ESPN's Ryan Clark Praises OutKick During Heated Twitter Exchange With Marcellus Wiley

A feud that had clearly been bubbling up for quite some time between ESPN's Ryan Clark and former ESPN sportscaster Marcellus Wiley went public on the streets of X on Wednesday. OutKick, including founder Clay Travis and columnist Bobby Burack, were mentioned by name amid the back-and-forth. In a move that likely raised the blood pressure of most employees at the four-letter network, Clark dared to say something nice about OutKick.

The nuts and bolts of the Wiley-Clark feud, at least this one that went public, involves Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, and Wiley accusing Clark of race-baiting. Essentially, Wiley believes Clark often offers up excuses for Jackson when he doesn't win big games or makes mistakes on the field, but never gives Allen the same benefit of the doubt.

Wiley made these claims on the most recent episode of his podcast, which had the not-so-subtle title of ‘Ryan Clark Caught Blatantly Race Baiting the Lamar Jackson vs. Josh Allen Debate!’

During the episode, Wiley played a clip of Clark during last season's NFL playoffs where the analyst says "At some point, Josh Allen is going to have to beat the other great quarterbacks in the AFC." He then pointed to Clark's post on X after the Ravens' loss to the Bills this past Sunday.

Prior to firing off his post about Jackson, Clark did share a post about Allen explaining that he was excited about seeing him square off against Patrick Mahomes again in this weekend's AFC title game. That post apparently didn't make it on Wiley's radar.

After clearly catching wind of Wiley's podcast and the accusations he was tossing his way, Clark decided to mention Wiley on X with a straight-to-the-point message.

Wiley chirped back, and the finger-pointing officially took off with Wiley accusing Clark of not exactly being talkative the last time they were in the same room together.

The next day, Clark accused Wiley of ducking him whenever he's asked him to have a man-to-man conversation about their differences. Three minutes later, he shared another post on X claiming he called Wiley, who answered the phone but hung up like a "coward."

Not lost in all of this was Clark giving a shutout to OutKick and our willingness to talk about differences with actual voices and not Twitter fingers.

Many different writers and personalities at OutKick have been critical of Clark and ESPN over the years, including Burack, yet he was more than willing to have a conversation with Clark to offer his point of view while hearing and respecting the other side of the story as well.

The moral of the story here is that free speech is a phenomenal thing, and when it brings forth meaningful conversations about differing opinions on certain topics, well that's how we take steps forward instead of remaining stagnant.