KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Baltimore Ravens fullback and defensive lineman Pat Ricard apologized Sunday for racist and homophobic tweets made six years ago, when he was “a 16-year-old kid in high school who clearly made bad choices.”
The deleted tweets from 2011 and 2012 by the former UMaine player surfaced late Saturday night, and Ricard was a healthy scratch against the Kansas City Chiefs after appearing in 10 games and playing both sides of the ball this season.
The Ravens issued a statement condemning the comments Sunday, calling them “totally unacceptable.” The team also said that “we have addressed the matter with Pat,” and would have additional comment later.
Ricard said he’d not had a chance to talk to his teammates or explain the tweets.
“You know, today’s game day. I want those guys to be (focused),” he said. “I don’t want to distract the team in any way, just have those guys come out here and play. I’m going to talk to them, most likely the next time we’re in the (practice) building.”
Ricard was a defensive lineman at Maine from 2013-16. He signed with the Ravens as a free agent after the 2017 NFL draft and won a spot on the roster, playing in all 16 games last season.
Some of Ricard’s tweets were captured before they were deleted, included a racist epithet. “‘My phone spins like a (expletive) at a disco’- me!” he wrote in 2011.
Other times, he used a homophobic slur. “I don’t even want to see that (expletive) wearing a patriots uniform,” he wrote.
CHIEFS: Team chairman Clark Hunt said he was shocked by security camera footage showing Kareem Hunt shoving and kicking a woman in a Cleveland hotel, and that it was a collective decision by the organization to cut its star running back within hours.
In his first comments about Kareem Hunt’s dismissal, the team’s owner also said the Chiefs were aware of two other offseason incidents involving Hunt, but not the extent of them.
“We’d had some issues with Kareem not being truthful with what happened that night (in Cleveland), and we really felt in everybody’s interest we head in another direction,” Clark Hunt explained after Kansas City clinched a playoff berth with a 27-24 overtime victory over the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday.
The other two incidents occurred in January at a downtown Kansas City nightclub and in June at an Ohio resort. No criminal charges were filed in any of the cases, and Clark Hunt said all of them were referred to the NFL for investigation. The league did not hand down any punishment until Nov. 30, afer TMZ Sports posted the security footage from the Cleveland hotel, at which point Hunt was put on the league’s exempt list.
The Chiefs then announced within minutes they were releasing the NFL’s reigning rushing champion.
“I don’t think we were necessarily trying to make a statement,” Clark Hunt said. “We just felt like the best thing for the Kansas City Chiefs moving forward was to part ways with Kareem.”
Send questions/comments to the editors.
Success. Please wait for the page to reload. If the page does not reload within 5 seconds, please refresh the page.
Enter your email and password to access comments.
Hi, to comment on stories you must . This profile is in addition to your subscription and website login.
Already have a commenting profile? .
Invalid username/password.
Please check your email to confirm and complete your registration.
Only subscribers are eligible to post comments. Please subscribe or login first for digital access. Here’s why.
Use the form below to reset your password. When you've submitted your account email, we will send an email with a reset code.