Alexander Mattison was the victim of racist attacks online after the Vikings lost to the Eagles 34-28 Thursday night in Philadelphia.
Mattison, who lost a fumble and had 28 rushing yards on nine carries, posted screenshots of direct messages he received from ignorant, racist fans. Overall, Mattison said he received more than 60 messages that were vulgar. He revealed two of them on Instagram.
One message to Mattison reads:
“You stupid ******* [racist slur], learn how to hold onto the ball. You get paid millions and can’t do ****. This team is 2-0 with Dalvin Cook. Move your [racist slur] back to Boise and start selling cars or some s*** you slow, useless (racist slur).
“If you decide that’s no for you, kill yourself. God knows yo [racist slur] dumber than **** so you can’t do anything with common knowledge.”
Mattison captioned the vulgar attack with a message saying he’s able to accept complaints about fantasy football but “disgustingly disrespectful” messages cross the line.
“Y’all can come at me all you about fantasy and, ‘you suck’ blah blah blah. I really could care less. But this **** is unacceptable,” Mattison wrote. “[Shake my head] I hope the 60+ people who decided to come at me with disgustingly disrespectful messages tonight in DM’s and comments, really reflect on WTF you say and how it could truly affect someone. Under my helmet, I am a human.. a father.. a son. This is sick.”
Mattison posted a screenshot of another sickening message from an individual with poor spelling:
“Hey (racist slur) do you know how to hold onto a gun and pull the trigger I mean give it a try cause you clearly can’t hold on to a football which is you’re PROFESSIONAL CARRER [sic] so try something new please.”
Mattison had a 4.8 cumulative GPA in high school and was named to the Academic All-Mountain West team three times while starring at Boise State University.
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Bring Me The Sports has elected not to embed the screenshots shared by Mattison in this story, but you can see them for yourself here.
On Friday afternoon the Minnesota Vikings issued the following statement:
