Former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer offered some “ridiculous” comments about Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protest Sunday and figured he might as well just keep the idiotic rants rolling, Deadspin reports.
Dilfer probably wishes he didn’t say that. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)
Dilfer criticized Kaepernick for taking the focus off his team and turning the spotlight toward himself, due to his ongoing protest against racial injustice. (RELATED: Kaepernick Responds To Trent Dilfer’s ‘Ridiculous’ Rant)
Dilfer claimed it is Kaepernick’s job as a backup quarterback to “be quiet and sit in the shadows and get the starter ready to play in week 1. Yet he chose a time where all of a sudden, he became the center of attention.”
Kaepernick had some words for Dilfer after hearing his comments:
“[Saying] ‘You’re a backup quarterback, stay in your place,’ that’s an issue. To me, you’re telling me that my position as a backup quarterback and being quiet is more important than people’s lives. I would ask him to really have a conversation with the families of people that have been murdered and see if he still feels that way, because I bet you he doesn’t. Just ’cause he hasn’t experienced that type of oppression.”
“I hope he goes home and really thinks about what he said, and how it impacts not just me, but how it impacts people whose lives are affected by these issues on a daily basis.”
Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid kneel during the national anthem. (Photo: Getty Images)
Dilfer thinks the media has been unfair to his statement on Kaepernick, choosing to focus only on his remarks of what his job is as a backup quarterback instead of taking it in the “complete football context,” Dilfer said on KNBR Tuesday.
So, he thought it would be a good idea to take this opportunity to clarify what he was trying to say using his own experiences as a backup quarterback:
“My wife and I had been introduced to some really disturbing stuff and other social injustices: Childhood slavery in our country. And I’d gone to a couple seminars and presentations where we got really deep in the weeds about this issue. It became a passion of ours to help fight this battle of childhood slavery around the country and I had a very big platform in Seattle and I could have leveraged being a Seattle Seahawk, being an NFL quarterback, done a lot to get that message out there, but I chose not to at the sake of not wanting to disrupt the team and I never want to draw attention to myself, and take it away from Matt, the rest of our team and our preparation to win.”
So Trent, being the upstanding teammate that he is, chose to remain quiet about the issue of child slavery for the sake of a damn football team. Heaven forbid that Trent would have to sacrifice his reputation as a quiet backup hanging in the shadows to open a dialogue about the issue of childhood slavery in America.
“It’s a good thing he stayed quiet so Seattle could achieve its 9-7 record in peace,” Deadspin’s Samer Kalaf writes.
Kaepernick’s 49ers, however, opened up the season with a 28-0 beatdown of the Los Angeles Rams. It was abundantly clear Monday night that Kaepernick’s protest isn’t distracting the team from what they need to do on the field.