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berger and the rest of the team’s leaders to amend their original idea, agreed upon after a Saturday night team meeting, which was to stand in the locker room during the anthem in an attempted show of unity. Part of the reason Villanueva pushed for change: He’d received texts from wounded veterans asking him to stand for the anthem.
Villanueva’s suggestion, he said, was to stand with Roethlisberger and the team’s other captains at the front of the tunnel. That didn’t work out due to, as Roethlisberger said, pregame “chaos” in a small area, and Villanueva was left to stand alone with his teammates about 20 feet behind him.
Villanueva said of some of his teammates, “They’re getting negative feedback because they didn’t stand up for the national anthem when in reality, they would’ve done it. They were fighting to stand up for the national anthem.”
He said he doesn’t take offense to players who have chosen to take a knee during the anthem in protest of “injustices and racial divide,” including former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt for the anthem in protest of police brutality and racial injustice last season.
“I take no offense,” Villanueva said. “I don’t think veterans at the end of the day take any offense. They actually signed up and fought so that somebody could take a knee and protest peacefully whatever it is that their hearts desire.”