The NFL’s players had a long weekend for digesting last Wednesday’s changes to the anthem policy. And some of them are now sharing their thoughts about the
situation. Panthers receiver Torrey Smith explained his own views on
Tuesday.
“I think when you see a reactive policy — and when I say that I mean something that’s done in response to what guys have done in the past — I always
think that’s a problem, especially when the message has been changed,” Smith
said, via the team’s official website. “Guys aren’t against the military. [Colin
Kaepernick] originally started it against police brutality. It was never against
the military, it was never about the military, but that narrative changed.”
The changed narrative, coupled with the changed policy, has made players like Kaepernick into the bad guys.
“The NFL is trying to do right by donating money to a lot of different causes that are helping people Alex Pietrangelo Jersey Kids , oppressed areas in our country, underprivileged areas in our country, which is a great thing,” Smith said. “But
you do that and then you also tell your guys to stand up when they’re protesting
when, honestly, I thought it had died off in a lot of different ways. [When] you
have the league putting this in, it almost makes it seem like a guy like
Kaepernick or Eric Reid — the guys who started it —?what they did was in vain,
that they were villains. That’s not the case.”
It creates a discouraging situation for players like Smith.
“You’re disappointed but not surprised because Dallas Goedert Color Rush Jersey , at the end of the day, the league is all about money, it’s a business,” Smith said. “But to try to silence guys when
they’re trying to do the right thing for our country, I mean, I really don’t
know what to say about it.”
Smith thinks the new policy “could stir things up, which is the problem because you’re stirring things up because you’ve been told to be quiet.”
“It could’ve been done together to figure out what we can do to move forward and what would be best for the players,” Smith said. “The whole reason guys were
protesting was to draw awareness to something. To take that away and
be Patriots Cheap Jerseys , ‘Hey, don’t do that anymore,’ like you’re anti-American or something like people
try to paint — it is very frustrating to continue to see that false
narrative.”
So Smith doesn’t think the issue is over, as much as the NFL would like it to be.
“You’re going to see reactive things from guys, probably,” Smith said. “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. But if you do it, you see it Womens Luke Kunin Jersey , it takes away even further from what the message was, which was against police brutality, which evolved to the criminal
justice system and a lot of other inequalities that we have in this country. So
it’s frustrating to see that the NFL had the opportunity to kind of right the
wrongs and change the narrative that’s best for everyone — people who are
offended by protests and a league that’s 70-percent African American that
understands and lived a lot of these problems that guys are protesting about. So
dropped the ball there, but we’ll see where it goes.”
The real question is whether the NFL would ever be willing to admit that it dropped the ball last week, and then to once again change the policy. This time
with real input from the players and a true compromise — not one among those who
run the sport but one among those who own the teams and those who are the sport.
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