Josh Allen issued an apology for old offensive tweets that were unearthed this week ahead of the 2018 NFL draft. The former Wyoming quarterback was drafted in the first round by the Buffalo Bills on Thursday. 

Yahoo! Sports flagged a series of tweets from Allen's Twitter account from 2012 and 2013 on Wednesday. The tweets, which no longer appear on his Twitter account, feature the N-word multiple times and other racially offensive statements. 

In one tweet, Allen wrote, "Ni**as Trying To Get At Me." Another tweet read, "if it ain’t white, it ain’t right!"

Allen, who said he was in high school at the time the tweets were published, reportedly told ESPN host Stephen A. Smith in the wee hours Thursday morning that the tweets were a result of him and his friends "playing around," Smith said. Allen also added that many of the tweets stemmed from music or TV quotes. He said the "If it aint white, it aint right!" quote was from an episode from ABC's "Modern Family." 

"If I could go back in time, I would never have done this in a heartbeat," Allen told ESPN's Chris Mortensen on Thursday. "At the time, I obviously didn't know how harmful it was and now has become." He added, "I hope you know and others know I'm not the type of person I was at 14 and 15 that I tweeted so recklessly. … I don't want that to be the impression of who I am because that is not me. I apologize for what I did."

Allen also told ESPN that he and his agency made efforts to comb through his social media account a year ago, and the offensive tweets in question never popped up. 

ESPN journalist Josina Anderson wrote on Twitter that San Francisco 49ers Richard Sherman reportedly said Allen was "a kid," in response to news of his old tweets.

"He was a kid," Anderson wrote quoting Sherman. "If you gave most of us a platform early in high school, I'm sure our immaturity would have shown as his did."

FootballJosh AllenNflracist twitter