Titans safety Bernard Pollard isn't worried about political correctness, just winning. (Ryan Wilson, CBSSports.com)
When Bills defensive end Mario Williams felt the need to backtrack from his "Kill 'em or hurt 'em" explanation for defensive coordinator Mike Pettine's new scheme, we wondered if everybody had gone soft in the new, politically correct world of the NFL.

Turns out, Titans safety Bernard Pollard ain't worried about the league's PC police -- or anybody else he might have offended. Here's the the motivational message Pollard had taped to his locker that made its way into the news:

Our response? The same one we had for Mario Williams: Seems innocuous enough, even in a post-Bountygate world, right? As far as Pollard is concerned, hell yeah. Even if it rubs the do-gooders the wrong way.

“I don’t care what they have to say. If they feel like we’re going to carry guns and knives and try and stab people and try and kill them, shame on you. You are an idiot,’’ Pollard said, via the Tennessean's Jim Wyatt. “For us, when we say kill, we want to go out there and knock the (heck) out of people, we want to hit you. And for me, we’re going to help you up because I’m going to knock you back down. I have been at plenty of pee-wee football games where I have seen my son, my daughter, and you hear parents, you hear women, white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, telling their sons, 'Kill them! Telling their daughters, Kill them!'"

The problem: If those parents -- white, black, Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese -- were associated with the NFL, they'd likely hear from commissioner Roger Goodell.

Pollard's response: “I really don’t care what the commissioner is doing. I don’t think he has ever played football, he has never played in the National Football League and he has never walked in my shoes. And I haven’t walked in his either. I don’t know what he has to say about me, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t care what he has to say about me.

"I know that we have to have that mentality to play the game," Pollard continued. "You have to be (ticked) off, and you have to do some things to (tick) other people off. … If you don’t like that, I’m sorry for you. We’re not going to change, and we’re not going to apologize.”

Just so there's no confusion, when Pollard wrote "Mission -- Kill!!!" he wasn't being literal.

“Do I believe they mean kill them?" he asked incredulously. "Literally kill them? No. So if you have never played this game before and you want to take that and run with it, go ahead. Shame on you. You’re a fool. But for us, that is just the mentality you have to have and that’s not going to change.”


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