Jonathan Baldwin Off To Bad Start With Thomas Jones Fight In Chiefs' Camp

Before I get too far along, I think it's worth pointing out that the specifics of the Jonathan Baldwin / Thomas Jones fight aren't known. This looks awful for Baldwin, to be sure. But to sit here and rip him for a fight we know little about at this point would be bad form.

So what do we know?

As I wrote earlier this week, Baldwin's been struggling at least a little bit in Chiefs camp. Nothing major, probably just the typical rookie-type issues. Then fast forward to today and SB Nation's Chiefs blog Arrowhead Pride dropped in mentioning that he was involved in a scuffle with running back Thomas Jones.

While we don't know the specifics, we do know that Baldwin is injured and likely out the rest of the preseason.

But the biggest issue appears to be who the fight was with.

More than a few people have pointed out the fact that Thomas Jones is a respected guy:

What bothers me the most about this news is that Jones was involved. He is a locker-room leader and is highly respected. To my knowledge, it has not been in his character, in Kansas City, to be involved in such incidents. Was Jones frustrated with Baldwin’s attitude? Something happened to trigger this fight.

I'm not defending Baldwin in any way. Combine that he came into the league with a bit of a reputation with the fact that he's a rookie and Baldwin should be humbling himself in every way possible. That said, it takes two to fight and I'd need to hear more before I jump on the bandwagon ready to slam Baldwin. I've got real issues with throwing him under the bus when we don't even know what happened.

This whole thing, of course, has brought up his character issues. The Chiefs said they did their due diligence when drafting him. Along those lines, local radio personality Nick Wright says he's not impressed with his character:

"What I'm hearing on Baldwin: 'He's as advertised. Diva, spoiled, doesn't wanna listen. Can run a go and a slant, and doesn't wanna work.'"

If this is true, it'd be awful for Baldwin. The last thing he needs is this sort of stuff building up before he's even played a down. Will be interesting to see this play out. We may never fully know what happened, but if a benching/suspension comes down from the Chiefs, then that would be a good indication of who was in the wrong.