San Francisco 49ers color commentator Tim Ryan has been suspended for one game after suggesting that Lamar Jackson is good at faking handoffs because of “dark skin with a dark football.”
Ryan made the comments in a Monday appearance on KNBR’s “Murph and Mac” when analyzing Jackson’s performance in Sunday’s Baltimore Ravens victory.
Snippet of Tim Ryan’s comments RE: Lamar Jackson’s “dark skin with a dark football with a dark uniform… you could not see that thing” via KNBR. He has since been suspended by the team pic.twitter.com/vpRI3veoXK
— 49ersHive (@49ersHive) December 5, 2019
“He’s really good at that fake, Lamar Jackson, but when you consider his dark skin with a dark football with a dark uniform, you could not see that thing,” Ryan said, via Matthias Gafni and Lauren Hernandez of the San Francisco Chronicle. “I mean you literally could not see when he was in and out of the mesh point and if you’re a half step slow on him in terms of your vision forget about it, he’s out of the gate.”
“We hold Tim to a high standard as a representative of our organization and he must be more thoughtful with his words. Tim has expressed remorse in a public statement and has also done so with us privately,” the 49ers said in a statement. “We know Tim as a man of high integrity and are confident he will grow and learn from this experience.”
In his own statement, Ryan said he regretted his “choice of words” and apologized to Jackson.
Ryan, a former NFL linebacker, has served as a color commentator for 49ers games since 2014. This is not his first brush with controversy in his tenure with the team.
