The San Francisco 49ers suspended a member of their radio broadcast team for one game on Wednesday over comments about Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson’s supposed advantage in disguising his handoffs of the football based on the color of his skin.
Tim Ryan’s comments came Monday on Bay Area radio station KNBR. He said players on defense had more difficulty seeing the ball being handed off by Jackson, who is black, ostensibly harder than by a lighter-skinned quarterback.
Ryan, a defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears in the early 1990s, said Jackson was “really good at that fake, Lamar Jackson, but when you consider his dark skin color with a dark football with a dark uniform, you could not see that thing.
“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.”
With Jackson, a prolific runner at quarterback, the Ravens like to use option plays that challenge defenses to track handoffs on running plays.
Ryan, who has been the team’s color analyst since 2014, and the 49ers organization issued apologies for the comments, which came on the “Murph and “Mac” show.
“I regret my choice of words in trying to describe the conditions of the game,” Ryan said. “Lamar Jackson is an MVP-caliber player and I respect him greatly. I want to sincerely apologize to him and anyone else I offended.”
A statement from the 49ers expressed disappointment “in Tim Ryan’s comments earlier this week. … 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. We know Tim as a man of high integrity and are confident he will grow and learn from this experience.”
Jackson led the Ravens to a 20-17 win over the 49ers on Sunday in a matchup of two of the best teams in the NFL. Each club is 10-2.
Jackson has 977 rushing yards, with seven touchdown runs, to go with 2,532 passing yards and 25 TD passes with just five interceptions.