Doug Gottlieb: “If you don’t want to accept this, then you just don’t want to deal with reality. NFL GM’s sit down and go ‘are we good enough at the quarterback position?’ If not, we’ve got to fix it because if we don’t you’re out of a job, and I’m out of a job.’ Nobody cares about race, they don’t… Almost half the league’s quarterbacks are black, this is not 40 years ago… Do you really think Ryan Pace is sitting there going ‘I like Deshaun Watson and I Iike Patrick Mahomes a lot, but he’s black, so I’m going to take Mitch Trubisky.’ If the Bears aren’t good this year and don’t fix the quarterback position Ryan Pace gets fired… If you think for one second that an NFL GM, who has worked his entire professional life to get that opportunity, would go ‘wait, wait, he’s black?? I don’t know…’ Like what are we doing? You can sit here and tell me ‘RACISM, RACISM, RACISM’, but if you talk to people in the NFL, they all will tell you ‘Dude, I don’t care if you’re straight or gay, married or single, black or white, Hispanic or Asian, don’t care. Can you stand in front of 45 other men on game day and lead them? Can you be accountable? Can you be prepared? Can you win us a game? First and 10, 80 yards to go and we need a touchdown, can they all look you in your eye and believe in you?' THAT’S IT, and that’s what the position is about.” (Full Audio Above)
Listen to Doug Gottlieb respond to fellow radio host Dan Le Batard after the two exchanged tweets last Friday that centered around the notion that Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson possibly fell in the 2017 NFL Draft because he’s black.
Gottlieb and Le Batard were referencing comments that Super Bowl champion quarterback Doug Williams made, as Williams, who was the first African-American quarterback to win a Super Bowl, as well as the first African-American QB to be drafted in the first round (1978), said he thinks Watson and Patrick Mahomes would have been drafted ahead of Mitch Trubisky if they were white.
The Bears, of course, infamously traded up to take Trubisky no. 2 overall in 2017, which would turn out to be one of the worst draft picks in sports history, as Mahomes and Watson would later become two of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, while Trubisky didn’t even have his fifth-year option exercised.
Gottlieb re-quoted the comment from Williams, saying of Williams’ claim that race played a factor in the 2017 Draft, ‘this is beyond idiotic’. Even Watson himself would chime in on the Twitter back-and-forth, claiming the Bears ‘NEVER ONCE talked to me’, however dated footage from The Rich Eisen Show revealed that Watson himself, said that the Bears were one of the many teams he had talked to on the phone before Draft day.
Check out the audio above as Gottlieb responds to Le Batard’s reply to Gottlieb that alluded to Bill Polian’s suggestion before the 2018 Draft that Lamar Jackson could potentially be a wide receiver in the NFL. Despite Polian being one of the most successful GM’s in league history, and Jackson being one of the most electric runners in college football history, some took the comment as racism against black quarterbacks.
To view the tweets, click through below.