Russell Wilson to KIRO AM: If Seahawks had a game this week they would not have played
If the Seahawks had a game to play this week, they wouldn’t have taken the field.
That’s what team captain Russell Wilson told KIRO-AM radio Friday morning in an interview, amid this week’s advancement of the Black Lives Matter movement and boycotts across sports.
Asked by 710 ESPN’ radio’s “Danny and Gallant” morning co-host Paul Gallant if the Seahawks had a game this week would they have joined boycotting teams from the NBA, Major League Baseball, the WNBA, the NHL and Major League Soccer and refused to play the game, Wilson said: “Yeah. For sure.”
The Seahawks’ first game is Sept. 13 at Atlanta.
This week coach Pete Carroll made clear the Seahawks intend to act, unified, as a team, during the NFL season to protest the lack of progress toward justice and humanity for all.
I asked Carroll Wednesday if it seemed possible an NFLl team—more to the point, his team—will do what the Milwaukee Bucks did this in the NBA playoffs: refuse to take a field and boycott a game when the NFL season begins in 2 1/2 weeks.
“You know, anything’s possible,” Carroll said.
“I mentioned to the players: this is the year of the protest season. This is a season of protests. So we’ll handle ourselves as we do.”
On the radio Friday Wilson also reiterated on the radio Friday what Pro Bowl cornerback Shaquill Griffin and Carroll said Wednesday, hours after the Bucks stopped the NBA playoffs by refusing to take the floor for their postseason game. The Bucks’ boycott came days after a white police officer in Wisconsin shot black man Jacob Blake seven times in the back in front of his family.
Seattle’s franchise quarterback, Griffin and Carroll said the Seahawks are in the middle of deep discussions on how to act in unity during the upcoming season to address the need for systemic change in our country.
Immediate, systemic change.
“I think this is...just witnessing what happened to Jacob, and everything else, and all the things that have added up to this, it’s devastating,” Wilson told 710 ESPN.
“It’s truly devastating.”
The players were scheduled to practice Friday afternoon at team headquarters in Renton.
“This isn’t like this hasn’t been going on for years. That’s the scary part, and the sad part,” Wilson said. “The difference is now we get to see it every day, because of social media, phones and everything else.
“I think the world is truly seeing the ugliness of society, at times. I think what’s truly disappointing is just know that we, as athletes, try to make a difference, and sometimes people don’t want to listen and don’t want to recognize that could have been us. That could be us. I think that’s a real reality.”
“So I think for us, as a team, for the Seahawks, we are definitely discussing, what do we do next? How do we make a change? How do we cause movement and how do we make a difference? We are in the midst of all that right now.
“We don’t have weeks, and we don’t have months, we don’t have years to change it. We’ve got to all do it together. And we’ve got to do it now. We need change now. We need people to make a difference now.”
The Seahawks have been leaning forward for years into the Black Lives Matter movement, back before white America understood the aims of the effort. Back to when Colin Kaepernick first began kneeling during national anthems at NFL games in 2016 to protest racial inequality and police brutality in America.
The team’s lean intensified during the summer’s wave of protests nationwide by citizens fed up with police brutality and killings, racial inequality and little tangible progress toward ending it across the U.S.
Tuesday night, the Seahawks’ team meeting before the mock game was a Zoom call Carroll arranged with Sen. Cory Booker, a one-time candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election.
Carroll had met Booker, a former Stanford football player who became a Rhodes Scholar and went to Yale Law School, when the senator came through the Seattle area earlier this year. The coach hosted him on one of Carroll’s podcasts with Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr this summer, as the Black Lives Matter movement was rolling across the nation. Carroll and Booker have since stayed in touch.
During the team Zoom call with Booker the night before the Bucks renewed the issue’s momentum in their stunning way, Wilson asked Booker a question on police brutality, inequality and racism in the U.S., per the team’s website.
“We have a poverty of empathy in this country,” Booker told the Seahawks.
Carroll said of Booker on the team’s call with him: “He was amazing.
“He emphasized to us that everybody has a voice now, and everybody can speak out, and everybody can have an effect on the people that follow them and watch them. On social media, you know, every one of our guys has a big following, to some extent, so they have people that care about what we think about.
“And so he urged us to think about what we really want to say to those people, and know that we do have the power to have an effect.
“It was really, really a big evening for us. And there will be more to come.”
Wednesday, before the mock game began—as the Bucks were staging their boycott and before the Mariners players voted unanimously to not play their night game in Major League Baseball against the San Diego Padres—Carroll gathered the Seahawks in the locker room at CenturyLink Field. It was not to talk about the scrimmage.
It was to talk more with his players about Black Lives Matter. About how the players are processing the shooting of Blake on top of the shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville on top of police killing George Floyd with a knee to his neck in Minneapolis, on top of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery while he was out jogging in Georgia....
“But this is a protest that doesn’t have an end to it until all the problems go away and we solve the issues and stuff,” Carroll said. “So we are going to do our part and continue to work to stay actively involved, and continue to stay in touch with the situations that are going on, by staying on the topics. And with it, just in hopes that we can be there to help and support where we can and influence where we can.
“The whole Black Lives Matter thing couldn’t be more obvious, how true this whole movement is. And how much focus and change needs to come. It’s just so clear. Hope we can do something to help. ...
“I am going to listen to my guys.
“The fact that this occurred, again, with Jacob Blake (shot), in plain view and plain sight and all that is just such a horrific thing,” Carroll said. “However we respond? We talked about it again (Wednesday) with our guys, and try to give some moments to the thought of the families and what everybody has to go through all that stuff. There’s...it’s...”
Carroll’s voice trailed off.
“This is just ridiculous that we are putting up with this. I cannot imagine that this continues to happen,” he said. “I don’t know how somebody could ever do that under the circumstances and the awareness that everybody should have right now. But it continues to happen. So, it continues to be a real problem.”
