Players, owner unite in protest ... with one voice
East Rutherford, N.J.— They stood with locked arms or bent knees in a way they didn’t expect, on a Sunday they didn’t ask for, with amessage they all hoped— black and white, young and old, rich like Miami Dolphins owner Steve Ross and rich like center Mike Pouncey — would resonate in one voice.
“We’re in this together,” said Ross.
“Together,” Pouncey said.
Did you sense the unity in that moment?
Because that’s central to the message delivered during Sunday’s national anthem, not just by the Dolphins on one sideline and the New York Jets on the other sideline at MetLife Stadium, but by most teams across the NFL for this pre-game moment.
All this peaceful, unifying, mostly arm linking protest Sunday came in reaction to President Donald Trump’s Wrestlemania-style message Friday night at a campaign event in Alabama calling for team owners cut players disrespecting the flag—“Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!”
And he kept that message aflame on twitter. “Fire or suspend!”
And he began telling fans to boycott football.
What aworld this is where the football players are the ones acting like grown-ups. That’s the onewe lived in Sunday. And the oddest part of all this is until Trump’s speech, and subsequent tweets packing more noise, the NFL players’ protest was effectively over.
If not gone, itwas going. If not silent, it was softened. The protest for equality that led Kenny Stills and Michael Thomas to kneel during the anthem last season had moved on to where no Dolphins player knelt in the season opener. None planned to all year.
Stills and Thomas knelt again Sunday with at least three other Dolphins. And Stills was saying in the locker room that Trump’s words were, “an attempt to demean and intimidate.” And Julius Thomas, who had never knelt, joined them, simply because, “It was important to show we’re in this together.”
Michael Thomas stood there, emotion in his voice, saying, “It just amazes me with everything else that’s going on in this world, especially involving the U.S., that’s what you’re concerned aboutmy man? You’re the leader of the freeworld, and that’s what you’re talking about?
“As a man and a father, as an African-American man, as someone in the NFL— as one of those ‘sons of bitches’— I took it personally. But it’s bigger than me. I’ve got a daughter who has to live in this world. I’m…
His voice began to waver, his eyes to water.
“I’m gonna do whatever I got to do that she can look at her dad and say, ‘Hey, he tried to make change.’ ”
Acouple of teammates put their arms around him and pulled him back to his locker. They had all met Saturday night for a quick team meeting in the hotel. No more than10 minutes. There itwas agreed to get together as a team, aswell to ask Ross to join them on the pre-game sideline.
Ross had issued a statement Saturday in the wake of Trump’s comments calling for “unifying leadership and not more divisiveness.” Nowhe stood answering questions about locking arms with Pouncey on one side and safety Reshad Jones on the other during the national anthem.
The Republic won’t rise or fall on moments like this, no one will be talked off their personal viewpoints. In fact, one of the opinions already coming out was the Dolphins lost this game because theywere too distracted by the pre-game protest.
Didn’t the Jets have a similar arm-linking protest? Didn’t they meet and discuss what to do, too? If anything, the Jets are more in the middle of this controversy, as team owner Woody Johnson was appointed by Trump as the ambassador to the United Kingdom.
“Wewere together as a team,” Jets quarterback Josh McCown said. Sound familiar? The Dolphins looked like a team in trouble on the field. Couldn’t run. Couldn’t pass. Couldn’t stop a Jets offense led by McCown by the end of the day.
“It kind of baffles me what just happened,” Dolphins defensive end Cameron Wake said.
It baffles everyone they had to link arms and, in some cases, kneel downagain, in a protest that had run its course. Even they said so. But Trump brought it back to life and so the Dolphins were united for a moment, black and white, old and young, just as they should have been. As they felt a need to be.