CLEVELAND — Editor's note: the video in the player above is from Dec. 16, 2020.
The matchup between the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens may have ended on Monday night, but a war of words between two of the team's star players is still going on.
Shortly after the Ravens' dramatic 47-42 victory over the Browns on Monday Night Football, a video showing Baltimore cornerback Marcus Peters spitting in the direction of Cleveland wide receiver Jarvis Landry made the rounds on social media. Meeting with reporters on a Zoom call on Thursday, Landry didn't mince words while addressing the incident.
"I wasn't aware of it until after the game, obviously. But he's a coward," Landry said. "Behind my back, he thought that maybe he could do things like that, but to my face, he wouldn't. So take it for what it's worth and now I know. Everybody knows the type of player he is, the type of person he is and just move on from there."
In a statement released on Thursday night, Peters denied spitting at Landry.
"I didn't spit at Jarvis," Peters said. "Where I come from, when you have an issue with someone, you deal with it face-to-face, man-to-man. Anyone who believes that I intentionally spit at him does not know me – plain and simple."
Spitting controversy aside, the bad blood between Landry and Peters appears to be mutual. In addition to the video of Peters spitting, another video of the 3-time Pro Bowl cornerback referring to Landry and Browns wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. as "homegirls" on the Ravens team flight home made the rounds on Tuesday.
Asked on Thursday if he has a history with Peters, Landry said he did not. But it isn't hard to tell how the 5-time Pro Bowl wide receiver feels about his newfound adversary.
"We don't have a history, but for some reason, he seems to have it out for me and 'O' and whatever beef it is, I don't know," Landry said. "But if that's what he wants, he definitely got it.
"I just think it was cowardly. I don't think about it as [COVID-19] protocols or anything like that. You wait until I turn around to do something like that, it's like, 'do it to my face.' Be a man about it if you're going to do something like that. I don't know about protocols, but if there's a protocol for being a man, that sure ain't it right there."