My message for Joe Thomas

“Now let’s go to something that we didn’t show. Joe Thomas went on Uninterrupted and he addressed Skip and I directly.

Skip, I’m about to do something I haven’t done since I retired and I’ve gotten into television. I’m going to address a current player as a former player. Because I never wanted for me to be a topic, I don’t want ‘Hall of Famer lashes out at Joe Thomas,’ that’s not what this is about. And after today, I’m going to be done with this conversation publicly with Joe Thomas.

He said, on his Twitter, that he loves engaging his fans, and so do I. And he said he views a distraction as any time players have to address something about a [teammate] that’s not football related. He views Colin Kaepernick as a distraction, and my point to him was… Josh Gordon came to his team. Josh Gordon was at Baylor University, he got suspended from Baylor because he flunked so many drug tests. He transferred to Utah, he couldn’t step on the field because he couldn’t pass a drug test. So he came into the league, quote unquote as Joe says, as a ‘distraction.’

Now, when you come to the National Football League, Skip, you get a clean slate. What happened in your past, for the most part, stays back there. Within the first year, he had flunked three drug tests, he had to miss the first two games the following season. Five suspensions [in total]. Joe Thomas and the Cleveland Browns’ organization never said Josh Gordon was a distraction.”