Aaron Rodgers, now and for the rest of his life, will be known as a football player — one of the best of all time, in fact.
But the Green Bay Packers quarterback on Thursday night proved he and his teammates and every other player in the NFL are more than, well, just football players.
NFL players recently were galvanized by the comments of President Donald Trump, who at a rally last week in Alabama, called on NFL owners to fire players who knelt during the national anthem. The timing of Trump’s comments was odd, as such protests — started last preseason by Colin Kaepernick — had started to dwindle and were no longer in the spotlight.
However, with Trump’s harsh rhetoric — essentially calling protesting players “sons of bitches” — the league and its players shot back last week with protests across the league. That led to a week of divisive arguments from both sides. Packers players, looking to ease that divisiveness, called on fans at Thursday night’s game against the Chicago Bears to lock arms as the team would do during the national anthem.
As one reporter pointed out to Rodgers after the game, not a lot of fans took up the team on its invitation, and Rodgers responded with a poignant message about what he and his teammates have tried to do in the last week.
“Well, it was an invitation to join us. The beauty is, it’s a free country so they can choose to do it or not,” Rodgers told reporters. “The messaging of this, unfortunately, needs to continue to be redirected I think. It’s never been about the national anthem, it’s never been about the military. We’re all patriotic in the locker room. We all love our troops.
“This is about something bigger than that, an invitation to show unity in the face of some divisiveness from the top in our country. I’m proud of our guys. This has been a galvanizing situation for us. In the locker room, and outside the locker room if you saw (Jordy Nelson’s) comments, there’s been some great conversations that have been started.”
The remark about the “divisiveness from the top in our country” is a clear reference to Trump, and it seems like Trump’s comments really ticked off players across the league. While that might temporarily sway the protest conversation from where it originally started — protesting racial injustice in America — there must be some long-term benefit.
NFL players are galvanized in a way we haven’t seen in quite some time, and now it’s on them to make sure the conversation is steered back in the right direction.
“As much as some people want us to just shut up and play football, and keep the politics to politics,” Rodgers continued, “sports and politics have always intersected. If we can help continue a conversation through demonstration of unity like tonight, I think that’s a good thing.”
Thursday’s “demonstration of unity” was met with mixed reactions to which Rodgers — who’s been banging this drum for a week — had another good point.
“I think we could hear some USA chants as it started — fantastic — could also hear some negativity being yelled during the anthem,” he said. “Semantics there, right? What’s disrespectful to the anthem? Yelling things during it or standing at attention with arms locked facing the flag? I’ll let you decide.”
Again, there’s still a long way to go for these protests to be “successful,” but at the very least, Rodgers’ comments Thursday show that players — no matter their race, background or team — are united. Whether the country can do the same, however, is yet to be seen.
Thumbnail photo via Benny Sieu/USA TODAY Sports Images
