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Premier League Rainbow Laces campaign explained: What is it and what has sparked controversy?

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Premier League Rainbow Laces campaign explained: What is it and what has sparked controversy?

The Premier League’s Rainbow Laces campaign, an annual show of support for the LGBTQ+ community, has been overshadowed this week.

Ipswich Town captain Sam Morsy twice refused to wear the accompanying rainbow armband in games, citing his religious beliefs, while Crystal Palace skipper Marc Guehi chose to write two pro-Christian messages on the armbands he’s worn in their past two matches.

The Athletic also reported on Wednesday morning that Manchester United abandoned plans to wear rainbow-themed Adidas warm-up jackets ahead of Sunday’s 4-0 win over Everton after defender Noussair Mazraoui refused to join the initiative. The Morocco international, like Morsy, pointed to his Muslim faith as the reason for his reluctance.

A well-intended campaign from the Premier League has found itself at the heart of a wider, divisive debate but one that is not unique to English football. 

The Athletic analyses the origins of rainbow laces and whether the initiative can retain a place in the game’s calendar. 

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What is the Rainbow Laces campaign and why was it introduced?

The campaign dates back to 2013 when Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity, initially teamed up with UK bookmaker Paddy Power to send rainbow-coloured laces to all professional footballers across England and Scotland.

Players were encouraged to show their support for LGBTQ+ communities by wearing them and its success led to the Premier League formally partnering with Stonewall in an attempt to improve inclusivity across the top level of English football. A report released by Stonewall last month showed that one in four LGBTQ+ people still did not feel welcome at live sporting events.

It has become customary for the Premier League to allot two matchweeks to the Rainbow Laces campaign every season, presenting all 20 clubs with the opportunity to mark the event with a home fixture. The Premier League distributes rainbow-branded corner flags, ball plinths, handshake boards and substitution boards to its clubs, as well as the laces and captain’s armbands.


A rainbow-coloured substitution board is one of the other ways the Premier League marks the campaign (Michael Regan/Getty Images)

The wider period, this season running between November 29 and December 5, also sees clubs encouraged to highlight the work they do to “embed equality, diversity and inclusion”.

That typically includes content with managers, players and supporters to celebrate LGBTQ+ communities. One example this year was Southampton and England goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale speaking out on the challenges faced by his brother, Oliver, who is openly gay.

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Why has it proved a talking point this year?

Morsy’s decision not to wear a rainbow armband for Ipswich’s 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest on Saturday made him the only one of 20 captains in the Premier League not to do so. A club statement, released on Monday, confirmed the “religious beliefs” of Morsy, a Muslim, had been behind the step, with Ipswich saying they would “respect” the midfielder’s actions.

Also on Saturday, Guehi, a devout Christian, wore the rainbow armband in the 1-1 draw with Newcastle United after having written ”I (heart) Jesus” across it. Doing so contravened the Football Association’s rules banning any religious messaging being carried on playing kits.

By chance, Morsy and Guehi were on opposing teams on Tuesday night as Palace won 1-0 away to Ipswich. Morsy again chose not to wear the rainbow armband, while Guehi had changed the written message on his to “Jesus (heart) you”.


Marc Guehi and Sam Morsy both made their own statements around the Rainbow Laces campaign (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

Speaking to Sky Sports on Wednesday, Guehi explained his thinking behind writing the messages.

“I think the message was pretty clear, to be honest,” he said. “It’s a message of love and truth as well and a message of inclusivity, so it speaks for itself.”

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On Wednesday, The Athletic revealed United’s plan to wear rainbow-themed warm-up jackets ahead of Sunday’s game with Everton was scrapped due to Mazraoui, who is Muslim, refusing to take part.

Is this the first time it has provoked controversy?

This is the second year that a Premier League side’s captain has opted against wearing the rainbow armband, after Sheffield United’s Anel Ahmedhodzic, the Bosnia and Herzegovina international defender, did so last December.

Ahmedhodzic, a Muslim, wore the standard Premier League armband for a 2-0 defeat at home to Liverpool, in what was his first game as the team’s captain. Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder told reporters after the game that he had been unaware of Ahmedhodzic’s decision, and when asked by Swedish outlet SVT Sport why he had chosen not to have a rainbow armband, the defender answered, “Guess.”

Are players allowed to not wear a rainbow armband or laces?

Neither the laces nor the armband are considered compulsory but there has been an unwritten expectation that all players help promote the campaign. No Premier League captain, until Ahmedhodzic did so, had shown any resistance to the pro-LGBTQ+ messaging.

What are the rules around footballers promoting political symbols or messages on their kits?

Doing that, in short, is prohibited by the FA, who have specific kit requirements for players at all levels of English football. “Equipment must not have any political, religious or personal slogans, statements or images,” it outlines under Law 4.

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The theory is that football, and a player’s kit, should not be used for the promotion of any beliefs, ensuring religion and politics are kept at a distance.

Those lines, though, can be blurred.

The annual poppy appeal, raising money for veterans of Britain’s armed forces, sees clubs carry the charity’s logo on their kits but James McClean, now of Wrexham in League One, has long considered it a political symbol and refused to commemorate the occasion, owing to his roots as a Catholic growing up in Northern Ireland.


McClean stands away from his Wrexham team-mates during the Remembrance Day minute’s silence in November (Gary Oakley/PA Images via Getty Images)

“The poppy represents, for me, an entire different meaning to what it does for others,” McClean posted on Instagram in November. “Am I offended by someone wearing a poppy? No, absolutely not, what does offend me though, is having the poppy… forced upon me.”

The same stance was adopted by Nemanja Matic as a Manchester United player, because of Britain’s historic involvement in a military campaign in his homeland of Serbia.

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It’s not just players either. Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola was fined £20,000 by the FA in 2018 for wearing a yellow ribbon — a symbol of solidarity with members of the independence movement in the Spanish region of Catalonia, where Guardiola is from, who had been arrested by Spain’s authorities — during an FA Cup tie against Wigan Athletic.

What has been the response of the football governing bodies and LGBTQ rights groups?

The FA has been in contact with Palace since Guehi wore his modified rainbow armband to remind them of the kit regulations, but no formal action will follow. Palace manager Oliver Glasner told reporters on Tuesday night he had spoken with Guehi ahead of the Ipswich game. “He’s no child. He’s an adult and he has an opinion,” said Glasner. “We respect that, and accept every opinion.”

Though the FA and Premier League are yet to make any formal comments on Morsy refusing to wear a rainbow armband or Guehi’s messaging, Stonewall released their own statement this week. “It has been incredible to see so many football teams at all levels support our Rainbow Laces campaign to make sport safer and more inclusive for all. When clubs like Ipswich Town FC show their support, it helps people feel safe and welcome both on and off the pitch,” a spokesperson said. “It is up to individuals to choose if and how they show their support for LGBTQ+ inclusion in sport.”

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‘We deserve our rights’: How LGBTQ+ fans feel about Rainbow Laces controversy

Is the campaign likely to keep going?

There is no indication the actions of Morsy and Guehi, or the events at Manchester United, will lead to any changes in the Premier League’s allyship with Stonewall. It has been a long-running partnership designed to welcome LGBTQ+ communities and heighten inclusivity and the resistance to the campaign has been nominal.

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Ahead of this year’s event, the league’s chief executive Richard Masters suggested it remained a long-term commitment.

“There has been considerable progress to make football a more inclusive environment for the LGBTQ+ community since the Rainbow Laces campaign launched a decade ago,” Masters said. “We are determined to maintain this momentum to make sure football is welcoming for everyone and send a clear message that discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated.”


Tottenham Hotspur Stadium lit up in rainbow colours in support of the initiative (Getty Images)

Are there equivalent campaigns in other sports?

The Rainbow Laces campaign is not confined to football in England, with Stonewall saying “over a million” people have participated since its launch 11 years ago, including elite athletes from the worlds of rugby union, rugby league and cricket.

Other countries have adopted similar initiatives and, like the Premier League, run into problems.

Clubs from French football’s top divisions wear shirts carrying rainbow colours once a season to promote LGBTQ+ causes, leading some players to make themselves unavailable for that round of games.

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Midfielder Idrissa Gueye, now in the Premier League with Everton, was twice left out of Paris Saint-Germain squads after refusing to wear the modified shirt. Mauricio Pochettino, the club’s manager at the time, said in 2022 that Gueye had missed one particular match for “personal reasons” and there was support from Cheikhou Kouyate of Palace and Watford’s Ismaila Sarr (now a Palace player himself) on social media. All three play at international level for Senegal, where homosexuality is illegal.

Toulouse and Morocco forward Zakaria Aboukhlal also decided not to appear for his French club in 2023 when rainbow kits marked the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia. Monaco and Mali midfielder Mohamed Camara was handed a four-match ban at the end of last season after covering up an anti-homophobia message on his shirt during a match in Ligue 1, the top division of club football in France. Amelie Oudea-Castera, the country’s sports minister, called Camara’s actions “unacceptable behaviour.”

The rainbow colours also created an issue in the NHL, North America’s top ice hockey league, last year. The NHL reversed a ban on players wrapping multi-coloured ‘Pride’ tape around their hockey sticks in support of LGBTQ+ communities.

(Top photo: Plumb Images/Leicester City FC via Getty Images)

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LeBron James, Mikal Bridges and most of the Sixers lead NBA All-Disappointment Team

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LeBron James, Mikal Bridges and most of the Sixers lead NBA All-Disappointment Team

At some level, horrible players can’t disappoint us. It’s all about expectations, right? The first step to being disappointed is setting the achievement bar somewhere higher than the ground.

So when we talk about the NBA season’s most disappointing players, keep in mind they’ve already done something that had us anticipating some level of success. We react differently when they fall short of our preconceived target; even a performance that might otherwise be characterized as “good” by mere mortals can earn the “disappointing” label. That’s particularly true if, say, a player not only sustained his success in an unbroken string of excellence for two decades but had done so at an exalted, MVP-caliber level well into his late 30s.

This takes us to LeBron James, the soon-to-be 40-year-old Los Angeles Lakers superstar who is, by his lofty standards, taking a rare excursion on the struggle bus. While the big news recently is that the Lakers have lost six of eight, including Wednesday’s humiliating 134-93 defeat in Miami, the bigger-picture story comes when you get into the “why”: James doesn’t seem capable of carrying a team by himself anymore … or even in tandem with another superstar.

Coming into the season, we knew this Lakers roster had some massive shortcomings. The lack of a third high-level starter, let alone a fourth and fifth one, and the sea of negative minutes coming from the bench augured that James and Anthony Davis would have to carry a massive burden to get Los Angeles to the playoffs, let alone beyond the first round. After All-NBA-caliber seasons from each a year ago, that didn’t seem like a big ask.

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The part about the rest of the roster, however, has held up: James and Davis are the only Lakers regulars with a PER above 15 or a BPM above 0. But that was the case the past two years, and L.A. not only made the playoffs in each season but also advanced to the 2022 Western Conference finals.

This time around, L.A.’s 12-10 record entering Friday has been built mostly on a soft-ish schedule and good fortune in close games. It masks some horrific underlying numbers — the league’s 23rd-best net rating and 27th-ranked defense — as well as the scary fact that the team has basically been completely healthy. James and Davis have missed one game between them; Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, D’Angelo Russell and rookie Dalton Knecht have only missed nine.

The difference is that we aren’t getting our usual LeBron. If the West coaches picked an All-Star squad right now, I don’t think he’d make the team. And as he closes in on his 40th birthday in a few weeks, we may have to acknowledge James is no longer superhuman, even as he still does things nobody else has done at this age.

James’ 20.6 PER is absurd for age 40, but “for age 40” is doing a lot of work here. It’s a steep decline from last season (23.7) and his lowest since his rookie year. Other metrics are similarly bearing on his impact thus far, from his horrific on-off numbers to the more nerdy advanced numbers that have always ranked him as a top-10 player now having him nowhere close.

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At a more basic level, James is doing a lot of things either less often or less well. His points per game average (22.3) is his lowest since his rookie year, and it’s not like he’s offset the decline in buckets by scoring more efficiently. Much has been made about his declining 3-point percentage, but he’s also down to 55.9 percent on 2s with a career-low free-throw rate. For the first time in his career, James is averaging fewer than one dunk per game; he’s also trending toward a career-worst in total turnovers and turnover rate.

His steal rate is another career low and half what it was a year ago; the eye test says James’ brain can’t impact games defensively the way he often did the past two years. Now, in addition to the team-wide transition defense struggles, it’s easier to pick out sequences where he’s stuck in mud on the weak side.

So if we’re coming up with our biggest disappointments from the first quarter of the season, James has to be at the top. He’s the headliner, but here is the rest of my All-Disappointment Team. (Stats current as of Thursday afternoon.):

Mikal Bridges, Knicks

Our Fred Katz and James Edwards have devoted a lot of energy to figuring out what’s wrong with Mikal Bridges, so I won’t rehash everything. Optimists will note the past two games (50 combined points!) have been slightly encouraging.

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But still … yikes. The Knicks gave up five first-round picks for a guy who is shooting 33.1 percent from 3 and looks deeply uncomfortable taking them from above the break, has been their worst perimeter defender on many nights and plays like the goal of the game is to never get fouled.

The decline in Bridges’ free-throw rate is particularly jaw-dropping. Just over a year ago, he drew 18 foul shots in a 42-point eruption against the Orlando Magic. Fast forward 12 months, and Bridges has 14 free-throw attempts all season. One of them was on a defensive-three-seconds technical. And it seems to have only become worse lately. Even in his two-game burst of scoring, Bridges only drew one free-throw attempt. He has drawn two shooting fouls in his past 10 games — and remember, he’s playing 40 minutes a night.

Of players with at least 500 minutes played, only Oklahoma City Thunder role player Cason Wallace has a lower free-throw rate than Bridges. In a related story, Bridges’ efficiency numbers aren’t great either, with the paucity of freebies dragging his true shooting percentage down to 55.3 and his PER to 12.6.


Mikal Bridges dives for a loose ball against the Mavericks in Dallas. (Jerome Miron / Imagn Images)

Nearly everything in Philly (except Jared McCain)

It seems wild to think that after the offseason the Sixers had, the guy they took with the 16th pick in the draft could turn out to be the Rookie of the Year, and yet the team would be an abject disaster.

Welp … here we are. Philly is off to a 5-15 start, and only the mess that is the Eastern Conference is keeping it remotely attached to the playoff race.

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Superstar center Joel Embiid has played four games, hasn’t looked anywhere close to his old self when he played and is out again with knee soreness with a hazy timeline for his return. It’s not clear if he’s ever going to come back as the same guy, the one who dominated at the offensive end with a mix of jumpers and overpowering drives. And if he does, can he do it for more than a week or two at a time before having to shut it down again?

While it starts and ends with Embiid, let’s not lose sight of the other disappointments. There were hints of this last season, when the Sixers went 16-27 in the non-Embiid games. But that team didn’t have max free agent Paul George, and it would take a torrid hot streak to get these Sixers to 16-27.

Two secondary free-agent targets, Caleb Martin and Kelly Oubre, look like replacement-level players so far, with Martin already falling out of the starting lineup. Eric Gordon, a 35-year-old free-agent pickup, aspires to improve enough to be replacement level.  Coach Nick Nurse has had no answers, and maybe the roster just doesn’t have any.

Even All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey has struggled to replicate last season’s breakout that earned him the Most Improved Player award and an All-Star berth. He’s at just 30.5 percent from 3 and 48.8 percent inside the arc.

Philly’s three max players have played less than a full game together. But the more telling stat may be the Maxey-George minutes, which was supposed to be the floor if the Sixers can’t count on Embiid. There have only been 93 minutes of it so far across five games, but the Sixers’ plus-5.0 net rating in that time may be the one glimmer of hope.

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Rookie Jared McCain, taking inspiration from Stephen Curry, is thriving for the Sixers

Tyrese Haliburton and Myles Turner, Pacers

Remember how much fun Indiana was six months ago? Um … what happened?

The Pacers are 9-14, the blazing fast attack that tore through the league last year ranks just 18th in offense, and if the playoffs started today, last year’s conference finalist (and NBA Cup finalist!) would barely be clinging to the final Play-In spot.

Haliburton has been the more obvious disappointment, seemingly still struggling with the physical ailments that chipped away at his performance in the second half of last season. (First-half Hali was a thing of wonder, and it sucks more people didn’t see it.)

He’s dipped to 33.3 percent from the 3-point line after being deadly anywhere inside half court a year ago and is shooting 2s so rarely that they stop the game for a small ceremony when he takes one. His 7.8 2-point attempts per 100 possessions are in line with snipers like Keegan Murray (whom we’ll discuss below), Buddy Hield and Cameron Johnson, not an NBA All-Star.

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Haliburton is taking the spotlight, but can we talk about Turner? He’s somehow managed to thread the needle of not really going inside the arc much but still committing a ton of turnovers. Turner has 19 bad-pass turnovers in 21 games, according to Basketball-Reference, after he committed 22 all of last season. One suspects this might be a symptom of increased high-low attempts to last year’s late-season pickup Pascal Siakam, but there’s more. Turner also is losing the ball in other ways far more frequently and committing more offensive fouls.

All of this might be understandable if Turner was trying to mash on the block, but his 2-point attempts are markedly down from a year ago, as are his attempts at the rim, and his 15.1-foot average shot distance is a career high.

Sum it up, and Haliburton-Turner units have massively diminished in effectiveness. The same duo that had a plus-8.8 net rating in their minutes together in 2023-24 is now sporting a minus-6.0 this season, and Haliburton-Turner have played more as a duo than all but eight pairs in the league.

The surging Hawks have won five straight. Ca-Caw! But the amazing part is that they’ve done it even as Trae Young continues to post some of the worst shooting numbers of his career. In Wednesday’s impressive road win at Milwaukee, for instance, Young was just 6 of 19 from the floor and missed all nine of his 3-point attempts.

Hampered by a sore Achilles for most of the season, Young has seen his shooting percentages dip everywhere — his 2-point and 3-point percentages (46.4 percent and 30.6 percent, respectively) are career lows, and his free-throw rate is his lowest since his rookie year. The only shot type that hasn’t declined is dunks — he’s still holding level at zero. More seriously, he’s also pushing to lead the league in turnovers and is at a career-worst on a per-possession basis.

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Young has offset that with some positives; he’s leading the league in assists, and while the comparison bar couldn’t be lower, his defense has definitely improved from two years ago. That said, the Hawks depend on him to be their offensive engine and are only 19th on that end as he labors.


In Atlanta, everything revolves around Trae Young. (Brett Davis / Imagn Images)

I get that nobody is watching the Wizards, but if you happen to stumble across one of their games, it doesn’t take long to hit you: What the heck are some of these shots Kyle Kuzma is taking?

Even by his thirsty standard of recent years, this has been some breathtaking stuff. Perhaps the surrounding talent is somewhat to blame; somebody has to shoot on this team, and the shot chart shows Kuzma is 14 of 37 in floater range. In other words, a lot of forays to the rim haven’t quite reached their destination.

Even open jumpers have been a struggle, however, and the result has been incredibly ineffective. Kuzma has a 9.9 PER and 47.6 percent true shooting, and it hasn’t just been because of cold 3-point shooting; he’s at 48.8 percent even inside the arc. An already tanktastic Wizards offense plummets to a 97.0 offensive rating in his minutes.

Kuzma has missed a few games, so his sample isn’t quite as large as some others on this list, but the notion that Washington could get value for the remaining three years and $64 million on his deal seems increasingly improbable.

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Sacramento is 24th in 3-point frequency and 25th in percentage, and that wasn’t supposed to happen because the Kings had two knockdown shooters on the wing to stop defenses from crowding De’Aaron Fox, Domantas Sabonis and DeMar DeRozan.

Instead, Keegan Murray and Kevin Huerter are clanging bricks to the tune of identical 28.7 percent marks from the 3-point line and starving for other opportunities while the Kings’ big three dominates the ball. Huerter’s usage rate would be his lowest since his rookie year; Murray’s would be a career low after he jumped to 15.2 points per game in his second season in 2023-24.

It hasn’t been fatal for the Kings, who are eighth in offense thanks to their three stars, but it’s still money left on the table that’s likely to matter in a cutthroat West playoff race. The Kings were No. 1 in offense in their Beam Dream season in 2022-23, and to get to a top-six win total in the conference, they likely need to push near the top of the league again.

Top 15 picks of draft

McCain (mentioned above) is making an impact, but of the first half of the first round of the 2024 draft, only two (behemoth bigs Donovan Clingan and Zach Edey) have rated significantly better than replacement level in their minutes; both have been injured, and Edey was pulled from the Memphis Grizzlies starting lineup. Yay? Nobody else in the top 15 has a PER above 12.

Yes, there are levels to this, from the Cody Williams insta-inferno to the Ron Holland 3-point experience (9 of 50!) to the, er, “developing” chemistry between Bub Carrington and Alex Sarr (an offensive rating of 96.0 with a minus-20.3 net rating as a combo) to the more encouraging flash-sprinkled efforts from guys like Stephon Castle and Zaccharie Risacher. As a group, though, this has been jaw-droppingly underwhelming.

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Zaccharie Risacher might not be a typical No. 1 pick, but he’s a good fit with Hawks

While there’s always risk in panning a draft class too early, it’s an understatement to say things aren’t going real well for the top 15. Castle and Sarr are the only players who routinely get to finish games. Two of them (Rob Dillingham and Kel’El Ware) can’t even get on the court, while third pick Reed Sheppard is baaaaarely hanging on (don’t cry; we’ll always have summer league).

Did Oklahoma City and Sacramento win the draft by taking injured guys? Can we just pause the Rookie of the Year award and give out two trophies next year? I have questions.

The general presumption was that, after a bumpy rookie year, the third pick in the 2023 draft would be a lot better in Year 2.

I wish I could tell you things look different, but they really don’t. A 30.2 percent 3-point percentage? Wild finishes leading to a 45.7 percent mark inside the arc? Marching up the leaderboard in turnovers per 100 possessions? Yep, we’ve seen this movie before.

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The 20-year-old Scoot Henderson still has time on his side, but the Blazers moved him to the bench this season despite being in a rebuild. It hasn’t been much of a decision to keep him there. For a guard drafted for his athleticism, there just haven’t been many positive signs — he has three and-1s all season and has made negligible impact on defense. Can he clean up some of the myriad offensive mistakes and get his career pointed in the right direction, or is this just who he is?

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(Top photo of LeBron James and Paul George: Harry How / Getty Images)

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Kylie Kelce says she sees husband Jason 'less now in retirement' than during his playing days

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Kylie Kelce says she sees husband Jason 'less now in retirement' than during his playing days

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Retirement life has not come that easy for the Kelce family.

Jason Kelce hung up the cleats after 13 seasons, and he will very likely wind up with a bust in Canton.

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However, despite being off the field, he might just be busier than ever.

Kylie Kelce on Monday, April 1, 2024. (Nathan Congleton/NBC via Getty Images)

Kelce is a “Monday Night Football” analyst on ESPN, which keeps him on the road. Next month, he will also host a late-night show on the network, while he also hosts a podcast with his brother, Travis.

Jason and his wife, Kylie, have a fourth daughter on the way, but the three are a handful for Kylie, as Jason is “busier now than he has ever been,” says his wife.

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“I see him less now in retirement than I did when he was playing football,” Kelce said on the debut episode of her “Not Gonna Lie” podcast. “We had a set schedule then. Now, it’s an absolute free-for-all. He is working so hard and really grinding right now. And so, I just make sure that I am covered. And if that means that he’s at the house and someone else is there just to make up the difference, then that’s what we have going on. He will not be watching the kids. 

Jason Kelce smiles

Former NFL player and ESPN commentator Jason Kelce on the sidelines during the first half of the game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.  (Denny Medley-Imagn Images)

FORMER ALL-PRO RUNNING BACK MAKES HALL OF FAME ARGUMENT AFTER ANOTHER SNUB: ‘I THINK I BELONG’

“He’s not watching them right now. I think he’s doing meetings.”

Shortly after losing the Super Bowl to his brother, the Kansas City Chiefs star was tabbed to host “Saturday Night Live,” but Jason made an appearance on the program. The stint, though, did not seem to go over well with Kylie, as shown in the Amazon Prime documentary featuring Kelce’s 2022 season with the Philadelphia Eagles.

Jason and Kylie Kelce

Jason Kelce poses for a photo with Kylie Kelce during the Kelce documentary premiere at Suzanne Roberts Theater on September 8, 2023, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Cooper Neill/Getty Images)

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Before the season, the Kelce brothers teed off at the ACC Celebrity Golf Tournament in Lake Tahoe.

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ESPN's Randy Moss is taking extended leave to focus on 'personal health challenge'

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ESPN's Randy Moss is taking extended leave to focus on 'personal health challenge'

Hall of Fame receiver Randy Moss is taking an extended leave from his role as an analyst on “NFL Sunday Countdown” as he deals with “a personal health challenge,” ESPN said in a statement Friday.

In a video recorded and posted on Instagram before he appeared on last Sunday’s episode, Moss told fans he “has been battling something internal” and indicated he might have to wear sunglasses while on the air because of it.

The tone of the video was upbeat and lighthearted, but Moss’ message was serious.

“I just ask for all the prayer warriors to put their blessing hands on me and my family through these hard times,” Moss said. “… Like I said, y’all, I’m battling something, man, and it’s something internal. Your boy is going to get through it. I got a great team of doctors and got a great family around me. So all you men, y’all do your checkups, get your bloodwork done and we’ll work through it, all right?”

He added in a second video: “There’s gonna be people concerned and asking questions. At this time, just gonna keep a lot of things private and y’all just bear with me. But like I said, I need your prayers.”

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Moss also briefly addressed the matter at the top of Sunday’s show. Host Mike Greenberg responded: “We’re all for one and one for all; if he’s wearing glasses, we’re all wearing glasses,” as he and the rest of the studio crew — Rex Ryan, Alex Smith and Tedy Bruschi — donned eyewear in support of their colleague.

Moss played for the Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, Oakland Raiders and San Francisco 49ers during his 14-year career. He ranks second all-time in receiving touchdowns (156), fourth in receiving yards (15,292) and 15th in receptions (982).

He joined the “NFL Sunday Countdown” crew in 2016.

“For nearly a decade, Randy has been an invaluable member of the team, consistently elevating ‘Countdown’ with his insight and passion,” ESPN said. “He has ESPN’s full support, and we look forward to welcoming him back when he is ready.”

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