There's a troubling little narrative brewing in the matter of Aaron Hernandez. Even if the writers promoting it won't put it in so many words, it runs like this: Because Hernandez got into trouble in college, the Patriots should have seen this murder stuff coming.


No, really. See here. And here. And here and here and here. There are references to "the marijuana use, the short fuse, the shadowy friends" and a scouting report that described him as "moods unpredictable, not stable" and an expectation of scrutiny for "Hernandez's complicated past." Recall that Hernandez admitted to smoking marijuana in college, and combined with some nebulous "gang concerns," this is apparently a sign that the Patriots ought to have known what they were getting.

None of this has anything to do with Hernandez being the focus of a murder investigation; that should probably go without saying. And yet it can't, because the tattooed, "thug life" Hernandez is the subject of two separate Boston columns saying the Patriot Way has gone astray. For one, this is lazy—the worst kind of hindsight analysis. But the only counter you need to completely destroy the argument is the one made by Justin Peters in Slate today: the Patriots-should-have-known narrative implies that the entire team is just waiting to go on killing sprees.


It is worth noting one point that wasn't made in any of the columns all but accusing the Patriots of knowingly drafting a potential murderer: Hernandez received a perfect score on a pre-draft psychological test. Past is prologue only when you've got 800 words to file, I guess.

[Slate]