Boy... This is going out of your way to miss the point.

Those two players gas-lighted a situation that otherwise civilized human beings should have been able to handle like a simple disagreement, talk behind closed doors, and get over it. They made a very public scene of hatred towards Brees which ignited the whole team against him. THEN they had their closed door meeting, where one can only assume, based on the bullying tactics they verbally used on twitter, that Brees was instructed that he would either see things their way or they would not play beside him. This gas-lighting led to death threats from others. No one said Jenkins or Thomas, themselves.

For Brees' part, he should have stood his ground, regardless of what the "discussion" was. But, he gave in to the pressure and put a game before his principles. And aside from the obvious distraction all of this would cause any team, I believe there is something that happens inside a man's mind when he forfeits his integrity in order to appease a few ignorant people. He's going around wearing a criminal's name on his helmet, and he doesn't even know who it is. He's just doing what he's told. That's a man who's lost his gonads. No one is following him, anymore. He's being dragged along. And that is crippling to a team's chemistry.

But, I don't feel sorry for any of them. They had their "priorities" and made their choices. Some people call it "karma". I simply say you reap what you sow.