The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Between the Lines Ep. 2: The Players

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick set a model for NFL players to follow when discussing matters of race and activism, but something else broke down the wall that led to the modern climate: The murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Episode 2 of Between the Lines reveals how NFL players became activist during the summer of 2020, and their perspective in the ways the league supports and hurts their message.Voices in the episode include former NFL players Doug Baldwin, Devin McCourty, Michael Johnson, and Don Davis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The summer of 2020 was a transformational moment for the world. Overnight, nationwide unrest, large crowds of demonstrators in multiple cities following the death of George Floyd. In response to a slew of murders of black bodies, demonstrations took place internationally in the backdrop of a global pandemic. Demonstrations over the death of George Floyd spread across six continents over the weekend. And chance of Black Lives Matter echoed from thousands of protesters in cities around the world. The reach of the collective movement was something that hadn't been seen in years. England taken knee in the campaign to eradicate racism from football. And pressure was placed on billion-dollar organizations to follow suit.

79 of the S&P 100 pledged money to organizations promoting diversity. It was something much bigger than the NFL, and it forced the league to act. Anytime you see a man get murdered based on the knee on the back of his neck, no matter what your color is, I think you could say that's wrong. Don Davis is a former NFL linebacker and currently works as an NFL Players Association representative. The national narratives has changed and that has allowed more athletes in general to use that platform with how social media is. people saw that you could connect as a community and therefore as well, it kind of allowed players to stand up and decide to take a stake. I'm Tashon Reed.

This is Between the Lines, Episode 2, The Players. To understand how infrequently NFL players became socially active before Colin Kaepernick, consider the case of Colin Alrid. I was sort of the Swiss Army knife for the linebacker room. I played every linebacker position, which in our 4-3 defense at the time was, I was the only one who was doing that. From 2007 to 2010, Allred was a backup linebacker for the Tennessee Titans. He was the kind of player that had to make his money on special teams and thrived doing the dirty work to keep an NFL career. And if anyone went down, I was the one who came in.

We had a great linebacker room. Keith Bullock was kind of our star linebacker, and we had some really, really good talent. Stephen Tulloch playing in the middle of David Thorne, some of the best, I think, four or three linebackers in the league at the time. And I was sort of the, a glue guy, you know, kind of helped keep things together. He often had political conversations with his family during his upbringing. But social activism was the furthest thing from his mind while he was in the league. In my family's kind of family where we would talk about politics around the kitchen table, and I was interested in it. To be honest, when I was in the NFL, I pretty much put everything to

the side, you know, every kind of extraneous thought, you know, any kind of outside interests. For me, being kind of a bubble guy every year, having to make the team, having to beat out a draft pick or a free agent signing, which I had to do every single year that I made the team, I really tried to limit myself to just focusing on my job. And I spent, I put so much of myself into being the best player I could be while I was there that I really wasn't very politically active when I was in the NFL. Like so many other players, Alwer's career ended suddenly. A neck injury during the 2010 season forced him to retire. So what does an injured end of the roster linebacker pursue for his second career?

He goes to Congress. This is one of the biggest upsets last night. Longtime congressional incumbent Republican Pete Sessions lost to Democrat Colin Allred, the 35-year-old former NFL players stunned the political scene in North Texas. When the experts said it wasn't possible, when they said there was no way we could take this race on and give North Texas the real leadership that it deserves. Allred is now a rising star in the political world.

After his NFL career ended, Allred went into law school, became a civil rights lawyer, worked for the Obama administration, and this past fall, won real. election for his second term as a congressman, representing a district in North Dallas. When I got to law school, and particularly when I started taking my first constitutional law class, I knew that the old interests were still really strong, and that that was what I was more interested in doing. I thought it could be more useful in the civil rights-slash-political space. Al-Rid's life is now completely consumed with activism and politics. But yet, as a pro-football player in the late 2000s, Arred couldn't imagine being outspoken on social issues.

There's the NFL, which has the kind of idea that we can find 10 guys who want your job and you're expendable. And there's also just football in general, which is trying to kind of, you know, over the years, you know, you are a part of a larger body. Have 10 guys on most plays that are not going to have any glory on that play to make it happen for the one guy who will. But the NFL is, of course, even worse because we don't have guaranteed contracts. You know, most guys are on short-term, relatively low-paying contracts compared to the amount of money in the sport. You feel very expendable. Being a quote-unquote distraction is a real risk because if you are, then they'll find someone who isn't.

This shouldn't be surprising. In 2016, when Colin Kaepernick spoke out, the NFL effectively muzzled its players. Kaepernick ended up out of the league and other players took notice. It's frustrating because you want to have guys who are willing to speak out about things that they believe in, whether you agree with it or not.

But I think that that's definitely playing a role now more so than I thought it was going to. During training camp in 2017, Doug Baldwin, a wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, addressed the feelings of many in the league speaking out could threaten your career. If you take a step back and you look at the overall picture, There's a lot of teams in this league that could use a quarterback of Colin Kaepernick's ability.

And why he doesn't have a job is at this point, it's, you know, it's very telling to me. And the fact that he hasn't been brought in the camp yet, it's questionable. But just three years later in 2020, following George Floyd, a large number of NFL players felt they couldn't be silent any longer. I think after Colin's situation, that's how a lot of young players felt that, you know what? we're not going to let our voices be silenced again. NFL network reporter Jim Trotter heard a different tone when he had conversations with players. It came on the heels of Colin Kaepernick and how he was treated, and you had players, in essence, who were saying,

who felt that they were silenced the first time around, or maybe they were afraid to speak the first time around, and now saying, I'm not going to allow that to happen again. Because I will never forget Alexander Madison, the Vikings running back saying to me, there is now strength in numbers. And he said, if they are going to fire one of us, they're going to have to fire all of us. The Athletics Bay Area columnist Marcus Thompson II covered Kaepernick back when he was essentially left out to dry.

This time around, Thompson saw a stark difference. The wave or the domino effect, the people said, all right, we got you. That mattered. Like, the Kaepernick component is obviously the spark, but it became this age where athletes were like, listen, man. Like, you know, we do have a value that extends beyond our athletic ability. We do understand that people listen to us and look up to us, and we can use that for something other than lining our pockets. In June of 2020, several prominent NFL players, including Patrick Mahomes, Sequan

Barkley, and Devante Adams collaborated for a Black Lives Matter video posted on social media. What if I was George Floyd? If I was George Floyd. If I was George Floyd. The video from the players proved to make a difference. After years of staying silent on social issues and showing no support for Kaepernick during his protest, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell put out his own video addressing the concerns raised by the players. We, the National Football League, condemn racism in the systematic oppression of black people.

We, the National Football League, admit we were wrong for national. not listening to NFL players earlier. We, the National Football League, believe Black Lives Matter. Instead of remaining idle, Goodell implied the NFL would join the fight for social justice. Like other corporate CEOs, Goodell didn't have much of a choice. I think that we had this incredible shock to the system of 2020 with George Floyd. HBO and ESPN's BOMONMOND-Jones noticed a significant shift. It wasn't just a number of players speaking out.

It was who was speaking out. The fact that Patrick Mahomes would put his face in name on anti-racism rhetoric is actually, I think, a bigger deal than people give you credit for, right? Like, the black quarterback has typically behaved like every other quarterback when it comes to anything of consequence and just stayed quiet. That's not the game that he chose to play. To the league's credit, the NFL's turnaround began a couple years before George Floyd. In 2017, Malcolm Jenkins and Anquine Bolden created the,

the Players Coalition. Hi, I'm Malcolm Jenkins. And I'm Anquam Bolden. We want to take this time to let our fellow football fans understand why we've been demonstrating. The organization is a nonprofit working to improve social justice and racial equality. The NFL not only voiced support for the organization, but adopted inspired change in 2018. We have a long way to go, but with players leading the way and the league supporting them, we're making major strides in the right direction.

Let's keep this drive going. which was created to support player-led efforts to identify meaningful ways to strengthen local communities and the greater society. Jones says the collaboration between the league and the Players Coalition was a turning point for how the NFL operated in communities. Once the NFL made the deal with the Players Coalition, things got a little bit different there. Like there was an arm and a mechanism that allowed it where if you had these things to say, well, hey, here's this other thing. you can go do something with it, then the league could then kind of get behind you. After Colin has busted down the door, the consequences for the rest of the people are nearly as strong, so long as they do this mostly in a way that the league, I don't want to necessarily say links league sanction,

but that the league can kind of wrap their arms around. Shortly after Goodell released his video, the NFL pledged a quarter of a billion dollars over 10 years to help advance social justice. During the season, messages such as in racism were painted on fields and placed on equipment. Jim Trotter says that following George Floyd, NFL players realized the influence they had, which had rarely been used when it came to social issues. It's almost as if we just take it as fact that owners and the league officials have all the power. The game is still about the players. If they don't play, there is no game.

But what did we see in the NBA after George Floyd was marked? or subsequent killings to that. When we saw Milwaukee Bucks, said, we're not playing tonight. And then other teams said, players on other teams said, you know what? We're not playing tonight. I'm just going to say to you, I think you're right. The owners have a hell of a lot of power. The league officials have a lot of power.

But the players have a hell of a lot of power, too, if they ever collectively decide to wield it. Players haven't just become more aware of that power. They're starting to use it. Sit around and not do anything about what was going on in our country, at least address it from a perspective that I could make, have some impact in. Before Doug Baldwin became a key figure during the Seahawks Legion of Boom era, he was a Stanford graduate. He'd always been intellectually inclined, but before Kaepernick, he had no plans of getting heavily involved in activism and politics. To be honest with you, I didn't really pay attention to it because it wasn't something that was on my purview when I was playing early on. So it wasn't even something that I was aware of.

When Kaepernick started his protest in 2016, the cause he fought for became a topic of discussion in the Seahawks locker room. Baldwin noted that it was a dramatic pivot away from the usual topics. Politics usually didn't have a place in the locker room. We didn't talk much about, you know, what was going on in a political landscape. And we would talk about different things, different subjects, but like it was never to the height that I think it became once Kaepernick took a knee. and the discussions around what was going on in our country, they were so prevalent. You couldn't get away from it.

The more he'd thought about it, Baldwin found himself motivated to find a way to make an impact, specifically when it came to police brutality. I really wanted to get their perspective because you see something on camera, on TV, and it's like, clearly know that that's not right, that something's wrong here, but there's so many people who are arguing the other way.

The only way that I know how to get to any resolution is to have a conversation with them, and so that's what I did. He reached out to law enforcement in Seattle in an effort to come to understand their perspective. From there, he attempted to bridge the gap between them and the citizens who made up the community he lived in. I went and spoke to some law enforcement officers that train all the officers in the state of Washington and just was like, look, help me understand this. Help me explain it from your perspective so that I can be empathetic when I go and talk to, you know, political head, legislators and try to get enact some change. because if I was to push something, if I was to try to do anything in that space,

I wanted to be able to come at it from an angle where, hey, I've done the work, I see your perspective, I see your perspective, but here's what we're being in the middle, and this is how we get changed. As Baldwin continued his work in Seattle, he noticed that some of his Seahawk teammates were focused on the same issues that he was. Michael Bennett, myself, and Cliff April, we continuously do a lot of things in service of the community. and every time we would show up, it was like we were overlapping and a lot of things that we were doing.

But we were also kind of in our silos, and there wasn't a lot of conversation between the organizations we were supporting because they just didn't know about each other. That realization led Baldwin, Averill, and Bennett to create Champions of Change in 2022. The group's primary focus is on improving the lives of families in the Seattle community and boosting charities that do similar work. And so Champions of Change was just this attempt to, you know, number one, shine light on these organizations, smaller organizations that don't typically get the pub that larger nonprofits get, shining the spotlight on them and demonstrating the impact that they have, raising money for them so that they can scale and do more of what they do in the community. But then, and I think most importantly, is like when you put a spotlight on them and you give them the money to scale, then they're able to collaborate with each other on a higher level. The efforts that Baldwin, Bennett, and Averall are making are things that teams once viewed as counterproductive toward their roles as football players. That was never true, but it's something that players had to be conscious of.

You want to look at guys and say, well, you're in this role, you know, you need to be doing this, you need to be doing that. That's a person of choice. If it's something that's near to you, do it, you know, more proud to you. If it's not your thing, it is not. That's former NFL defensive end Michael Johnson, who played for the Bucks and Bengals throughout the 2010s. Johnson grew up in Selma, Alabama, a noteworthy city in the Civil Rights Movement. Selma's in the Black Belt of Alabama.

Historically, being a poor area, it was mostly a lot of agriculture. You trace it all the way back, that's where a lot of the, you know, big plantation and stuff were. And so when all that end, now you just got a whole bunch of farmland. So it can be hard down now. Johnson's roots in Selma spurred him to start early in activism. During his rookie year in the league, he started the MJ-9390 Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on finding ways to combat poverty. Just coming from that, wanting to do whatever I could to meet the needs or the community,

you know, whether that was young kids, school supply, camps. I just wanted to try to do my best to, you know, make a drive. in the bucket. Starting in 2011 as a player on the Bengals, Johnson began to incorporate work involving the Cincinnati Police Departments into his organization. Who wanted to bring it to the table from the law enforcement side and from the public civilian side. Because you'd be surprised at the questions kids ask and the stuff that they don't know, you know, but you don't know until you're going to talk. You know, the kids are as like, are the police going to shoot you? Well, they're seeing it on TV. That's really what they think.

You know, so they scare the police. You're out of situations where this side scared, that side scared, and when you've got fear in the situation, it's not good. I just want to really prepare the kids for different situations and hopefully save life. Police brutality is nothing new, but it's become more visible in recent years. Following the summer of 2020, Johnson altered the focus of his organization. Me being from Selma, understanding, like, my mama always was on.

me about, hey, you got to make it home. This life is a game, and especially being a black man in America, it's different rules for us. I'm going to just keep it real. And you got to learn how to navigate that, or you can find yourself in a compromising position. So I was always taught that growing up, you know, get home. You may be right in your stands.

I don't want to be writing my stands and end up on a T-shirt because I didn't ran into a bad apple. Like Johnson, Patriot Safety Devin McCordy always made it a point to be active in the community. You know, me and my brother do a lot of work with sickle cell. You know, sickle cell is in my family, so that's how I got involved in it. Devin and his twin brother Jason, who also played in the NFL, got started together early in their careers. Since, I think it was like 2012 or 13, but that deals with a lot of, you know, kind of social justice and the health care with how patients are treated. And then we just started bridging those two things and kind of full force. Kaepernick's protests influenced McCordy to take a broader look at social justice issues.

My big thing was education, kind of economic advancement. The thing is, like, for me, I learned, like, hey, these could be things I'm passionate about, but like, what's going all right around? Like, what needs my voice and getting involved in, you know, at this moment? I felt like that was more important than kind of selfishly what I thought, you know, should be done. So I always felt like the only way to do that is listening to those people who are in those communities. They're involved in those things. McCordy has honed in on criminal justice reform. He's held panels on the topic and testified to help pass legislation at the Massachusetts State House.

Raising the age of juvenile justice, a young person could be involved into the system. We've moved it from the low end from seven to 12. We were a part of passing a bill for education to put $1 billion in the Massachusetts education. I'm not a real guy in politics and different things like that. So when people start talking us about legislation, like getting things done on that level and not just protesting and doing things in the streets, but actually going to the statehouse and getting bills and stuff fast, that opened my eyes. And I was like, man, we need to keep pushing this. Like, there's so much more we can do. The impact of George Floyd in 2020 has extended further than the players or the league office.

McCordy has also seen a greater willingness from coaches, team executives, and owners to get involved, even on teams like the Patriots, who are notorious for teaching their players to stick solely to football. One of the coolest things we help a man get his sentence commuted and was released out of prison after 28 years. Last year, Coach Bill Belichick and the coaching staff joined McCordy and several players in a campaign to advocate for the release. of a convicted man named William Allen. Back in the day, it was called Joint Venture felony, and anything that happened during that crime, both people would be charged with him during the crime.

The other guy that he did the robbery with, stab and killed him, and William was 20 years old, didn't fully understand. So he decided to go to trial, another guy, you know, took a plea deal. He got first-degree murder, he got life without the possibility of parole. You know, he was in prison. And after 11 years, the guy who committed the crime, the actual murder was released from prison, and he still sat in prison.

The Patriots Collective signed off on the letter to the governor of Massachusetts, pushing for Allen's release. We found it and got introduced his story and petitioned the governor to listen to her story. Our whole coaching staff, including Coach Belichick, signed a letter to the governor. I wrote a letter to the governor. The Massachusetts Parole Board has voted unanimously to grant parole to a man convicted for his role in a 1994 murder. William Allen has served nearly 28 years in prison. With buttoned-up organizations like the Patriots and others getting on board with social justice efforts, it's whittled down the

excuses for others league-wide not to do so. For the most part, the NFL has followed suit. With that being said, there's still work to be done in order to ensure that continues. Without the players pushing it, it will die. More on that after the break. To listen to every episode, of Between the Lines, ad-free, and bonus full-length interviews with people like Doug Williams, Bumani Jones, Hugh Jackson, and more. Subscribe to the Athletic Audio Plus exclusively on Apple Podcasts. The NFL has ramped up the messaging about social issues. It's donated a lot of money. It works with a lot of organizations, who, to be fair, we heard good things from through inspire change. But given the NFL's history, it's a legitimate exercise to question

whether those efforts are genuine. The NFL is just like any other business. You know, they want to put out a profitable product. You see it all the time with these companies. You know, they give millions of dollars of different things. Yeah, it's a good call, but it's a tax write off. You know what I'm saying?

But whether it was genuine or not, I'm not in the rooms with them and they thought process behind what they're doing. But I will say this, if it made a positive impact in any kind of way, great. And at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do well. The reality is that players aren't too focused on changing the hearts of the NFL's decision makers. I mean, it's human nature to be reactionary.

So I don't know if anything is going to change it or if there is a desire to change it. Not to be negative, but I don't think we're ever going to live in a utopian society where all the problems that we see out in the world are going to be solved. I don't think that's, I don't think that's ever going to be the case. The NFL is really hard to change because it's a big man. machine. It may sound overly critical, but that's part of the reason why the league shouldn't receive a pat on the back just for donating money. Baldwin says it's what the league and its owners should be doing. I think it's vitally important for the NFL to do that. Look, inherently, the NFL is about

buying, selling, and trading human beings. That is what it is. It's a marketplace for your services as an athlete. Inherent in that comes some conflicts of interest, right? But knowing that, The NFL should do all it can do to implement health and well-being for the individuals who participate in their business. That doesn't necessarily mean just the athletes themselves, but it also means the communities that they come from. The majority of the NFL's players, who are the reason why the league rakes in billions of dollars every year, are black. Baldwin says the league has an obligation to invest in the communities where their players come from. If you're going to benefit from the drive and motivation of these players that comes from a very, very specific place, I'm not trying to get too deep into this, but there's a reason why players are willing to do what they do on the football field and disregard their bodies. If somebody benefits from that, then I think, yeah, they have an obligation to give back to the community, to the sources, to the origin of why that is what it is in the first place.

And McCordy says the league must be intentional about its process instead of working to merely generate positive headlines. I'll say as far as I can inspire change. My personal opinion, I think the league has gotten in and helped out. But I think that will always kind of be dictated on what's the key thing that we can do that looks the best. I wouldn't say that's always the things that need to be done or that's going on. It's like, all right, this is a cool event to be a part of. We're going to do that. For that to happen, keeping the players involved is crucial.

I think it's a has to be player, but we can't wait on, we call it the NFL, but you look around there's 32 seniors. The 32 owners, like, we can't sit here and say like, this is important to all 32 of those guys. You know, I think there's obviously individuals that are owners that, you know, they do a ton of work, and I think it is something important to them. But overall, that league moves how the 32 owners vote on things to go forward and be done. So we have to continue to push that. Naturally, that requires for there to be a robust number of players who are willing to get involved.

Without them, the efforts won't be sustained. Without the players pushing it, it will die. That is not something I would say that's inherently important to the league and what they're about. I think they fall into it or come involved into it because of the players. And I think if we don't continue to be involved in different things and speak to different people, how to get the league more evolved, then it will go away. That possibility isn't yet off the table. A popular theory is that future generations of athletes

will be more emboldened to speak out in today's climate. But the view on whether that will happen is split. The thing about this capitalism thing is having money ain't never made nobody not want any more money, right? But Moni Jones says that factors such as name, image, and likeness endorsements, which allow athletes to make money as amateurs could make those athletes more reticent to speak out. I think that if you start indoctrinating young people into making all this money so early, that's going to wind up effectively being their purpose. Then I'm going to think about it as something that they can just stop doing.

They're going to think about it as the thing that they ultimately do. In the past, money has been a corrupting factor for athletes remaining on the sidelines when it comes to social issues. Bill Rotten in his book, The $40 million slaves refers to this as the conveyor belt and basically talks about how it is. that these guys start off being molded so early into being corporate pitchmen and effect that by the time you get them at the end, there's not much that you can do with it. Because what I would be concerned with in this is we are starting to raise professional athletes in childhood, right? And we weren't always doing that. The people surrounding athletes in their formative years naturally have a greater influence

on them than they do later in life. Jones argues they could steer them towards just focusing on the money. And so the people around them are probably going to be like the people, people around everybody else that's in this money game and encouraging them not to say these things because the less offensive you are, no matter how you're offending, the more money that you can ultimately make. I have found personally in my travels the I don't want to mess up my livelihood is often true, but also often an excuse. Because as you say, it's often a lot of people that already got a zillion dollars. Like Michael Jordan had a zillion dollars. That ain't, you know, his fear of going broke was not the reason that he didn't say anything about this stuff.

I actually think it's worth knowing a whole lot of them probably ain't really got nothing to say in the first place. On the other hand, there has been reason to believe the shift in reaction from corporations like the NFL has led athletes to become more comfortable speaking out at an early age. Marcus Thompson II says it wasn't just professional athletes who made waves in the summer of 2020. There were plenty of amateurs doing the same thing. It may not manifest into the types of changes you want to see in the NFL, but it certainly emboldened a new generation of athletes, right? It certainly has people looking up saying, oh, I'm going to speak my piece. I'm going to say what it would do.

You got high school athletes who have this template and this blueprint and they have the expertise from the social media. They're watching this. They're watching, for lack of a better term, corporate America and white America, be shook about it. That may not result in tangible change, but it still has value. Is it like massive change? No, I mean, we know what it is, right? And I think everybody know what it is, but you can see the power of the athletes at least make people front, where at a time they didn't even do that, right? So a lot of this stuff is showy.

A lot of it is symbolic, but not executed, right? So we can always pick that apart. But if you look at this from the landscape of what can happen over 30 years, right? You know, players are going to come into the league. Players are going to operate a society in a different way. because they watch the NFL or the NBA put Black Lives Matter all over the court and they watch, you know, historically, a league that historically mistreated its players and disregarded this element kind of bowed out to it in a very public way. For McCordie, there's optimism from current NFL players on that coming to fruition. I think the coolest thing about everything that's happened over these years is this next generation of athletes will be inspired.

I think kind of like back in the day, like Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, you know, Bill Russell, all of the doors that they broke down, you know, they went out there, they did the hard work. Now we have a younger generation that has watched the Colin Kaepernick. They've watched a LeBron James build his own school and have graduating class. Like they've seen that they've protested on Pop Warner Fields

and middle schools and high schools. That part of it is awesome because I think this next generation, I think they have a sense of equality and I'm going to fight for what I believe in. For the next generations to succeed, there needs to be greater support from those in leadership positions, but that likely won't happen if leadership isn't diverse. Don Davis with the NFLPA says that creating that sort of ecosystem

has been an area where the NFL has continued to drop the ball. It's hard to measure impact. You can look at some things that have happened with the singing of the Black National Land, with markings on players' helmets, and on the NFL field, with commercials running on primetime and in primetime spots, with clubs all starting initiatives of their own. And you could say that those are some good things.

You can't ignore some of the progress that has not happened, right? And that is when we come to head coach. GM was better. We saw a lot of hirings of people of color, minorities. But the coaching ranks is still abysmal. For over 100 years, sustained diversity among leadership positions has been something the league has failed to accomplish. I don't know if you can totally call it the North Star, but it could be considered by some as the North Star, right? There's no reason that there shouldn't be more minority head coaches in the NFL.

I think until that happens, until you have double digits there year after year, I don't know that anyone's going to feel like that progress or true progress and change has occurred. Players have pushed for that change, but there's been a disconnect in turning that into results. They've been able to get owners more involved in the social justice space, but when it comes to influencing who they hire, that's another story. We have to push so hard here in the NFL because I think so many people watch, this is a huge moneymaker. So as we make changes within our own institution, owners, GMs, head coaches, like those things, you know, we look out and we try to fix things in community.

And sometimes I hate doing these things. I'm like, I work for a business that has zero diversity at the top. But I go out there in the community and try to speak out and do those things. But how do I help be a part of changing the stuff that's right here? As you knock down doors one place, it seems like more and more doors are getting built in other areas. So it's a constant fight. On the next episode of Between the Lines, I just don't think they see us in those lead chairs. I mean, let's just cut to the chase.

and that's exactly what it is. We'll explore the NFL's consistent unwillingness to hire Blackhead coaches, the toll that takes on the individuals pushing for those spots and explain why the onus falls on the owners to fix a broken hiring process. Thank you for listening to Between the Lines. Deshaun Reed is the creator and host of the series. Madhavia and Mike Smelts are the executive producers. And special thanks to Robert Mays and Michael Beller.