Grotz: Doug Pederson ready to support his players
The last Super Bowl-winning figure to publicly state his feelings about kneeling during the national anthem was vilified.
So, it wasn’t surprising when Eagles head coach Doug Pederson tiptoed around the question during a teleconference Tuesday.
It’s no secret that several Eagles intend to demonstrate before the playing of the national anthem at games this season, much like former Eagles/current Saints safety and CNN race social justice contributor Malcolm Jenkins did during the 2017 season.
At this point Pederson is in no hurry to join the conversation, which isn’t surprising, given that his critical discussions with people occur face-to-face, not on FaceTime, Skype or Zoom. He’s a players’ coach. He’s got to feel it, and that comes from looking into the eyes of his guys.
“We have been able to have dialogue and conversations,” Pederson said Tuesday. “Nothing has been determined. I support players who demonstrate peacefully and stand for something because it’s part of — we have to fix the whys. It’s part of the whys and trying to understand our players. We support our players. I support our players. But we are going to have these conversations I know, once we get into camp.”
The NFL hasn’t cleared players to return en masse to training facilities. The green light is expected to come next month, as teams tweak their plans to divide rosters with 90 players wearing masks into one or more locker rooms with at least six feet between players.
That’s also the start of the next wave of dialogue among players in these, the days of “institutional racism” where you can get attacked for exercising freedom of speech.
Drew Brees, the Super Bowl XLIV MVP who has given his life to the city of New Orleans and the Saints, a man whose foundation has raised more than $30 million for charitable causes, basically apologized twice for explaining what he was trying to say about why he wouldn’t kneel for the anthem in the wake of the death of George Floyd during an arrest in Minneapolis.
Jenkins was the most vocal. He walked his talk in the Philly protests that began peacefully but were followed by vandalism, looting and chaos.
The rallies spilled over into Upper Darby, where video showed the 69th Street stores under siege.
There have been unity rallies throughout Delaware County, including Media, Clifton Heights, Darby, Lansdowne, Haverford, Upper Darby and Yeadon, among other towns.
There have been tweets, Instagram posts and demands by professional athletes for elected leaders to change the system.
The police not only are under attack, but on the verge of being defunded in Minneapolis and California.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who ended the national anthem demonstrations by channeling NFL money to social justice causes agreed upon by players, recently admitted he was wrong in not listening to the players who were protesting.
Under fire from all sides, Goodell now is encouraging a team to sign Colin Kaepernick, who hasn’t played in four years. Kaepernick was the first NFL player to kneel for the anthem. He turns 33 in November.
In Dallas, every day that Cowboys owner Jerry Jones doesn’t weigh in on national anthem demonstrations is another day he gets ripped. Like Brees, Jones is an advocate of standing at attention for the anthem.
Against that backdrop, Pederson is trying to learn how his players feel and why they feel like it. There’s nothing phony about it.
“The first thing I wanted to do is listen,” Pederson said. “Listen to my players, listen to the guys that have feelings, have strong beliefs. I want to understand everything that I can. A lot of it’s personal.
“For me, just hearing from the players — and I don’t want to get into a bunch of dialogue that way — but me, just understanding more and more about what these players go through on a daily basis and what the black community, the African American community go through on a daily basis. And we are seeing it more and more, not only with sports but obviously in our communities.”
At some point Pederson will realize that whatever he does will be criticized. People aren’t going to like it if he kneels. People aren’t going to like it if he doesn’t.
Unlike a fourth-down gamble with the game on the line, there is no instant result to judge whether he was right or wrong.
“This is what I told my team several weeks ago, a couple weeks ago when we had a team meeting, is I want to learn, I want to understand,” Pederson said. “I came from a world that didn’t understand that. And so, for me as an adult, I want to also be able to take the information and teach my own boys, for those of you that know my three sons.
“I love all our players, coaches, and that for me is what I’ve taken away is just the understanding and knowledge, what have these guys go through on a daily basis.” Contact Bob Grotz at bgrotz@21stcenturymedia.com; follow him on Twitter @BobGrotz.