Stephen A. Smith Is Personally Offended Drake Maye Doesn't Watch Him And Cam Newton
Stephen A. Smith is offended that Patriots quarterback Drake Maye says he doesn’t watch "First Take." In fact, Smith insists Maye must be lying.
"[Drake Maye] is a liar… First Take is the number one morning show. Don’t tell me you’re an athlete and you don’t know that. Don’t tell me you’re an athlete and you don’t know that Cam Newton is on this show. You lying," Smith said Thursday.
For context, "First Take" contributor Cam Newton recently called Maye and the Patriots "fool’s gold," a remark the rookie quarterback dismissed earlier this week.
"I don’t even know what show [Newton is] on," Maye told WEEI. "I think they get paid to make remarks and say certain things. I just worry about what people in our organization think, what my teammates think. People are going to have different opinions. I’m just going out there on Sunday and worrying about us."
While we can’t say for certain what Maye does or doesn’t watch, it’s telling that Smith is so convinced that athletes sit around all day watching his television show. As much as Smith touts its success, "First Take," still only averages around 400,000 viewers a day at a 10 a.mm time slot in which most people are working – including NFL quarterbacks.
"Lol yea man. We are just out here watching morning talk shows during the week at work," former NFL lineman Geoff Schwartz joked.
Smith’s claim that "First Take" is the "number one morning show" is also misleading. It’s the top sports morning show. However, given the lack of competition, every ESPN program is technically "number one" in its category. Essentially, Smith is bragging that "First Take" outperforms ESPN's "Get Up," the only other sports morning show that regularly cracks the daily top 150.
And for Smith to call someone else a "liar"? That’s rich. After all, it was Stephen A. — not Drake Maye— who wrote a memoir built on a fabricated version of his own history.
"You don’t call someone a LIAR over this. Calling someone a liar is a serious allegation. ESPN has NO standards when it comes to SAS and their race idolators. This is embarrassing," Jason Whitlock wrote in an X post responding to the segment.
Indeed.
It’s also worth noting why Smith and Newton are so eager to criticize Maye, the betting favorite for NFL MVP. Like Josh Allen, Maye is a star white quarterback in an era in which most of the other elite quarterbacks are black. Compare how Smith and Newton discuss Maye and Allen versus Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Jayden Daniels, or Shedeur Sanders.
It's all so predictable.
So it’s hardly surprising that Smith, Newton and Ryan Clark chose to attack Maye’s character while broadcasting from Bethune–Cookman, a private historically black university.
Perhaps these racial biases are the reason Drake Maye appears to pay so little attention to First Take. Or, as his play suggests, he is just focusing on football and not on what uninformed buffoons say about him on television.