If boycott is planned, stays mum on Shurmur stance
somewhere off the field but requires players on the field to stand for the anthem or else be fined.
Last season, Thomas did more off the field to reinforce that his protest was about making a social difference. Conversations between Miami owner Stephen Ross and Thomas yielded the creation of an annual fund to advocate for social justice programs and the genesis of the Project Change Scholarship to pay the full, four-year college tuition for one high school student each year. The goal of the scholarship is to impact students’ lives so they can change their community positively.
And it sounds like Thomas is trying to do the same kind of work with the Giants.
“Definitely gonna do scholarships. This organization is trying to work with me to do some personal scholarships in our community,” Thomas said. “I’m trying to do one back in my hometown. I believe Miami’s gonna give their first one out this offseason that I had a big part establishing out there. The work in the community? With me and my brothers, that’s gonna continue. No doubt.”
There should be some hard, direct conversations coming, however, between Thomas, defensive end Olivier Vernon (who knelt last year as a Giant) and head coach Pat Shurmur.
For while Thomas resisted saying too much, he clearly did work HOWARD SIMMONS/NEWS to subdue his reaction to Shurmur’s Tuesday comment that the coach trusts players to “do the right thing” with regards to the anthem — the type of phrasing that confuses the players’ message as a lack of patriotism.
Thomas grinned and paused as if to suppress his first impulse.
“Uh, that’s a good question,” Thomas said. “But no, for me, it’s just, obviously it’s already been stated what this is about. It’s bigger than us. A lot of people try to make it about something else than what it is, but for me and my brothers, we know in our hearts why we’re doing it, why we started to take this stance, and we’re not gonna let it get distorted.
“If we have to find different methods, different ways to get our message across and still continue to do work in the community, we’re gonna do that,” he added. “But I’m not gonna get emotionally hijacked about it, not gonna make comments, just keep doing what we gotta do.”
Thomas would not share if the Giants had discussed his previous kneeling for the anthem during their free agency courtship: “Everything that was talked about was in between me, the Mara family, the Giants organization. We’re gonna keep that between us.” But he did say it came up with other players this offseason.
“These are situations that (are) going on right now,” he said. “I know our union is looking into all that type of stuff because it was brought up with some guys in free agency. That’s gonna be addressed. But any conversation I had with anybody we’re gonna keep it between us.”
So now he sees being a Giant as an opportunity to make a positive difference.
“Definitely,” he said. “using this New York platform to make a big change.”
CONNECTING: Eli Manning connected on a well-placed deep ball down the right sideline to Evan Engram with linebacker Kareem Martin in tight coverage. Davis Webb also dropped a pretty deep ball down the same sideline that Kalif Raymond hauled in.