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Jacksonville Jaguars v Miami Dolphins

Source: Michael Reaves / Getty

In recent weeks among those who have questioned Jay-Z and his motives for his deal with the NFL, is Miami Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills. Stills has been an avid supporter of Colin Kaepernick, and protesting the national anthem.

Stills recently spoke up and said that Jay-Z and his comments about moving on from kneeling didn’t seem very informed. Stills also says he believes Jay-Z should have reached out to him or Kaepernick before agreeing to this deal.

The day after Stills expressed his disappointment in the deal Jay-Z made, along with expressing his desire to have spoken to Hov before the deal, Stills’ head coach, Brian Flores, decided to play a playlist heavily featuring Jay-Z songs in an effort to challenge Stills and his ability to tune out the noise around him, and play football.

“It was a challenge to Kenny to perform regardless of whatever is going on outside,” Flores told ESPN. “I would say, and I said this to him, he hasn’t performed up to that level over the course of training camp, or as I’ve seen. So that was the challenge; to get open, catch the football and make plays for this team, regardless of what’s going on outside of this building.”

After writers at practice picked up the story, Flores told them, that he still supports Stills and all the players on his team.

Kenny Stills offered his comment on his coach testing his will.

For the most part, I think it was him seeing if I could handle if people were going to heckle me or play Jay-Z in another stadium if I could be mentally strong enough to handle that sort of treatment. I’ve been dealing with this since 2016, music, boos, racial slurs. So I don’t think a little Jay-Z music is going to ruffle my feathers that bad.”

Stills mentions that he has been handling this since 2016, that is the year Colin, along with a myriad of other players in the NFL began protesting. Most protestors were faced with less than ideal conditions and plenty of heckling.