"It was insensitive, especially during this time," Barkley said of those comments on TNT's broadcast (h/t The Athletic's Clevis Murray).
"I thought the negative reaction from every talking head on television and some of his teammates was overkill.
I never heard a bad word about Drew Brees in my life.
"It made it worse that it was Drew Brees, someone who we cheer for, who has teammates like us, that didn't get us," Smith said on the broadcast (h/t ESPN's Tim Bontemps).
"Someone we cheered for is using his white privilege to say he couldn't understand what we were going through in that moment," he added.
Ernie Johnson spoke about his grandfather's military background and his understanding of how people hold the American flag in great reverence.
But he added that those same people "cannot use the flag as a blindfold" to avoid acknowledging the issues of systemic racism in the United States. »
