The NFL changed its stance on player protests, but the true test will come from Trump in the fall
- NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for the league's resistance to player protests, saying the NFL wanted "to be part of the much-needed change in this country."
- Goodell's words are a good starting point, but the NFL's true test will come in the fall when games begin, players take part in protests, and President Donald Trump attempts to vilify them.
- Trump has already made clear that he's happy to use the players' protest for political gain, and in 2018, pushed the league into a corner, calling for players who knelt during the anthem to lose their jobs.
- Goodell will likely have the chance to prove that the league does stand with the players when he's forced to respond to further complaints from the president.
The summer of 2020 has proved significant for the NFL.
On Friday, Roger Goodell put out a video apologizing for the league's previous resistance to player protests.
Goodell's statement came in response to a video put together by several superstar players. They demanded that the NFL make a more proactive statement in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and apologize for the way that the league had treated players taking part in protests against police brutality.
With Goodell's video, it appears that the players' effort worked, but the NFL will still have to do more to make good on the league's statement. Given President Donald Trump's response to player protests re-entering the news cycle, the league is likely to have a prime opportunity to let their actions speak louder than words in the coming season.
Trump has already made clear he's willing to use the proteting players for political gain
With more than 100,000 Americans dead due to the COVID-19 pandemic and protests across the country rallying against police brutality, Trump took the time to insert himself into the NFL discourse once again.
Figures around the sports world criticized Saints quarterback Drew Brees after saying he would "never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country." As Brees' critics pointed out, Brees had made the conversation about himself rather than those taking part in the protest and centered the argument around the flag rather than police brutality.
Brees apologized for his remarks, with some of his teammates publicly accepting his apology. Still, on Friday, Trump did his best to reignite the controversy surrounding the protests on Twitter, dragging Brees into the conversation once again.
"I am a big fan of Drew Brees. I think he's truly one of the greatest quarterbacks, but he should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag. OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high," Trump tweeted.
"We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag - NO KNEELING!"
Brees responded by fact-checking the president, showing a better understanding of the protest than he had just two days earlier.
"Through my ongoing conversations with friends, teammates, and leaders in the black community, I realize this is not an issue about the American flag," Brees said. "It has never been. We can no longer use the flag to turn people away or distract them from the real issues that face our black communities.
"We did this back in 2017, and regretfully I brought it back with my comments this week. We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial & prison reform."
Brees' response was a hearteningly strong reply to Trump after the president had seemed to dictate some of the league's policy surrounding protests during the national anthem in the past. After the 2017 season, the NFL attempted to put a rule in place that would require players to either stand during the anthem or remain in the locker room as the pre-game festivities took place.
It was a half-measure meant to please Trump, and it backfired spectacularly. "I don't think people should be staying in locker rooms," Trump said on "Fox & Friends" after the NFL announced the policy.
"You have to stand proudly for the national anthem, or you shouldn't be playing, you shouldn't be there, maybe you shouldn't be in the country," Trump continued, adding that the NFL owners "did the right thing."
Meanwhile, the players were outraged that the policy was passed apparently without their input.
"We were not consulted ahead of this meeting on any potential changes to the anthem policy," NFLPA spokesperson George Atallah told ESPN at the time. "If there are changes to the policy that put players in a position where they could be disciplined or fined, we are going to do what we always do — fight anything that encroaches on players' rights to the end."
Ultimately, the new rule was grounded before the NFL put in place, but the tension between protesting players, Trump, and the NFL front office caught in the middle was still evident, and this fall the whole debate could come front and center once again.
Trump will likely continue his tirade against the protests, and it's up to the NFL to stand up for players' rights
In 2018, a report from Andrew Beaton at the Wall Street Journal gave football fans a bit of insight into Trump's thinking regarding his criticism of player protests:
"This is a very winning, strong issue for me," Mr. Trump said in a phone call, according to a sworn deposition given by Mr. Jones and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. "Tell everybody, you can't win this one. This one lifts me."
No matter how often players explain that their protest is about police brutality, and no matter how long citizens around the country march and demonstrate in protest of the same issue, this isn't a topic Trump is going to let go of out of a moment of understanding.
This truth was evident back in 2017 when Trump initially called for players to lose their jobs should they take a knee.
"It's very clear that for his base, this is the red meat of all red meat because they're able to reframe this," said then-Fox News anchor Shepard Smith. "They're able to say, 'Oh, they're attacking the national anthem. They're attacking the troops. They're attacking the flag' — none of which they're doing. They're not doing any of that."
Smith continued: "Isn't this all a play to his base, and could it all possibly be so that they don't notice there is no healthcare and North Korea is the biggest mess since the Cold War?"
While the issues of healthcare and North Korea have been swapped out with an international pandemic that has killed more than 110,000 Americans and civil unrest that has resulted in mass demonstrations the likes of which the country hasn't seen since the 1960s, the point remains the same.
The start of the NFL season lines up neatly with the final run-up to the presidential election in November when Trump will be looking to animate his base, and he believes that framing protesting players as being anti-American is a reliable way to accomplish that goal.
While Goodell's comments last week felt like a big step forward about supporting protesting players, the true test will come when the season begins, with Trump turning up the heat and the protests, possibly a weekly story coming out of every NFL Sunday.
Brees' response to Trump provides a solid blueprint for how Goodell the league can react. He was respectful and informative and urged action from the president — a style of response that Goodell could easily put out in a statement come the fall.
The NFL can't turn back the clock on its treatment of Colin Kaepernick, but the coming showdown with Trump is an opportunity to show that it is committed to not repeating mistakes
Colin Kaepernick has not played in the NFL since the 2016 season. While there have been renewed calls for Kaepernick to get a deal, and the former 49ers quarterback still wants to play, the damage is done. Kaepernick missed out on what could have been some of the prime years of his career because he kneeled during the anthem.
The NFL can't change the past, but their response to whatever criticism comes their way this season could help prove that the league is truly committed to the values that Goodell expressed in his statement.
Actions speak louder than words, and if the NFL is truly ready to embrace the rights of its players to protest and enact change in the country, they should have plenty of opportunities to do so this fall.
It shouldn't take long to see how far their commitment goes.
- Read more: