NBC shared a short clip with the NFL quarterback. Christians turned it into a conspiracy.

Conservative Christians are furious at NBC for not promoting a football player’s proselytizing after a big game. And their outrage is, as usual, missing the point.

Over the weekend, C.J. Stroud, the stand-out rookie quarterback for the Houston Texans, let his team to an absolute rout of the Cleveland Browns, 45-14. His rise is one of the biggest storylines heading into the second week of the NFL playoffs.

After the game, sideline reporter Kathryn Tappen asked Stroud a fairly typical question about how he felt… and received a fairly typical response:

(Follow article link to view photos/video/PDFs that accompany this article.)

TAPPEN: C.J., your first playoff game in your first NFL season and a record-setting performance for you. What does this moment mean?

STROUD: First and foremost, I just want to give all glory and praise to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I mean, it's been amazing being in this city for as short as I've been, but the love that I've got, I've really just been doing it for Houston, man. People back home. I'm blessed enough to be in the position I am and blessed enough to be playing at a high level right now, and we got to just keep it going, but I'm super blessed.

TAPPEN: So many of your teammates contributed in this victory. How were you able to find so many targets?

STROUD: Just the hard work we put in at practice. There's no me without my teammates, my O-line, my receivers, my cornerbacks, my receivers, my defense. We all put it together and we play complementary football, we’re gonna be hard to beat.

TAPPEN: C.J., best of luck moving forward. Thanks so much.

STROUD: Thank you. God bless.

All of that’s perfectly normal post-game banter. And NBC, which aired the game, shared a portion of that interview on X/Twitter.

They didn’t share the entire interview. Instead, the caption just highlighted that Stroud “has a lot of love for his city” and clipped the relevant portion of their exchange.

Which is to say they edited the exchange down from 53 seconds to 22 seconds and removed the unneeded bit praising Jesus in order to show him praising Houston.

TAPPEN: C.J., your first playoff game in your first NFL season and a record-setting performance for you. What does this moment mean?

STROUD: … I mean, it's been amazing being in this city for as short as I've been, but the love that I've got, I've really just been doing it for Houston, man. People back home. I'm blessed enough to be in the position I am and blessed enough to be playing at a high level right now, and we got to just keep it going, but I'm super blessed.

That editing makes sense.

That’s because the goal was to post something Houston fans would appreciate, and Stroud’s response only made sense if the question was included in the clip.

Everything else? Cut out.

But conservatives are now spreading a bizarre conspiracy theory that NBC was censoring Jesus.

Here’s how FOX put it:

The moment was overshadowed over the course of the week as NBC appeared to edit out that part of his words in the video posted on X. The "Sunday Night Football on NBC" X account posted the video of Stroud speaking to Tappen, but started it at Stroud praising the city.

…

[The Citizen Free Press account tweeted:] "It's disconcerting to realize NBC is actively censoring a player praising Jesus after a massive win. Would NBC have censored his speech if he praised transgenders or Palestinians?"

Former New York Mets star Lenny Dykstra added: "I have a feeling there are going to be a lot more post-postseason-win interviews with him that the dinosaur media is going to have to edit as well. This young QB is outstanding."

There’s no censorship involved here. Yes, NBC would also have edited out post-game comments about trans people or Palestinians if the goal was to show Stroud praising Houston.

You know how I know NBC wasn’t censoring Shroud?

Because NBC posted the full interview of the exchange on YouTube! That’s the one I embedded above! Citizen Free Press, whose claim of alleged censorship went viral, literally showed the original NBC video to make the argument!

Furthermore, even the edited clip posted by NBC includes Stroud talking about how “blessed” he is! Three times! (They didn’t even NEED to include that part for the clip to make sense!)

That’s how badly these conservatives want to be persecuted. They insist there’s anti-Christian bias by using sources that refute their own damn theory!

(Also, if Lenny Dykstra is your character witness, you’ve got issues.)

It’s not just some dumb Twitter account and FOX, though. The New York Post said, “Whether it was an intentional cut or a misguided attempt at shortening a video for social media is unknown…” (It’s the latter. This isn’t complicated.) The conservative sports site OutKick concluded, “Faith is not one of the pre-approved talking points that athletes are allowed to uphold.” (NBC literally shared the full interview on YouTube and included comments about being blessed in the X/Twitter clip.)

The American Family Association, a conservative Christian hate-group, is also spreading the lie online, urging people to sign a pointless petition calling on NBC “to stop its clear aversion to testimonies of faith in its social media posts.”

That petition reads:

I’m disappointed to learn that your recent interview with C.J. Stroud posted on X was blatantly cut to remove any religious references. Stroud clearly answered the interviewer’s question by giving credit for his talent and success to his faith and belief in Jesus Christ.

There was no logical reason for NBC to censor Stroud’s interview except that it has an animosity toward the Christian faith.

I urge NBC to stop discounting the importance of personal faith when interviewing athletes in the future.

Again, NBC posted the full exchange online and there absolutely was a “logical reason” to edit the clip! They wanted to show the star quarterback praising his city and the parts of the conversation that weren’t relevant were cut out! It’s just that simple. Plus, they were posting it on X/Twitter, where the shorter the video is, the more likely it is that people will watch the whole thing, and that’s especially true in the first few seconds.

As of this writing, that petition has over 18,000 “signatures” from gullible Christians who have fallen for the conspiracy theory. (As with all of AFA’s petitions, it’s important to realize the only goal is to get new email addresses for their mailing list, not to create meaningful change.)

All of this is just evidence of how the right-wing media bubble works. Some ignorant buffoon draws a false conclusion, and then a bunch of well-paid buffoons amplify the lie for clicks because it checks all the boxes their readers love.