Is Winston a serial sex offender? Will Buccaneers cast him adrift?

Updated Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Jameis Winston has most attributes of an elite quarterback: big arm, strong and long body, affable personality.  A natural leader, say those who coach him or play alongside him.

But he lacks self-discipline, on the field and off.  The former No. 1 draft pick of the NFL has been suspended for the first three games of the 2018 season because of an alleged sexual assault of a female Uber driver.   It was at least the fourth time he’s been accused of abusing women.

This latest incident occurred in the early morning of March 23, 2016, at a drive-through Mexican restaurant in Scottsdale, Ariz.   A driver named Kate said Winston groped her crotch for 3-5 seconds.  She told BuzzFeed News that she removed his hand and asked “What’s up with that?”

Some of Winston’s fans will say he did nothing a president wouldn’t do.  They think Commissioner Goodell Two Shoes has too high a bar for acceptable sexual conduct.  Ask Zeke Elliott.  The Dallas running back was suspended for six games last season, though no DA sought an indictment against him.

Winston has never been charged with a sexual offense, yet he’s lived in a gray area of semi-criminality beginning with his three-year tenure at Florida State.  As a red-shirt freshman in 2012, he might have been indicted for rape if not for a much covered coverup by the university and the Tallahassee Police Department.

His accuser, Erica Kinsman, reportedly collected $950,000 from FSU in a Title IX suit in which she claimed justice was denied her because of gender.  She also filed suit against Winston and received compensation that’s unknown because of a confidentiality agreement drafted to protect the guilty.

Though it’s been little reported, another female student at FSU sought counseling and complained to the school’s Victim Advocate Office that Winston sexually assaulted her.  She said his action might have been less than rape, she declined to press charges, and the matter is all but forgotten.

Not forgotten: In September 2014, Winston stood on a table in a campus cafeteria and screamed vulgarities about female genitalia and what he wanted to do to it.  Again, perhaps more acceptable in a president than in a college sophomore.

For what was considered verbal abuse of women, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner was suspended for a game.  Apparently that was not enough to make an impression.

Let’s not forget a couple of nonsexual transgressions that show lack of self-discipline: Jameis in November 2012 shooting BBs into an apartment building, causing $4,200 worth of damage, and Jameis in April 2014 stealing $32 of crab legs from a grocery store.

He said he was in Publix for “a hookup” – to collect under-the-table benefits that a quarterback is entitled to have.   Nonetheless, he was convicted of shoplifting, sentenced to 20 hours mopping a YMCA.

Bucs general manager Jason Licht saw all this as “immaturity.”   But there was no sign of moral development when Winston addressed an elementary school class last year, at age 23.  “The ladies, they’re supposed to be silent, polite, gentle,” he instructed.  “My men, supposed to be strong.”

He keeps falling more out of step with the #Me Too movement that caught up to Kate the Uber driver in November 2017.  That’s when she decided to stop being silent and called BuzzFeed.

At first, Winston tried to spin this like a football spiraling from his right hand.  He denied wrongdoing in a lengthy statement that read like a lawyer’s brief.  He submitted a witness, Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Ronald Darby, to testify that he was in the back seat with Winston and that “Jameis did not have any physical contact with the Uber driver.”

But NFL investigators Lisa Friel and John Iannarelli found the driver’s story “consistent and credible” and Winston’s not so much.   An examination of Darby’s cell phone showed that on the night in question he was not in the Uber car.

Darby, a teammate of Winston at FSU, was a witness (enabler?) for him in the rape case that was flicked aside.   Another friend of Jameis, former Vanderbilt football player Brandon Banks, was not as helpful as Darby tried to be.

Banks was facing rape charges and was out on bond, drinking with Winston and Darby at a Scottsdale bar when Kate’s Uber car arrived at 2 a.m.  Banks’ attorney, Mark Scruggs, told the Tampa Bay Times that Jameis left, drunk and alone.

Banks was convicted and is now in prison in Tennessee.  Winston is not appealing his suspension.  To keep it from being longer, he wrote a semi-apology to the driver, saying he was “sorry for the position I put you in.”

He’s not sorry, he never is.  He’s telling friends he did nothing improper.

His fundamental problem is he’s too full of himself, too certain he can get away with tossing a duck up for grabs as he tumbles to the ground.  Too certain he can get away with unwanted passes off the field, too sure the ladies will be silent enough.

He has bad hands (lost seven fumbles last season), and they’re not so reliable when he’s with women.

But given the he-said, she-said nature of Ubergate, Winston probably will avoid trial, as he always does.   Expect him to pay off Kate, represented by Kinsman’s lawyer, John Clune.

Winston is about to be a father.  He might wonder what his children someday will know about their dad.  They will know some good, to be sure.  He gives generously of his time and resources to help his community.  Football fans can excuse his foibles as easily as voters can forgive a president’s carnal sins.

But Quarterback is not a job in which 60% approval by the team is acceptable.  Jameis is as immature now as he was six years ago, and there’s no excuse for that.

It’s good he’s sworn off alcohol.  Perhaps if he’d been sober he would not have yelled gay slurs at pedestrians, as Kate said he did on the way to Los Betos Mexican Food.

But alcohol does not cause insensitivity toward women.   The NFL is requiring Winston to undergo a “clinical evaluation” that can lead to psychological counseling.

Keyshawn Johnson, former star receiver for Tampa Bay, is not right about many things, but on his radio show (ESPN LA 710) he accurately nailed Winston: “The fact that you keep coming up with sexual behavior problems against women, there’s something wrong, mentally.”

There are limits to how patient the Buccaneers’ ownership, the Glazer family, will be over this ongoing drama of Jameis Distraction.  Physical appearances aside, there’s no reason to think he can be the leader they want or the Face of the Franchise.  Again and again, he’s the face you want to slap.