A passionate debate broke out over the Baltimore Ravens' degree of interest in Colin Kaepernick as a prospective fill-in for injured quarterback Joe Flacco, on Monday's [July 31] episode of Undisputed. Skip Bayless, Shannon Sharpe and Ray Lewis all got vocal on the issue, with Bayless closing the segment out by stating that he doesn't believe team owner Steve Bisciotti is sincere about opening the door the possibility of bringing Kaep aboard. But it was the back and forth between Sharpe and Lewis that grounded the conversation with the weight of the elephant in the room, as Sharpe contended that men like Bisciotti can't be fully empathetic towards Kaepernick's protest because they aren't typically impacted by police brutality. Lewis counters by saying that police brutality isn't their issue to worry about.
"It ain't too many people gonna stand up to go in the Black neighborhoods and worry about Black folks killing themselves. That's factual. So, sooner or later that we figure that out, then we're gonna start taking care of ourselves," Lewis said. "So when I started to understand these things Shay, what I started to understand was, that ain't Steve Bisciotti's fight what happened to Freddy Gray."
The discussion began with acknowledgment from Lewis that as one of the Ravens' all-time franchise players, he was approached for his advice on whether or not to pursue Kaepernick, as he says he is often approached when ownership needs a player's opinion. Sharpe took issue with the fact that Lewis had to be consulted with at all, arguing that an owner and the organization's brass ought to know whether or not a player is good enough to help them win, off of the bat. And if Bisciotti and his staff are not confident Kaepernick could be effective, why even give him the time of day, he posed. Sharpe's assertion was a challenge to Lewis affirming that what Bisciotti really wanted to know is whether or not Kaepernick could come right in have an impact on the team's performance. Lewis says he pushed back on rushing to sign Kaepernick without having a clear idea as to how long Flacco would be out.
Sharpe and Lewis would inevitably veer off of the topic of Kaepernick's skills and dispute one another on whether his protest has any place in the conversation, after Sharpe questioned whether Bisciotti was just as interested in what Lewis and the fans thought when taking the criminal histories of controversial players he's in the past been interested in, into account. Lewis would ironically question why guys like Bisciotti would get involved in a discourse on police brutality when they don't get involved in the discourse on violence among Black people inside of impoverished communities.
"They should care because it's the United States of America," Sharpe then exclaimed. "You care about what's going in the Ukraine... You care about what's going on in Venezuela."
