When five-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle Haloti Ngata was traded to the Detroit Lions, the news broke on Twitter so quickly that the team's head coach didn't learn about the newest player on his roster until after the rest of the world already knew.
Twitter knew about the Haloti Ngata trade before the Lions head coach
The Haloti Ngata trade news happened so fast that the Lions didn’t have time to tell Jim Caldwell.
Benny Sieu-USA TODAY Sports
In a town hall meeting with season ticket holders, Lions president Tom Lewand talked with fans about the handling of the trade with the Baltimore Ravens and said that only a handful of team officials knew about the deal before Aaron Wilson of the Baltimore Sun broke the news.
“We literally finalized the trade with Baltimore; Martin Mayhew and I are on the phone in my office,” Lewand said. “We hadn’t even told Jim yet, and we’re on the phone to (vice chairman) Bill Ford Jr., letting him know that the trade was finalized. And it pops up on Twitter as we’re telling the owner we had just finalized it. We hadn’t even told the head coach yet.”
Caldwell and the rest of the coaching staff didn’t seem too upset, according to Lewand, who said he interrupted a meeting to inform the rest of the Lions staff of the trade:
“The looks on the faces of these guys was like it was Christmas morning and Santa Claus had just come down the chimney,” he said.
Ngata, 31, wasn't one of the people out of the loop, and was informed of the trade by Ravens head coach John Harbaugh. A first-round pick in the 2006 NFL Draft, Ngata played the first nine seasons of his career in Baltimore. He was traded along with a seventh-round pick for fourth- and fifth-round selections.
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