Colin Kaepernick ‘Disappointed’ More NFL Players Didn’t Kneel With Him During Anthem in 2016 Protest

Colin Kaepernick is looking back at the national anthem protest he began a decade ago.

During the Friday, September 11, episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour, Kaepernick, 38, recalled how former San Francisco 49ers teammate Eric Reid approached him about joining the protest after Kaepernick initially sat alone during the anthem.

In 2016, the former quarterback began kneeling at the start of NFL games in protest of police brutality and racial inequality.

“The first three games, I had been sitting by myself,” Kaepernick recalled on the podcast.

He explained that after his protest began attracting attention, Reid came to him about participating. “Look, I’m from Baton Rouge. I care deeply about this as well. I want to join you and be supportive in it,” Kaepernick recalled Reid telling him.

While Reid chose to stand alongside him, Kaepernick said he had hoped more of his teammates and fellow NFL players would do the same.

When podcast host David Remnick asked whether he was “disappointed” that more players didn’t join him, Kaepernick answered, “Yes.”

Remnick then asked whether other players were scared, and Kaepernick replied, “Yeah,” explaining: “I had players that came back and were like, ‘I talked to my agent about it, or I talked to my family about it.'”

Kaepernick recalled one conversation that particularly surprised him. “I had one player that came back and was like, ‘My owner told me that I can’t protest,'” he said. “And that was an unfathomable sentence to me.”

Kaepernick began his protest during the 2016 NFL preseason, initially sitting during the national anthem to call attention to police brutality and racial injustice. Despite the publicity, the athlete said no one directly told him to stop.

“They wouldn’t explicitly frame it that way, but it would be like, ‘Well, have you thought about doing something else?'” he said on The New Yorker Radio Hour. “It was always a passive-aggressive [way of] trying to redirect, which is interesting.”

Kaepernick also expressed disappointment with the broader response from NFL players when Remnick asked who had let him down. “I would say largely NFL players, I don’t think collectively responded,” he said. “I do think there was a missed opportunity there.”

Kaepernick has not played in the NFL since the 2016 season. During the interview, he maintained that he would still return to the NFL field if given the opportunity. “Oh, we’d be suited up and on the field throwing the football,” he said.