AJ McCarron blames media after the former Alabama quarterback misspoke

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

For former Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron, he said something he didn’t really mean, and the response to a poorly-worded answer during an interview forced him to blame the media.

Al.com relayed a radio interview Tuesday between McCarron and Tide 99.1-FM where the current Cincinnati Bengals quarterback said Alabama’s offense has “to find that leader on offense.”

McCarron felt the need to address his comments a day later by returning as a guest of the radio station:

“It comes with the position of playing the position of QB at the University of Alabama, for the rest of your life and however long your career lasts in football and then after football, people are going to want to hear what you have to say about the university. And sometimes that’ going to be taken out of context and blown up more (than) what it was actually intended for. And that’s the bad side of media and the for the guy that first wrote the article, I mean, that’s his job. The negative attracts people to click on the article and read it more then it goes from there.

“Now his name is all over the place, so it helps sell their product, but it’s tough sitting there when I felt like I’ve been a big supporter of this year’s team, not only this year’s team, but Blake Sims. He’s one of my good friends and we talk all the time and I try to help him with everything I can. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes that it’s taken out of context.”

A quick read of the original piece on AL.com doesn’t appear to have taken anything out of context. The author provided context to each question asked and the transcription of McCarron’s answers.

While the negative reaction prompted by McCarron’s original quote apparently invoked the “bad side of the media”, the quarterback did attempt to take some responsibility for what he said:

“I misworded it last night and I’ll admit that. What I meant, because I gave an example right after I said that, which was the ‘vocal leader.’ So that’s what I should have said was vocal leader and I mentioned last night, they have plenty of leaders on the team. I named numerous ones last night. Ryan Kelly, I knew he was one of them. And I asked, with him being out, who was going to be that vocal guy that steps up now? And I asked is that Blake Sims? Does he need to step up into that role? That’s not a negative in any way.”

Instead of simply owning what he said originally, McCarron laid the blame elsewhere. But, it’s Alabama football and McCarron won two national championships as the program’s starting quarterback. All will be forgiven. After all, it was those nasty media members who were apparently stirring up trouble.