For a guy that was pretty adamant that football wouldn’t be played in 2020 just a few weeks ago, Kirk Herbstreit now claims he was simply thinking out loud and his comments were taken out of context.

If you somehow missed the comments from the ESPN college football analyst from a few weeks back, here’s what Herbstreit said during an appearance on ESPN radio:

“In my opinion, until we have a vaccine, where we’ve really got some control over this, even if this curve is flattened out, this virus is still out there,” Herbstreit said. “I’ll be shocked, I haven’t talked with anybody but I’ll be shocked if we have NFL football this fall, if we have college football. I’ll be so surprised if that happens.”

Several weeks removed from the hysteria he caused, Herbstreit offered up these comments during a Monday teleconference leading up to the 2020 NFL Draft.

“It was kind of misconstrued, misrepresented based on what I said in a radio interview and how it was taken by a lot of people,” Herbstreit said according to Riley Gates of 247Sports. “…I was almost just thinking out loud. It was the day baseball was supposed to start, Opening Day, and we were reminiscing about how sad it is that we weren’t having any baseball. I was like, ‘Hey, man, this thing’s scary. We may not even have football.’ I was kind of thinking out loud at that point.

“…I’m not making any predictions. I really wasn’t that night. I was trying to explain how real this pandemic is.”

That’s quite the turn there by Herbstreit and it would be interesting to know how much of his new comments have to do with the backlash he received from those that questioned why he made such bold comments to begin with.