having spent most of my life in Green Bay, i will say this about the "thugs" comments every time an NFL player gets in trouble..
often i'll hear people (particularly kids) talk in glowing terms of how "cool" players must be. or they're edgy. they look tough.they look like gang members. they look scary. women will say a player looks like the boy your mom would want you to date, etc.
fact of the matter is that the vast majority of these guys are from small towns. they're from country towns. they have dedicated their entire life to football. they aren't "thugs". they're nerds. they're meatheads with lots of money. bro's writ large.
but because much of the league is black, every time a player gets in trouble he's a "thug" or a "gang member" or a menace to society in some way. fact is, he's a country bumpkin who got rich and drove drunk. that makes him..... pretty normal.... except he has money and anything he does wrong is going to get reported on the news and beaten to death by angry sports media.
people are going to assign to them whatever personality trait they want. you see them on TV.. you don't know them.. they can be anything a person wants to fit the storyline they've invented in their head.
Darren Sharper is a great case in point given his recent imprisonment. he was WILDLY popular here during his playing career. all the women loved the guy... from a distance. he was so handsome and well spoken and blah blah blah. nobody would have called the guy dangerous or scary, whatever. turns out he's a sexual predator. (women i know who knew him and were the same age as he during his playing career knew he was not to be left alone with then)
Josh Brown beats his wife bloody 20 times and, well, we're not entirely sure she didn't have it coming
this guy just needs some attention 
