CANTON -- Jerry Rice is a Hall of Fame receiver who played on a lot of good teams and a few bad ones, but he's a Hall of Fame receiver who never had to deal with what's going on in Philadelphia with Riley Cooper.
And he's grateful.
Because Rice, here for the 50th annual anniversary of the Hall, said he would have a problem playing on the same team with Cooper. More than that, he said he thinks the Eagles should have done "something a little more drastic" to punish him.
"Yeah, I would have a problem playing with him," Rice said Friday. "One thing everyone is saying is, 'Look, we know this guy,' but come to find out, I guess they didn't. Whenever you use the N-word like that it's something you can't take back.
"I understand the guy is a good player, and with [Jeremy] Maclin going down he probably would have been an important component this year. But how is that locker room going to function? From what I'm hearing, during the [Thursday] practice no one really hung out with him.
"I think the players took that [incident] to offense, and it's going to be very difficult for him. I don't know what they're going to do in Philadelphia, but when you speak that word there's no taking that back."
The Eagles fined Cooper an undisclosed amount of money but did not suspend him. They did, however, excuse him from team activities Friday so he could seek counseling.
"Yeah, they fined him," said Rice, "but it was undisclosed. I think something more drastic needed to be done."
"Then," I said, "would you have suspended him?"
"I don't know," said Rice. "That's not for me to say. I just know it's going to be hard for him to function in that locker room. When you have a new coach coming in like that, he doesn't want to have people focusing on that. He wants people to focus on what they're trying to do on the football field and winning games. Now, all of a sudden, they have this big distraction, and the locker room might be divided.
"So you're just going to have to do something about it. You have to address that. It's unfortunate. I feel sorry for him. But he spoke exactly what he was thinking, and that's just something you can't take back."
