Roger Goodell Wishes NFL Had Listened to Kapernick

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said he wishes the NFL had listened to former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick when he began kneeling for the national anthem in 2016.

Goodell made the comment during an interview with former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho. Maybe, 2021 in the NFL will be different?

“We had invited him in several times to have the conversation, to have the dialogue,” Goodell said in the video posted Sunday. “I wish we had the benefit of that. We never did. And we would’ve benefited from that, absolutely.”

Goodell also said that players kneeling is “not about the flag” and that their intentions are being “mischaracterized.”
“These are not people who are unpatriotic. They’re not disloyal. They’re not against our military,” Goodell said. “In fact, many of those guys were in the military, and they’re a military family. And what they were trying to do is exercise their right to bring attention to something that needs to get fixed. And that misrepresentation of who they were and what they were doing was the thing that really gnawed at me.”

Roger Goodell Wishes the NFL Would Have Been Open

In June, Goodell released a video in which he apologized on behalf of the league for not doing a better job of listening to players’ concerns about racial inequality. Goodell told Acho that he had hopes the death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody in May made people realize what players were protesting and that he regrets that the league did not do a better job of supporting those protests. Roger Goodell wishes he would have done more.

“… That’s where we should have listened sooner,” Goodell said. “And that’s where we should have been in there with them, understanding and figuring out what we can do as the NFL.”

In another interview in June, Goodell said he supports and encourages teams to sign Kaepernick. The 32-year-old quarterback has not played in the NFL since the 2016 season.