It’s been an exciting couple of weeks for Raiders fans, with trades and free-agent signings galore, featuring the unpredictable, amazing acquisition of wide receiver Davante Adams.
So there’s been a lot of Raiders fan-to-player love within the world of social media. Raiders WR Bryan Edwards took to Twitter on Friday to test his own standing with Raider Nation by doing something I’ve never seen before — asking his fans if they’d help him pay for a jersey-number change.
First of all, a bit of backstory. Here’s Edwards’ tweet from a short time ago, declaring he wants to switch from No. 89 to No. 3.
About to change my number to 3
— Bryan Edwards (@B__ED89) March 16, 2022
Seems simple enough. But when Edwards got the ball rolling with the NFL, he realized it takes more than a whim to change jersey numbers as a professional athlete. It takes cold hard cash.
That’s when he turned to his fans. What’s $43,000 amongst friends, right?
About to start a go fund me y’all gone donate?
— Bryan Edwards (@B__ED89) March 25, 2022
That’s kinda wild. It’s my impression that the majority of GoFundMe accounts are for people with very real problems. It’s possible that Edwards was joking, however.
It’s also possible that he wasn’t, of course. Either way, I got a nice chuckle out of Edwards’ request. I still searched GoFundMe’s web page for Edwards’ cause and didn’t find anything — yet, anyway.
He’s lucky the cost isn’t higher, by the way. The NFL asks its players to buy the entire inventory of their own jerseys before a number change is granted. And they pay retail prices, not the cost of production, which would be much lower.
Edwards got an early indication of whether fans will throw some cash his way, thanks to abundant responses to his tweet. The reactions were mixed, predictably. Check them out yourself, or I can attempt to sum them up. Most of Edwards’ fans simply want him to be more productive, regardless of his jersey number.
He’s been a bit underwhelming in the silver and black thus far, but he’s still young and full of potential. Edwards played in 16 games last season with 12 starts and made some crucial grabs in big moments for Las Vegas.
Ideally for the Raiders, and for Edwards himself, ironically, the cost of his number change goes up as he improves as a player and more of his jerseys hit the market. Though the Raiders receiving corps is stacked with the addition of Adams, there’s still plenty of room for Edwards to make an impact on the gridiron. That would be far better than making zany requests on social media.