Since the death of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that followed it, many athletes have used social media to express their feelings about the situation.
One of them, Falcons offensive tackle Kaleb McGary, took a stance he almost immediately regretted.
In a Twitter post, Atlanta’s 2019 first-round pick equated protesters to the cops who contributed to Floyd’s death in Minnesota.
The 27-year-old wrote that while Floyd’s death was “sad and shameless,” the protestors who hit downtown Atlanta hard were making “themselves no better than the cops they claim to hate. Congrats.”
The take drew a lot of backlash, with one fan photoshopping a Klu Klux Klan hood on a photo of McGary. He backed down from his original tweet, deleting it and posting an apology.
“One sad and senseless death is too many and this trend has to stop,” he wrote. “I know I will never experience the same feeling some of my brothers and sisters feel and I cannot pretend that I will. I apologize for my previous misguided choice of words and the hurt they have caused, that was not my intent. I recognize I shouldn’t have said what I said and I am learning from this.”
Floyd, 46, died last week after police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck after Floyd was suspected of spending a counterfeit $20 bill.