Patrick Mahomes says he knows the type of person his Kansas City Chiefs teammate Harrison Butker is despite the backlash to his recent graduation speech.

“I’ve known him for seven years. I judge him by the character he shows every single day, and that’s a good person,” Mahomes, 28, said during a Wednesday, May 22, press conference at the Chiefs’ OTAs practice. “That’s someone who cares about the people around him, cares about his family and wants to make a good impact in society.”

He continued, “When you’re in the locker room, there’s a lot of people from a lot of different areas of life and they have a lot of different views on everything. We’re not always going to agree and there’s certain things that he said that I don’t agree with, but I understand the person [who] he is and [that] he’s trying to do whatever he can to lead people in the right direction.”

Butker, also 28, delivered the commencement address at Kansas’ Benedictine College earlier this month, where he infamously slammed LGBTQIA+ rights, IVF and surrogacy as family planning methods, President Joe Biden’s policies and women wanting to have careers outside of being stay-at-home wives and mothers.