FOXBORO, Mass. — Devin McCourty is typically the life of the party in the New England Patriots’ locker room, but he took on a different tone Thursday in a video conference call with reporters.
McCourty is feeling “hopeless” after seeing a video of Kenosha (Wisc.) police shoot Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man with his children, seven times.
The Patriots, unlike seven other teams across the NFL who postponed their training camp sessions, practiced Thursday. McCourty didn’t participate but the free safety’s absence was unrelated to any social issues, and he doesn’t have a strong opinion on whether the team should or shouldn’t have taken the field.
Frankly, he’s out of answers.
“Everybody in this locker room has so many thoughts and feelings going on, but I also don’t know if we don’t practice one day and go back practicing the next day, I don’t know what that really accomplishes,” McCourty said. “I’ve done a lot of this work over the last couple of years. I’ve studied things. I’ve tried to do different things. I know we could take a whole day off and we could talk about a whole bunch of different things. We have talked as a team. We’ve done all that stuff. It just hasn’t mattered.
“Obviously, football distracts people from that. But if there was no football, I don’t think people are still going to care about black and brown people in our country.”
McCourty said it was powerful to see NBA players choose to cancel games Wednesday night to not distract from issues of racial inequality in the United States. The Indianapolis Colts, New York Jets, Arizona Cardinals, Tennessee Titans, Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers and Washington Football Team all canceled practice Thursday morning. The Detroit Lions canceled a training camp session Tuesday.
McCourty questioned if it would accomplish anything.
“I’m not saying they’re wrong,” McCourty said. “I’m just being honest with you. I don’t know. I don’t have those answers. I don’t know what’s the right thing to do.”
Athletes have attempted to be at the forefront of addressing inequality, but McCourty, who was requested by the media to speak Thursday on this topic, acknowledged some of the undue pressure that gets placed on them in these times. And he wondered why other powerful people in this country aren’t making similar sacrifices.
“I saw something Draymond Green posted about why should athletes stop playing and be the only people to stop playing when why doesn’t some of the top businesses, whether it’s Apple or something like that, why doesn’t their CEO stop going to work?” McCoury said.
“So like there’s definitely pressure to go out there and do something. Right now there’s pressure on every team that goes out and practices. Like, ‘you should be canceling practices’ is the theme right now. Or when the anthem comes up, ‘you should be taking a knee for the anthem.’ It’s just like at the end of all of that if the goal is to help these different people in different areas or trying to get rid of all the systems that are holding or oppressing different people, when we do those things, does that really affect change? And that’s what I think is the issue right now and something we have to try to find.”
McCourty belives that everything should be on the table from boycotting games to NFL owners getting more involved. But he’s still unsure if anything ultimately will be effective.
“If we all boycott Week 1, will that solve the problem?” McCourty wondered. “I don’t know because does it matter if we all come back to play Week 2?”
McCourty, like many people across the country, is at a loss.
