to approach it.



“Now everyone might not have that same approach. I would encourage every team-mate in our locker room to do that, but he’s gonna have to at some point, whether he does it in front of the whole team or one-off, somebody’s gonna ask him, ‘Why did you say that?’ Or ‘Why were you quoting those words?’ He’s gonna have to have a good answer.”

Allen, who was a teenager when he wrote the tweets, grew up in a small town in California with very few black people. Alexander said the tweets may well have come from ignorance rather than prejudice.

“I’m not gonna be ignorant enough to assume that he understands the [n-word] as I understand it and a lot of people understand it,” Alexander said. “Because growing up in a culture, especially around a guy like Eminem, there are certain aspects of our culture that think it’s OK to say it, whether you’re white or black. I’ve actually witnessed some black kids allow their [white] friends to use the word and not think twice about it.

“Not a lot of people were in his town that he grew up in. Small time, I think it’s 1% blacks that live in that neighborhood. So you’re just not exposed to the same things.”

The Bills said they had scouted Allen extensively before drafting him but were not aware of the offensive tweets until they came to light on Thursday.

Allen is not the first player to have been burned on social media on draft day. In 2016, video emerged of top prospect Laremy Tunsil taking a bong hit through a gas mask under a confederate flag. He subsequently slipped down the draft – potentially losing millions of dollars – before being picked up by the Miami Dolphins.