The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were no better than the thousands of fans who got fooled by an impostor pretending to be standout second-year player Emeka Egbuka.
The Buccaneers wide receiver was at the center of a social media firestorm this week that he did not cause. An account posing as Egbuka had asked, “Is CTE even real?” The account has since been suspended. The post got enough attention that the Buccaneers’ PR team felt the need to respond and state that the account did not actually belong to Egbuka.
Before the fake Egbuka account was scrubbed from X, the Buccaneers’ team account apparently tagged it in posts “nearly 60 times.” According to Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel, the Buccaneers’ social media team genuinely got “duped” by the impostor. You can check for yourself here.
Egbuka does not appear to have his own active X account, or at least one made aware to the public.
In all fairness to the Buccaneers, the ones responsible for tagging the fake Egbuka account were probably just a social media manager or a couple of interns. But you’d think someone from the billion-dollar organization would catch the mistake eventually.
The Bucs could have at least been responsible for verifying each player’s personal accounts to avoid such a gaffe, particularly for players like Egbuka, who’s expected to be Tampa Bay’s top receiving option with Mike Evans headed West.
In his first NFL season, Egbuka led the Buccaneers with 63 catches for 938 yards and 6 touchdowns across 17 games.
