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- Mar 16, 2019
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Jake Fromm apologized Friday for racist text messages sent to a childhood friend in 2019 that surfaced in June.
The rookie quarterback said his words, calling for gun silencers to be “very expensive so only elite white people can get them haha,” came from a lack of perspective and being “naive, young and immature.”
“I made a mistake and I’m going to own up to it,” Fromm said, via Matthew Fairburn of TheAthletic.com. “But that’s not indicative of who I am.”
It was the first time Fromm had discussed the text messages with the media. He apologized to his teammates on a Zoom call in June.
But Fromm did not state Friday exactly what he has learned or exactly how he will continue to educate himself on social injustice issues, according to Fairburn. The fifth-round choice from the University of Georgia did say the incident has “opened my eyes and seeing the world from a completely different perspective.”
“That’s not the way my parents raised me,” Fromm said. “That’s not the way I was raised. . . . My family has a super loving family. We had people all different kinds of backgrounds in and out of our house from day one growing up. I mean, that’s just something that just never happened was, you know, jokes like that were never said. I take responsibility for it, and I’m going to get better from it. And hopefully, you know, that people can look at me and hopefully, learn something from me.”
The Bills chose to keep Fromm, and defensive end Jerry Hughes said players have moved forward. They will give Fromm a clean slate.
“We feel that’s in the past,” Hughes said. “He might have to answer more questions to other people. When you say certain things, you have to answer questions. But we addressed it as a team. Moving forward, however he handles it is up to him. We just hope he does the right thing.”