ESPN commentators Bomani Jones and Domonique Foxworth teamed up Friday to accuse the NFL of thinking its fans are racists who will never accept too many black quarterbacks.
Speaking on ESPN’s The Right Time with Bomani Jones, the host and guest Domonique Foxworth started a conversation about the 2023 NFL Draft when Foxworth noted that all the top quarterback prospects picked up by the NFL are black. This has scared the NFL, he insisted, according to Fox News.
“Before we get to the Eagles and how scary that is, something just hit me – there’s gonna be some rule changes in the NFL. They ‘gon do something. And you may be looking at me like I’m crazy, but wait ‘til I explain something to you, then you’re gonna be like, ‘yup, they about to fix this,’” Foxworth insisted.
(L-R) Bryce Young poses with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell after being selected first overall by the Carolina Panthers during the first round of the 2023 NFL Draft at Union Station on April 27, 2023, in Kansas City, Missouri. (David Eulitt/Getty Images)
Over the weekend, the one white first-round quarterback prospect, Will Levis, was left out of the first-round picks. And after that first night, Levis decided not to even bother attending the second day’s events.
He noted that the most popular quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, and the highest-paid quarterbacks, Lamar Jackson and Jalen Hurts, are all black men, and added, “Who are the first three quarterbacks drafted in this draft? Black dudes. … Oh, we got a rule change coming down the pike.”
Jones quickly agreed with Foxworth that the NFL is probably becoming alarmed by all the black quarterbacks.
“Guys, as crazy as you think this is. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Harry Edwards speak and he was talking about the quarterback position and when (Michael) Vick, (Daunte) Culpepper, you know that run of dudes started coming, what they did was they started making those punitive roughing the passer penalties where if you just touch the guy on the helmet that you got 15 yards ‘cus they had to slow up those defensive backs,” Jones continued. “Guys, it’s turning into a problem where can’t nobody even talk themselves into Will Levis, right? Something has fundamentally changed.”
Foxworth jumped back in, noting that he isn’t saying the NFL’s fans are too racist to accept black quarterbacks. It is something else entirely.
“No, it’s a different type of racism. It’s because they think that you are a ‘I hate Black people’ type of racist. They know that the stars of this entertainment property are the quarterbacks. That is who the people who are three degrees removed from you who’s a superfan they don’t know nobody but four or five quarterbacks’ names. And you know what they believe? The same way the NBA is probably concerned about all these international players, they know that the stars that sell consistently, that they have known to sell consistently are tall White dudes,” Foxworth explained.
Jones added that the NFL knows that its “secret sauce” is white viewers and that the NFL will start pushing white kids in sports to look toward becoming a quarterback.
“We need to get some more of them in the league because if we get to a situation where it’s a bunch of Lamar Jacksons and Jalen Hurts the face of the league, the NFL is going to be concerned, not because they care who their labor is but because they think it’s y’all who care who the labor is,” Foxworth exclaimed.
Lamar Jackson, #8 of the Baltimore Ravens, warms up before the game against the Denver Broncos at M&T Bank Stadium on December 04, 2022, in Baltimore, Maryland. (G Fiume/Getty Images)
Neither Foxworth nor Jones exactly made it clear what sort of “rules change” they were expecting, but Patrick Mahomes, who is black, has been the leading face of NFL quarterbacks since 2019, especially with Tom Brady starting to head out to pasture even then. And one can argue that the NFL’s ratings have not suffered much at all during that time.
The only real downturns the NFL saw in TV viewership was between 2016 and 2018 when the league went all in for extremist, unpatriotic national anthem protests. That dip in viewers was about patriotism, not race. And once the league left that hateful attack on America behind, the ratings came right back.
As Fox noted, the biggest audience the NFL ever had was in 2015, when the numbers topped out at 18.1 million viewers. But over the last two years, the league earned 17.1 and 16.7 million in 2021 and 2022, respectively. Not much of a loss there. And pro football is still the biggest ratings-getting programming in all of broadcast TV.
It seems very unlikely that these ratings would crash just because all the top quarterbacks are black.
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