Josh Norman lost his beef with Michael Thomas because he deleted his tweets

The Saints took it to Washington on Monday Night Football with a 43-19 win, and Saints receiver Michael Thomas took his trash talk to Twitter.

Norman decided to delete his tweets after the exchange, so here it is in its entirety:

Thomas: “I made that boy check out after the first half.”
Norman: “You clout chasing! 25-times lined it up toe-toe (blocking decoy) out-come of that 0-0-0!! Drew didn’t even look yo damn way “Juice” Waste of a tweet!”
Thomas: “Zone corner, play your role. Lol you don’t even have no clout to chase. I didn’t have to do nothing but punk you all day and watch you bust coverages all game and cost your team so who really a clown. And im going to bully you every time I see you just so you know.”
Norman: “25-0-0-0”
Thomas: “And you still crying to the media in your cheap ahh suit and in my mentions crying. You 30 yrs old dude. Life comes at you fast.”
Norman: “You right you did nothing but #BLOCK”
Thomas: “You my son, go to bed son. I was punking you all night give me a break. @ your coach so he can put your so called tough guy self in timeout again.”

It wasn’t long after this exchange that Norman deleted his side of it, prompting one last jab.

This is glorious beef, because both players used some inside football knowledge to make this as painful as possible for each other.

Norman’s general thesis is that he was in coverage on Thomas for 25 plays, which didn’t result in a single catch, yard gained, or touchdown. Now, this part is hard to verify until All-22 film is analyzed, but it’s plausible. Essentially the Washington corner believes he totally shut down Thomas and turned him into a glorified blocker (it should be noted that Thomas finished with four catches for 74 yards).

Now, Thomas’ side is a lot more personal. This is a multi-tiered assault on things that really annoy Norman. He poked fun at him being a Cover-2 corner, a typical criticism of Norman is that he struggled in man-to-man, but also took a shot at the cornerback being benched during the game, which happened following the pass which made Drew Brees the NFL’s all-time leading passer.

Honestly, I think it’s pretty close based on tweets alone. Norman is leaning on something that can’t be proven without advanced stats, while Thomas is going for the obvious play and pointing out what everyone saw.

This might have been a 10-9 round, until Norman deleted his tweets. That move alone makes this a crushing loss for the Washington cornerback.