Alexander Mattison was warming up before the Minnesota Vikings’ Thursday night game in Philadelphia when he heard someone yelling at him. “There’s a guy in the stands that just repeatedly telling me my ACL is bust,” Mattison said, “signaling that with his hands while we’re warming up.” Minnesota’s fifth-year running back dismissed it. He’s heard worse.
But as he was on the team plane debriefing with C.J. Ham, Mattison decided to publicly reveal racist messages people sent him on Instagram. There were over 60 of them. Some came from Minnesota Vikings fans, others from fantasy football players and gamblers. Mattison had fumbled immediately after Theo Jackson’s interception, with the Eagles up 3-0 and under three minutes left to go in the first quarter. It was one of four Vikings fumbles in their 34-28 loss. Everyone on the team took it hard.
“We were just talking,” Mattison said on Monday. “Talking about the game, of course, because it was a frustrating loss that you’re dealing with, and then dealing with stuff like that (the racist messages) in a moment when you’re down, you know? Kick me while I’m down.
It was one of those situations where I realized that I have been able to find my voice over the last few years with a lot of different issues and a lot of different things going through my own mental health journey. Understanding that there are a lot of people out there that are either dealing with something worse or dealing with something similar that may not have a voice or found their voice yet.
So to be able to do that was really the main reason, to make sure everyone understands. There’s a lot of fantasy football people out there that think it’s all fun and games, and we have families. We have people that love us. We have people that we are doing this for that’s not fantasy. This is real life.
So just wanted to make sure I emphasized that.
The last part is paramount. We must understand why he made his DMs public. “None of this was for attention,” he said. “None of this was for pity. It was to bring awareness and bring to light something that happens way too much.”
Mattison isn’t thin-skinned. He’s willing to be criticized.
I don’t care if you tell me I suck. I don’t care if you tell me I shouldn’t be playing. I really could care less about those comments. It’s when you cross the line, make it personal, and you make it something that not only I have to deal with, but something that my family has to deal with, that’s when you get into a different realm of things.
That’s where there’s a line that needs to be drawn.
“I know this is not just an isolated incident,” Kevin O’Connell said in a Twitter/X post the Vikings released on the Friday after the game. “Racism has no place, regardless of how upset someone may be with fantasy football output or a player’s performance. That’s just unacceptable. In any way, shape, or form, really, in our society, but especially in regards to the treatment of professional athletes and our players.”
“I had a similar situation happen to me,” said Josh Metellus, referring to something that happened when he was in college. “That’s why you need those core groups of people [to] always keep you stable and ready to move on and move forward, and I think anybody out there going through a situation like that needs somebody to lean on.
“I think our job as his teammates is to be there as people.”
Camryn Bynum felt Mattison highlighted something many players deal with.
I’m glad just the fact that he had the courage to do that and really to put the spotlight on what happens behind the scenes for players. It’s one thing, you make a good play, everybody’s gonna be in your DMs talking good, saying you’re the best thing ever. And you make one bad play, they’re gonna rip you apart.
So it’s good that he’s able to see that and really let the world see it, that it happens to all of us. But especially on the fake accounts, you can’t do anything about it. So I’m just glad that he was able to express that it happens to every single person.
Mattison said he’s not going to look too far into who DM’d him. However, he would like social media accounts to hold their users accountable instead of allowing them to post anonymously.
I’m not really looking too far into it and trying to move past it, but it is something that I feel like the platform should make it some type of way where these people making these profiles have to provide some type of information where you shouldn’t be walking around doing stuff like this and be able to hide behind that. … Maybe you’re in a position where you have a career where you’re interacting with people where you shouldn’t be able to interact with people without going through some type of repercussions and some growth.
He says people’s social media posts have affected his family.
That’s the sad part, too. People don’t understand how much it affects your family. I have my wife and my brother and people trying to defend me publicly on comments and stuff like that. It’s taken a toll, where they don’t want to see that, where they don’t want to have to go back and forth with these people.
But it’s hard not to take certain things [personally]. My dad talked to me multiple times. At times, he got into it with people, and it’s one of those things that just is, you don’t want that for your family.
It’s something that’s frustrating. It’s something that I understand comes with it. But at the same time, it’s what can we do to fix that? What can we do to make that happen less?
Mattison also said that he wants to be an inspiration for young kids.
It’s just one of those things where there’s a lot of people dealing with a lot of different things. And if you can see that you’re not alone dealing with things and kinda see how someone else can handle it and get through that adversity, it helps out.
So to be that example. I know that at the home game on Sunday, I was able to talk to a young kid who was being bullied back in his hometown because he was a Vikings fan. He was being bullied by some kids, so I was able to speak some positive light into him, and he reached out to me to return the favor this time.
Just things like that. It’s always bigger than the game. It’s always bigger than me.
