Patriots owner invites fan to game after heckling video goes viral
Robert Kraft personally called New England fan Jerry Edmond to invite him to Saturday's game.
A video went viral of a couple harassing a Patriots fan during New England’s loss to the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday.
Patriots owner Robert Kraft responded by inviting him to Saturday’s matchup against the Cincinnati Bengals, Yardbarker reports.
It was Jerry Edmond’s first time attending an NFL game this past weekend. In the video posted to Twitter on Tuesday, a woman wearing a Derek Carr jersey invades Edmond’s personal space and hurls a torrent of abuse at him during the Patriots’ 30-24 loss to the Raiders.
In the video, the woman is yelling at Edmond and repeatedly swearing at him. Edmond hardly reacts as a man grabs the woman in an attempt to de-escalate the situation. But the man’s tight embrace does little to calm her down. After the couple kiss and hug, the woman high-fives several spectators around her before she proceeds to bark at Edmond once more.
The Daily Mail reports that Edmond, a Black man, explained to the League of Justice that he remained calm and collected during the confrontation because he didn’t want to “make a big scene” and “wasn’t going to try to make a fool out of myself.”
“I didn’t want to ruin anybody else’s night,” he said.
The woman became upset whenever Edmond cheered for the Patriots, football podcaster BabzOnTheMic reports. The Mail reports that Edmond said she harassed him throughout the entire game and accused him of being disrespectful to the stadium and Derek Carr.
“I didn’t say anything crazy to anybody,’ Edmond explained. “All I said was “That’s the Derek Carr, I know,” and that’s when the woman’s husband comes over.”
“When the Patriots scored, I yelled out, ‘Yep Raiders fans, I think it’s time to go home.’ And he comes over and he’s like, ‘Oh, so you’re talking to me’,” Edmond recalled. “I just kind of like looked at it like, ‘You know what, I don’t want to get in trouble. I don’t want anything to happen here’.”
When Kraft caught wind of the incident, social media sleuths helped to identify Edmond, resulting in the personal invitation to Saturday’s game, according to Patriots.com
In a statement on Twitter, Edmond explained that he did not want to ruin his first-ever NFL experience by “retaliating” towards the woman, “so I kept my cool,” he wrote.
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