NFL players angry over Trump’s insult

President Donald Trump struck a nerve with NFL players when he implored team owners to “get that son of a bitch off the field” for protesting during the national anthem.

The line drew loud applause at the president’s political rally in Huntsville, Alabama, but the words cut deep into America’s most popular sports league, where the majority of players are black and many grew up in tough neighborhoods, raised by strong women.

“I’m a son of a queen,” an emotional Falcons defensive lineman Grady Jarrett said.

“There are no SOBs in this league,” Lions coach Jim Caldwell said Sunday, when at least 200 NFL players either knelt, sat, stretched or prayed during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest Trump’s remarks. Three teams didn’t even take the field until the national anthem was over.

The protest campaign that started last year with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was down to just six players last week. But Trump’s weekend attack on athletes sparked angry reactions from around the sports world and drew defiance from most of the NFL.

Players, owners and commissioners past and present chastised the president for his divisive remarks, but the angriest responses came from players upset that he’d insulted their mothers.

“Once again, this is a tragedy in this country that we have to sit here and still have these discussions,” Browns rookie quarterback DeShone Kizer said following a 31-28 loss to the Indianapolis Colts. “I know for a fact that I’m no son of a bitch, and I plan on continuing forward and doing whatever I can from my position to promote the equality that’s needed in this country.”

Buccaneers wide receivers Mike Evans and DeSean Jackson, who knelt at the Bucs-Vikings game, said Trump’s remarks were especially disturbing when juxtaposed to his recent comments equating white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, with counter-protesters.

“Why is he singling out athletes?” Evans asked. “I really don’t really see him tweeting about all the other things going on, the neo-Nazis, the situation in Charlottesville. I don’t really see him talking about that much. But he has the time and the nerve to call out the Golden State Warriors, Stephen Curry, all of us in the NFL that took a knee out of protesting. He has the time to do that? It’s not right.

“And he called us SOBs, so that was very disrespectful.”

Jackson said, “It’s just blatant disrespect. I look at it as my mom’s the queen. (We’re) not sons of any ‘B’s.”