Fox Sports
Skip Bayless may have gone too far with his latest hot take while discussing Dak Prescott and depression.
Earlier this week, the Cowboys franchise QB revealed that he was already suffering from depression before learning of his brother’s suicide which made things extremely tough for him to deal with.
“All throughout this quarantine and this offseason, I started experiencing emotions I’ve never felt before,” Prescott said.
“Anxiety for the main one. And then, honestly, a couple of days before my brother passed, I would say I started experiencing depression. And to the point of, I didn’t want to work out anymore. I didn’t know necessarily what I was going through, to say the least, and hadn’t been sleeping at all.”
Prescott has endured a difficult offseason, including the loss of his brother, a man who got him to play quarterback when he was young.
“He meant a lot to my family,” Prescott said of his brother during training camp. “Meant a lot to me. Part of [the] reason I am a quarterback. When I was a little kid, he was the reason I first started throwing the football. It has been a tough year. Been a tough year for me personally. Been a tough year for my family. Been a tough year for this country and this world. It has all been tough.”
During the latest edition of FS1’s Undisputed, Bayless criticized Prescott for showing “weakness” as a leader of “America’s football team” by publicly talking about his depression in public.
https://twitter.com/Ace_Eca4/status/1304096844444774401
I’m going to ask our audience to feel free and go ahead and condemn me if you choose as cold-blooded and insensitive on this issue. I have deep compassion for clinical depression but when it comes to the quarterback of an NFL team…it’s the ultimate leadership position in sports, you are commanding an entire franchise, you are commanding a lot of young men and some older men and they’re looking at you to be their CEO, to be in charge of their football team and because of that I don’t have sympathy for him going public with “I got depressed”
Bayless was widely condemned for his comments regarding Prescott and his depression.
Dak Prescott basically said: I'm a human being, I can be vulnerable at times. It's been a really hard year for me, & I want to normalize mental wellness & admitting when we aren't OK.
And Skip Bayless basically said: nah, toxic masulinity is the way for me b/c football.
Clown.
— David Helman (@davidhelman_) September 10, 2020
What Skip Bayless said today is the reason why there’s a stigma about depression. It’s the reason why people are afraid to open up.
Don’t listen to him.
It takes so much strength to open up about depression, like Dak Prescott did. It’s OK to not be OK. It’s OK to get help.
— Joseph Hoyt (@JoeJHoyt) September 10, 2020
You really just said it’s ok to be depressed unless your the QB for the Dallas Cowboys…please do better as a human @RealSkipBayless
— Cameron Magruder (@ScooterMagruder) September 10, 2020
Wow! A lot of us did know in Dallas and chose not to report it. It’s called empathy. Secondly, criticizing someone for saying they struggled with the loss of their brother AFTER the loss of his mother THAT he did play through is a problem for you, the fan and an analyst? https://t.co/JiSUhn2K35
— Jane Slater (@SlaterNFL) September 10, 2020
Just shameful, Skip Bayless.
Shameful. And FOX should be ashamed, too.— Art Stapleton (@art_stapleton) September 10, 2020
