As protests against police brutality continued across the country, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees weighed in on Wednesday to object to NFL players kneeling during the national anthem. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, he said, “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.” He added that when he sees the flag, he thinks of his grandfathers who fought in World War II.
“And is everything right with our country right now?” Brees continued. “No, it is not. We still have a long way to go. But I think what you do by standing there and showing respect to the flag with your hand over your heart, is it shows unity. It shows that we are all in this together, we can all do better, and that we are all part of the solution.”
He echoed that broad appeal for unity in an Instagram apology for the comments on Thursday morning, accompanied by an image of a black hand and a white one shaking. As many pointed out on Twitter, the photo appears to be a stock image; if you search Google Images for “black handshake white,” you can find it in a few seconds.
“I would like to apologize to my friends, teammates, the City of New Orleans, the black community, NFL community and anyone I hurt with my comments yesterday,” Brees wrote.
It was a wide range of people to apologize to, but such was the array of people, including teammates, other NFL players, and athletes in different sports, who criticized his comments:
Colin Kaepernick, who’s effectively been blackballed from the NFL for his activism, began his kneeling protest of the national anthem in 2016. At the time Brees criticized Kaepernick’s protest, making more or less the same claim that he did on Wednesday when he told ESPN that the protest method was “disrespectful to the American flag.”
“In an attempt to talk about respect, unity, and solidarity centered around the American flag and the national anthem, I made comments that were insensitive and completely missed the mark on the issues we are facing right now as a country,” Brees wrote on Thursday. He emphasized that he has “ALWAYS been an ally, never an enemy.”
“I am sick about the way my comments were perceived yesterday,” Brees added, in that familiar semi-apology language. For all the objections to his initial comments, it’s not clear that a day in the hot seat and a stock image changed the substance of his view.
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