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As Colin Kaepernick‘s kneeling protest continues to divide the league, one of the NFL’s most influential players, Tom Brady, sat down with Oprah Winfrey to talk about it.
In an interview with Winfrey, the Super Bowl winner said Kaep’s decision led the Patriots to have “good, healthy conversations” in the locker room about the reasoning behind certain players deciding to protest.
“We support what people are going through. You play sports long enough, everyone comes from something different. I think showing respect for everybody…in a locker room, a team full of guys trying to go in the same direction, you better have that empathy for everybody. That’s what sports are about,” he told Winfrey.
He even revealed that they had meetings on the topic after practices to make sure everyone felt represented. Following Trump calling those who kneeled or otherwise protested the anthem “sons of bitches,” Brady thought it was important to show unity, so before a game against the Houston Texans in 2017, his team locked arms.
The Patriots also had two players, Malcolm Butler and Stephon Gilmore, who decided to kneel just two days after Trump’s comments. Brady isn’t the only known supporter of Trump to denounce the divisiveness—team owner Robert Kraft feels the same and was quoted saying it’s “the right of people in this country to make statements or protests, peacefully, in a way that’s appropriate to them.”
In the upcoming episode of Super Soul Sunday, Brady also breaks down his future in the NFL and his love for his supermodel wife, Gisele Bundchen.
