Bobby Wagner thinks it’s possible an NFL club will refuse to play. ‘People are fed up’
Bobby Wagner stepped in front of the camera to start his Zoom video press conference, the way of this NFL COVID-19 season. He was wearing a black, Vote 2020 shirt with a Seahawks logo inside the “o.”
That’s his and his team’s latest initiative toward forging racial equality and social justice in the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement. They are not asking but imploring every eligible American to vote in the general election Nov. 3. The All-Pro linebacker and his teammates canceled a practice last month to hold a voter-registration drive, inside training camp at team headquarters, to ensure every Seahawk was registered to vote.
Will taking action for change in the NFL include following what the Milwaukee Bucks did last month: refuse to take the floor for an NBA playoff game?
Is it possible an NFL team, Seattle’s in particular, does not take the field for a game this season, which is to begin Thursday night with Houston playing at defending Super Bowl-champion Kansas City?
“I don’t know. The Bucks did it in a response to something that happened the day before (in Wisconsin, the shooting of Jacob Blake seven times in the back by a white police officer),” Wagner said Wednesday. “It happened, like, right there. So they were responding to something that happened right then and there.
“I think if an NFL team did it, it would be far away from what happened (in regards to the shooting of Blake).”
Then Wagner paused.
“But,” he added, “I wouldn’t put it past a team, honestly.
“Because I think everybody — including everybody in this building, everybody outside this building, in this world — a lot of people are fed up with how things are going in this world. And they want change. They are tired of the same thing.
“So, I think anything that gets the ball moving in the right way, I’m all for it.”
The Seahawks have been meeting to decide what actions they will do to in an effort to forge real change. Coach Pete Carroll has said he fully supports what his players want to do on issues Carroll says white people must no longer ignore.
In talking to players and those on and with the team, it’s apparent there will be some show of a unified protest by the Seahawks at games this season to demand racial equality and social justice. Wagner stressed that any plans for such action “will remain in house.”
To be clear: All signs are Seattle’s players will take the field to play and not boycott Sunday’s season opener at Atlanta.
The players are going to be wearing decals on their helmets to honor those killed and brutalized by police in racial incidents. Wide receiver DK Metcalf, a native of Mississippi, is putting Emmett Till’s name on the back of his helmet.
K.J. Wright, the longest-tenured Seahawk who is also from Mississippi, has organized an initiative that he and his teammates will be wearing shirts that read “We Want Justice” during warm-ups before games including Sunday’s against the Falcons.
Asked how important it was for the Seahawks to present a unified, powerful stance at games for racial equality and against police brutality, Wagner said: “I think it’s important just to understand what’s going on in this world right now.”
Wagner thought back to May, when the Seahawks took daily Zoom meetings that were supposed to be on football and playbook installations and turned them into intense, deep talks on the killing of Black people in America, on the need for action toward equality for Blacks and minorities. Those talks came as the Black Lives Matter movement swept the nation in the days and weeks following the death of George Floyd. A white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into the back of the Black man’s neck into pavement for more than 8 minutes.
“I can’t say that it’s gotten too much...better, you know, since then,” Wagner said Wednesday. “I think it’s just being conscious and aware of what’s going on in your world, and understanding the impact that you have, and you can have, in your community. Because I feel like it starts in your community.
“I think everybody is working and figuring out ways that they can impact their community and impact the world. So I think it’s really important that people are conscious of that.
“I don’t really think it’s about the gestures, because I feel like the gestures have been done. ...
“Having guys use their platform to make this world better I think is really important.”
Last month, The News Tribune asked Carroll if he thought it was possible the Seahawks, or any NFL team, would not take the field for a game this season.
“You know, anything’s possible,” he 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.
“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. 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.”
Asked if he thought it was possible the Seahawks would not take the field for a game, All-Pro safety Jamal Adams repeated his coach.
“Anything’s possible,” Adams said.
The Seahawks have been leaning forward for years into the Black Lives Matter movement, back to when Colin Kaepernick was kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games to protest racial inequality and police killing Black people. That was in 2016. Their discussions and efforts intensified during this summer’s wave of protests nationwide by Americans fed up with police brutality and killings, racial inequality and little tangible progress toward ending it across the U.S.
Players talked about how they were processing the shooting of Blake, on top of the shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, on top of a police killing officer Floyd...
In a team meeting the night before the Seahawks’ first mock-game scrimmage last month, the players were on a Zoom call Carroll arranged with Sen. Cory Booker, a one-time candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 2020 presidential election. Booker is former Stanford football player who became a Rhodes Scholar and went to Yale Law School before entering politics.
Carroll had met Booker 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. Carroll and Booker have since stayed in touch.
During the team Zoom call with Booker the night before the Bucks renewed the momentum of Black Lives Matter in their stunning way, Booker encouraged the Seahawks to use the full power they have in their public platforms to demand and in fact act toward change.
Quarterback Russell Wilson asked Booker a question on police brutality, inequality and racism in the U.S., per the team’s website.
Booker told Wilson and the Seahawks: “We have a poverty of empathy in this country.”
It’s a deficit the Seahawks players are vowing to help change while they play games this season.
“It was really, really a big evening for us,” Carroll said of Booker’s talk to the team.
“And there will be more to come.”
This story was originally published September 10, 2020 at 7:25 AM.
