Skip Bayless, Shannon Sharpe lavish praise on Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes for speaking out
During Friday’s edition of “Undisputed,” Fox Sports’ Skip Bayless recalled writing a story in the 1970s about a quarterback from Grambling who would be an NFL first-round draftee.
It was Doug Williams, who was taken by Tampa Bay but would find fame later as a Super Bowl winner in Washington. Bayless said Williams had to pick and choose when he would speak out on social issues.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes faces no such concerns, and Bayless thinks that’s a great thing.
“This is a new day,” Bayless said. “The tide has turned, the window is open, the door has opened and you need to run through that door. Your time is now. So when I listen to what Patrick Mahomes says, he hasn’t grown up enough to have as sophisticated a feel for what’s happening as LeBron James does. He’s still kid like to me, Patrick Mahomes is, but he’s starting to get a hold of his responsibility because — guess what, ladies and gentlemen — we have now had back-to-back black quarterbacks win MVP. Patrick Mahomes, Mark Jackson; and Patrick Mahomes is now the reigning Super Bowl MVP. They are the champions.
“So the best thing Patrick Mahomes did to me was one week ago, he chose quickly to be part of that video that got thrown together and put out on social media, black current NFL players saying, we have to act now. And who led the charge in that video? It would not have had near the impact unless this young man had said I’m in.”
“Undisputed” co-host Shannon Sharpe said Mahomes’ appearance on the video was unprecedented in the history of the NFL.
“He’s probably the most powerful player to ever take a stance like this,” Sharpe said. “Quarterbacks don’t normally take a chance. Quarterbacks don’t touch this, quarterbacks don’t touch this stuff here because they’re the CEO. ...
“For me, for him to do that, like you said, they had some big names like Saquon (Barkley) and they had Michael Thomas and they had a lot of big names. That guy (Mahomes) is just like the quarterback on any team. You get the quarterback. OK? Because more times than not, not always, but more times than not, I would say, probably 25, 27 times out of 32 teams, the quarterback is the leader of that team. And a lot of people say that’s the best player. I believe he’s the best player in football. And he’s on it. And the days of just sticking to football, like I said, politics and sports have always been intertwined, and it will always be intertwined. It’s never going away.”
Here is their conversation about Mahomes:
