ESPN
Ryan Clark was the highest-profile name to be laid off by ESPN last week
Ryan Clark has been opening up about getting laid off by ESPN and hasn’t been shy about sharing his true feelings. The former Pittsburgh Steelers safety was brought to tears while discussing his desire to be “accepted” on his podcast.
While speaking on his The Pivot podcast, Ryan Clark — who was the highest-profile name to be fired in ESPN’s wave of layoffs in mid-July — got emotional while discussing what it means to him to be “accepted” by people back home.
The specific viral clip was part of a larger discussion about Clark’s dismissal from ESPN.
Ryan Clark was brought to tears on his podcast The Pivot while discussing being laid off from ESPN
“When I go home and this kid, you know, from the West Bank is like so accepted in New Orleans now, like I wouldn’t change that. Never,” Clark told co-hosts Channing Crowder and Fred Taylor. “All I ever wanted to do was be accepted and wanted. So yeah, I wouldn’t change that.”
“All I ever wanted to do was be accepted”
-Ryan Clark in tears on @thepivot speaking of his ESPN firing.
Powerful, powerful moment. https://t.co/zFh7f20QXm pic.twitter.com/ALPQq88gKG
— Emmanuel Acho (@EmmanuelAcho) July 24, 2026
Clark also claimed that he was not laid off as reports have been claiming, but fired.
“Let me put this to bed, I wasn’t laid off. I was fired They’re using lay-offs as a cover and a camouflage for what they already intended on doing,” Clark added.
“But there was no cause for it. So, because there was no cause for it, you couldn’t just fire me, so you had to wait for the lay-offs so you could camouflage it and veil it.”
In addition to Clark, ESPN also laid off on-air personalities such as Karl Ravech, Cam Newton, Tom Pelissero, Stephania Bell, David Lloyd, Bart Scott, and more. As Clark noted, however, news of his firing broke a few days before the other lay-offs were made public.
Prior to joining ESPN as an NFL analyst in 2016, Clark, 46 yers old, was signed by the New York Giants as an undrafted free agent out of LSU in April 2002.
He spent two seasons in New York and another two with the then-Washington Redskins before joining the Pittsburgh Steelers, where he had the most success of his career as he was a fixture of the team’s defense from 2008 to 2013, and including the year they won the Super Bowl in 2008.