By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

          Former Houston County and Georgia quarterback Jake Fromm made a debut on Thursday with a visit to the national spotlight for something negative, for the first time.

          Screenshots of a private text conversation from 2019 with “@ashleymp20” was posted on Twitter just after midnight Thursday morning with no comment, Fromm stating that guns are good, and “Just make them very expensive so only elite white people can get them haha.”

          Fromm apologized to his new team, the Buffalo Bills, in a meeting Thursday and issued an apology on Twitter.

          He was picked by the Bills in the fifth round of April’s draft, and was already in a tough position to maintain a regular roster spot despite rave reviews from Bills’ management after picking him.

          The story was printed or posted by scores of non-sports outlets, like The Hill, Forbes, TMZ, among others, as well as throughout Canadian media.

           The conversation apparently took place in March of 2019, the spring of Fromm’s sophomore academic year at Georgia.

          Fromm is well known for his love of hunting and fishing, with scores of social media pictures of him in camouflage gear to hunt or on a boat fishing.

          He scared Georgia fans two years ago this month when he got a fishing lure stuck in his lake and had a brief trip to a hospital.

          The first comment to the post came three minutes later.

As of 6 p.m. Thursday, the ashleymp20 account had had been retweeted nearly 2,000 times and liked more than 2,000 times.

          Around dinnertime, he was the No. 3 trending topic on Twitter, behind the George Floyd Memorial and Al Sharpton.

          Former UGA teammate Terry Godwin was terse in a Tweet. “This is showing everybody’s TRUE side. Even from a guy like Drew Brees and Georgia very own Jake Fromm. I’ve lost all respect for both of these people.

Buffalo teammate Tre White retweeted the post of New York Jet Jamal Adams: “You and Drew aren’t really sorry. Save the bulls**t ass apologies. The truth just came out, and you two aren’t the only ones!"

          A common Tweet topic was Fromm comparing himself to Drew Brees, who was the sports world’s headline for comments Wednesday that he would never understand not standing for the national anthem, as per Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling for the anthem to protest police brutality against minorities. Brees apologized Thursday.

          Her account indicates a strong connection to Houston County, which was confirmed in a Thursday afternoon story by the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which interviewed the young woman, “a female childhood friend” about the exchange, and how Fromm contacted her about part of the conversation, and to delete it.

          Among those she follows: Fromm’s younger brother Dylan, Warner Robins grad and former Tennessee receiver Marquez Callaway, Houston County grad and Auburn signee Wesley Steiner, ex-Lee County standout and current Tennessee player Aubrey Solomon, Barack Obama and President Trump, and others from Houston County in general, among others.

          Among those following the account: Steiner, Dylan Fromm, ScoreAtlanta, former Macon County and UGA standout Roquan Smith, 11 Alive Sports in Atlanta, Buffalo News sportswriter Jay Skurski and executive sports editor Josh Barnett, AJC Sports, former Veterans standout and former Army player Rashaad Bolton, former UGA running back Brian Herrien, and other current and former athletes from the county, among others.

          Buffalo starting quarterback Josh Allen was in the middle of a similar situation regarding racial Tweets when he was in high school.

          Speculation picked up steam Thursday afternoon that the Bills may release Fromm soon.

Bills will give Fromm a chance to learn

Work to be done with teammates