Shortly after re-signing with the Patriots last week, safety Patrick Chung gushed about how happy he was to return to his NFL home after a year away from New England.
Apparently Brandon Spikes doesn't share the same professional fondness for Foxborough.
Since signing with the Bills as a free agent this offseason, Spikes has spent plenty of time talking and tweeting about his former team and not all he's said has been positive.
That continued on Twitter on Wednesday. Spikes got things going with a schedule-related tweet from his @BrandonSpikes51 account saying:
The last hashtag was a reference to a group of hardcore Buffalo fans.
He followed that up a few minutes later:
A little good-natured trash talking for his former team and now division rival isn't exactly news, though. But Spikes next tweet seemed to bring crystal clarity to how he feels about his time with the Patriots.
"4 years a slave" he tweeted, playing off the Academy Award-winning best picture 12 Years a Slave.
That would seem to be an obvious reference to his four years playing for the Patriots and Bill Belichick after New England drafted the one-dimensional linebacker in the second round out of Florida in 2009, at a time when his stock was falling after his 5.06 40 time earlier that spring.
Spikes was a solid player on the field in his time in New England, including consecutive 100-tackle seasons over the last two years, but never seemed to really fit the Patriot Way off the field. He was the only player to skip voluntary OTAs last spring, had one league suspension, controversially landed on IR last fall after reportedly missing a day of work and had a variety of other minor issues pop up along the way during his time in Foxborough.
And though many fans seemed to defend Spikes in his time at Gillette Stadium, that alliance has long since been severed. Not surprisingly fans didn't take kindly to his words on Twitter and he later tweeted that he was "Busy blocking every single #Masshole" on the social media forum.
For the record, the Patriots beat the Bills twice last season, five straight times over the last three years and in 25 of the last 27 games dating back to 200. Buffalo hasn't beaten New England twice in a season since 1999.
