Brees now NFL’s latest distraction
Comments on protesting anthem tone-deaf as world mourns Floyd
Drew Brees is becoming a distraction. The kind of distraction a disciplined team like the New England Patriots sure wouldn’t tolerate.
The kind of distraction that all 32 teams decided Colin Kaepernick had become when he couldn’t get an NFL job in 2017, one year after posting a 90.9 quarterback rating, better than 13 quarterbacks who kept their careers going just fine.
As it was reported, the Seahawks wanted Kaepernick to guarantee he would stop kneeling during the national anthem before they made him an official contract offer in 2018. He wouldn’t do that.
Here we are in 2020 and Kaepernick is still a free agent. Meanwhile, police officers and military personnel (in Boston and around the country) are taking a knee in solidarity with protesters who want justice for the death of George Floyd.
Now the NFL has a new distraction to deal with.
“I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America,” Brees said during a video interview with Yahoo on Wednesday.
Then he went on to preach about how standing during the anthem is a sign of unity.
Brees’ No. 1 target in New
Orleans and arguably the best receiver in the NFL, Michael Thomas, reacted almost immediately on Twitter, sharing a puking emoji in response to a tweet that said, “How can anyone watch George Floyd get murdered and their first response when asked about it is ResPEcC tHe fLAg.”
When America is grieving over the murder of Floyd and begging for justice, when athletes and sports teams are trying to come together to share a message of inclusivity and fairness, when people of all races are asking that we recognize the impact police brutality has on the black community, this future Hall of Fame quarterback thought it would be a good time to kick them when they’re down.
Protest peacefully, so many in America have asked of the Black Lives Matter movement.
But Kaepernick’s peaceful protest was met with vitriol, as if those spewing their anger forgot that it was a Green Beret, Nate Boyer, who talked with Kaepernick about the best way to protest and suggested taking a knee rather than sitting during the anthem.
“It has become an anthem debate, but that’s not what the protest is about,” Boyer told the L.A. Times in 2018. “It’s about racial inequality, police brutality.”
Quietly, and with far less publicity, Bruce Maxwell has a similar story to Kaepernick’s.
Maxwell was the Oakland A’s catcher who became the first and only MLB player to take a knee during the national anthem in 2017.
He was released the next year and never signed by an MLB team again, not getting as much as a spring training invite. With a .240 career average in the bigs and a .275 average in Triple-A, Maxwell profiled as well as any backup catcher in the bigs.
Maxwell, too, paid a price for his protest.
“I still have the messages,” he told NBC Sports this week. “I had a kid the other day come out on my team and just said, ‘Eff you,’ on my Instagram. He was like, ‘People like you are the problem that we have in this country.’ I had a guy reach out to me last year … in the middle of my season, down here in Mexico, that told me that he hopes me and my family die a horrible death.
“Three years and I still get it. It’s the hate. It’s the hate.”
Yet there are still players like Brees and coaches like the Denver Broncos’ Vic Fangio, who told reporters Tuesday, “I don’t see racism at all in the NFL, I don’t see discrimination in the NFL.”
Seahawks running back
Chris Carson responded via Twitter by calling those comments “a joke.” Carson’s teammate, Quandre Diggs, added, “Is he blind??”
Fangio has since apologized. Brees should consider the same.
It’s estimated that 75% of the NFL is made up of black athletes. As the country shifts toward recognizing that it made a mistake to shoo away Kaepernick like a fly buzzing around the dinner table, how will Brees be perceived in the Saints’ locker room?
Even now, after Floyd’s death in police custody brought light to the very issue Kaepernick and Maxwell were trying to bring awareness to, some still don’t get it.
Maybe they’re the distractions.