Vince Williams Took The Bengals Rivalry Too Far With This Tweet About Harambe The Gorilla

If you’ve been on the internet at any time over the past week, you’ve certainly heard about Harambe, the gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo that was killed when a little boy fell into the animal’s pit. Ever since, everyone from all of your Facebook friends, to professional zoo keepers, to Kaley Cuoco, to Jane Goodall have chimed in with their thoughts on whether or not the right thing was done in ending the gorilla’s life.

We haven’t seen too many athletes go public with their thoughts on the issue, though, with the exception being Steelers linebacker Vince Williams. See, Harambe was living in the Cincinnati Zoo before he was killed, which just so happens to be the same city as where the Steelers’ arch rival, the Bengals, play their home games.

Because of that similarity, Williams didn’t miss the opportunity to go in on the city of Cincinnati and the Bengals with this since-deleted tweet from Monday morning.

Yeesh. It’s no secret that the Bengals and Steelers absolutely loathe each other, and last year took the rivalry up a few notches. First, the teams fought over the injury to Le’Veon Bell in November, and when the two teams faced off in the postseason, things unexpectedly got out of hand. There was pushing and shoving by both coaches and players and a wild ending that featured two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties that helped Pittsburgh win the game, and hell, even the fans got into it with one another.

Considering all that, it’s not surprising that players will go out of the way to insult the other, but this was almost too savage. Williams unsurprisingly was hearing it from a lot of folks after the tweet went up, and while he did delete it, he didn’t exactly back down.

Steelers-Bengals is going to be so much fun next year, y’all.