Recording reveals owners, players talking past each other
During October meeting, Texans’ McNair urges end to kneeling, seeks positive action
NFL owners, players and league executives, about 30 in all, convened urgently at the league’s headquarters in New York City in October, nearly a month after President Donald Trump began deriding the league and its players over protests during the national anthem.
It was an extraordinary summit; rarely do owners and players meet in this manner. But the president’s remarks about players who were kneeling during the anthem had catalyzed a level of public hostility that the NFL had never experienced. In the spirit of partnership at the meeting, the owners decided they and the players should sit in alternating seats around the large table, which featured an NFL logo in the middle.
“Let’s make sure that we keep this confidential,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said to begin the session.
The New York Times has obtained an audio recording of the roughly three-hour meeting, and several people in the room corroborated details of the gathering. The unvarnished conversation reveals how the leaders of the most dominant sports league in the country and several of its most outspoken players confronted an unprecedented moment — mostly by talking past one another.
The players sounded aggrieved. After discussing a proposal to finance nonprofit groups to address player concerns, they wanted to talk about why Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who started the anthem protests to highlight social injustice and police brutality against African-Americans, was, they believed, being blackballed by the owners. The owners sounded panicked about their business under attack and wanted to focus on damage control.
“If he was on a roster right now, all this negativeness and divisiveness could be turned into a positive,” Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Chris Long said at the meeting.
Mollifying Trump
Long said he did not wish to “lecture any team” on what quarterbacks to sign, but “we all agree in this room as players that he should be on a roster.” The owners’ responses were noncommittal. Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said that fighting for social justice is not “about one person.”
New England Patriots owner Robert K. Kraft pointed to another “elephant in the room.” “This kneeling,” he said. “The problem we have is, we have a president who will use that as fodder to do his mission that I don’t feel is in the best interests of America,” said Kraft, who is a longtime supporter of Trump’s. “It’s divisive and it’s horrible.”
The owners were intent on finding a way to avoid Trump’s continued criticism. The president’s persistent jabs on Twitter had turned many fans against the league. Lurie, who called Trump’s presidency “disastrous,” cautioned against players getting drawn into the president’s tactics.
“We’ve got to be careful not to be baited by Trump or whomever else,” Lurie said. “We have to find a way to not be divided and not get baited.”
Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan noted that the worst was behind them.
“All the damage Trump’s going to do is done,” he said.
The owners kept returning to one bottom-line issue: Large numbers of fans and sponsors had become angry about the protests. Boycotts had been threatened and jerseys burned and — most worrisome — TV ratings were declining.
Kaepernick ‘hung out to dry’
Buffalo Bills owner Terry Pegula complained that the league was “under assault.”
“We’re getting hit with a tsunami,” he said while expressing his wish that the league never be “a glacier crawling into the ocean.”
Texans owner Bob McNair was more direct. He urged the players to tell their colleagues to, essentially, knock off the kneeling.
“You fellas need to ask your compadres, fellas, stop that other business, let’s go out and do something that really produces positive results, and we’ll help you,” McNair said.
After Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross raised the idea of a “march on Washington” by NFL players and owners, Eric Reid, Kaepernick’s former teammate and the first player to kneel alongside him, brought the discussion back to Kaepernick.
Reid, who attended the meeting wearing a Kaepernick Tshirt over his dress shirt and tie, said his former teammate was being blackballed.
“I feel like he was hung out to dry,” Reid said of Kaepernick. “Everyone in here is talking about how much they support us.
“Nobody stepped up and said we support Colin’s right to do this. We all let him become public enemy No. 1 in this country, and he still doesn’t have a job.”
Kaepernick’s name was not mentioned again. He continues to pursue a labor grievance accusing the owners of colluding to keep him out of the league. He remains unsigned.
Before the meeting ended, owners had quoted Thomas Paine (Falcons owner Arthur Blank), invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s Selma march (Ross) and expressed great hope for what they all could accomplish together (“We have a chance to do something monumental,” declared New York Giants owner John Mara).