\u201cWe are athletes, OK? We are athletes. We are not gladiators. This is not the Roman Coliseum. People pay their hard-earned money when they come in here and I believe they can boo, they can cheer and they can do whatever they want, I believe that. We are lucky to play this game. People, it\u2019s hard to economic times, and they still pay the money to do this.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cBut when somebody gets hurt, there are long lasting ramifications to the game we play, long lasting ramifications to the game we play. I\u2019ve already kinda come to the understanding that I won\u2019t live as long because I play this game and that\u2019s OK, that\u2019s a choice I\u2019ve made and a choice all of us have made.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cBut when you cheer, when you cheer somebody getting knocked out, I don\u2019t care who it is, and it just so happened to be Matt Cassel \u2014 it\u2019s sickening. It\u2019s 100 percent sickening. I\u2019ve been in some rough times on some rough teams, I\u2019ve never been more embarrassed in my life to play football than in that moment right there.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cI get emotional about it because these guys, they work their butts off. Matt Cassel hasn\u2019t done anything to you people, hasn\u2019t done anything to you people. Hasn\u2019t done anything to the media writers that kill him, hasn\u2019t done anything wrong to the people that come out here and cheer him. Hey, if he\u2019s not the best quarterback then he\u2019s not the best quarterback and that\u2019s OK. But he\u2019s a person. And he got knocked out in a game and we have 70,000 people cheering that he got knocked out?<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cBoo him all you want. Boo me all you want. Throw me under the bus. Tell me I\u2019m doing a bad job. Say I gotta protect him more. Do whatever you want. Say whatever you want. But if you are one of those people, one of those people that were out there cheering or even smiled when he got knocked out, I just want to let you know, and I want everybody to know that I think it\u2019s sickening and disgusting. We are not gladiators and this is not the Roman Coliseum. This is a game.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019ll sit here and I\u2019ll answer all your questions for the next 30 minutes if you want to ask them and I\u2019ll take all the responsibility I can take because I deserve it but don\u2019t blame a guy, and don\u2019t cheer for a guy who has done everything in his power to play as good as he can for the fans.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s sickening. And I was embarrassed. I want every single one of you people to put this on your station and in your newspapers because I want every fan to know that. This is a game that\u2019s going to cost us a lot down the road. That\u2019s OK. We picked it, we deserve it and I don\u2019t want your pity. But we have a lot of problems as a society if people think that\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kansas City Chiefs loss again on Sunday. When quarterback Matt Cassel was injured fans cheered. Tackle Eric Winston is not happy with the fans reaction and had a few comments directed at them. Cassel has been the target of much of the fans angst. He has not returned to the form he showed in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[425],"tags":[52,33],"coauthors":[4],"class_list":{"0":"post-215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"tag-eric-winston","8":"tag-matt-cassel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tireball.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}