Charles Barkley always very bluntly tells it how it is, which is refreshing in this day and age of people trying to sanitize their takes in fear of making somebody angry or getting themselves “canceled.”

If you’ve been on social media at all this week, you know everybody and their mother has a Drew Brees opinion, after the Saints quarterback came out and talked about his reverence for the American flag and disagreement with kneeling in protest.

Brees apologized after he was mostly crushed by fellow NFL players and other professional athletes, though Chuck came out and said he finds the criticism to be “overkill” while reprimanding the Twitter mob:

Barkley, in part:


“Drew’s original statement I thought was insensitive. It was very insensitive, especially during this time. But I thought the negative reaction from every talking head on television, and some of his teammates, was overkill. I’ve never heard a bad word about Drew Brees in my life. He made a mistake. But, we’ve gotten to the point in society where everybody on social media thinks they are God, judge and jury. Drew Brees made a mistake.

Drew Brees was wrong in his initial statement, but the level of vitriol, anger, and things like that I thought was overkill. I thought he talked about, ‘hey the flag means different things to different people.’ But I thought the way he was portrayed on radio and television was not fair at all. Drew Brees has done some amazing things in New Orleans and his life, and I’m not even talking about football.  He made a mistake in a statement. But this level of ‘we’ve got to kill everybody who says something we don’t agree with,’ I’m never gonna go with the mob.”

Of course Barkley is spot on, as usual. The social media mob mentality is unhealthy and void of nuance, understanding, and meaningful discussion.

And people were kind of missing the point with Brees anyway. It wasn’t really about slamming him for his personal opinion, it was more about the fact that he talked about the military, which was off-base since Colin Kaepernick and others have stated a thousand times before that the protest had nothing to do with American servicemen and women. The whole reason he decided to kneel in the first place is because a green beret who played for the Seattle Seahawks (Nate Boyer) suggested he take a knee instead of sitting on the bench, out of respect for the military, to which Kaepernick agreed.

Boyer even talked about Brees this week, via Yahoo:

“I’ll just speak on the Drew Brees thing really quickly — he’s a really good dude, man. He does a lot for the city of New Orleans, for the community, whether it’s post-Katrina or helping secure voting rights for formerly incarcerated people in Louisiana — he helped lead that charge with some of the Saints’ players,” Boyer said on 97.3 The Fan, via USA Today. “Even what he said in his response, well, he said what he said, so I don’t know what he meant exactly. But I absolutely don’t think he meant to ostracize himself or make this issue about something that it’s not.

“But the fact of the matter is that we’ve gotta — for these guys that are working really hard in the league, a lot of these players — make sure that the narrative is understood that the protests are about racial inequality, social injustice and policy brutality and that kneeling during the anthem was a mechanism to raise that attention and to get those voices heard. But it’s not about disrespecting the flag or disrespecting the military, and I think Drew knows that.”

That’s part of the reason why people were ripping Drew Brees, not because it had anything to do with his personal views, but because the comments didn’t interface with things that have been previously established. I think we all know Brees is a good dude who has done a lot of good things in the past, and of course the best take exists somewhere between the frothing Twitter mob and default blind defense.

Time’s yours.