The Buffalo News has a mini-profile of new Bills receiver Percy Harvin, the point of which is to show Harvin as a man at a crossroads. Will he go on being an alleged locker-room cancer, or will a fresh start in Buffalo be what he needs to finally reach his potential? That’s all worth considering, but what we’re really here for is Harvin talking shit about Golden Tate and Doug Baldwin.
Harvin famously got in fistfights with both Tate and Baldwin while the three were teammates in Seattle—the brawl with Tate happened before the Super Bowl. Harvin admits to all of this in the Buffalo News piece, but claims that both fights were instigated by Baldwin and Tate, who were immature, jealous, and threatened by Harvin:
To Harvin, the two felt threatened.
“It was a constant thing,” Harvin said. “It was something that got under my skin. I felt like they were acting like kids.”
Harvin goes on to explain that Baldwin and Tate went out of their way to make him feel unwelcome by publicly claiming that the receiving corps would be just fine with or without the oft-injured Harvin. According to Harvin, this is what led to confrontations:
“I was like, ‘Whoa, buddy, I’m your teammate! Let’s get it together and let’s go out there and kill people. If you all were already doing this, imagine what we could do with me in there!’ But I just kept getting, ‘If he comes back, he comes back. If not, we’re good without him.’ Finally, I wanted to say something.”
None of this is hard to believe given that Baldwin and Tate both have reputations for being dipshits, but it’s important to remember how one-sided this telling is, and that the guy who fought with two teammates on two separate occasions may not be the most trustworthy source.
But the absolute best part of this story is the revealing of Doug Baldwin’s terrible nicknames:
“Everybody calls him, ‘Tough Doug’ or ‘Angry Doug,’” Harvin said. “That was one of the times, he tried to use me to show he was a tough guy. I tried to walk away and he came back. It got messy. And I think what happened was the best for me.”
Nice to meet you, I’m Tough Doug Baldwin, but please, call me Angry Doug. It’s what all my friends call me.