Former NFL star Brian Urlacher is pulling no punches when discussing former quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s headline-making 2016 national anthem protest.
“Politics — I didn’t even know what I was [politically] back then,” Urlacher, a legendary linebacker for the Chicago Bears who competed in the NFL for 13 seasons before his 2013 retirement, said while appearing on OutKick Sport’s “The Craig Carton Show.”
“I didn’t care, man… You can’t have the racial divide in the locker room,” the Hall of Famer, 48, continued. “It’s just not going to work. If you do, your team is going to be s***.”
Urlacher went on to add, “The thing with him taking a knee would have been really, really f***ing hard for me to put up with in that locker room. That would have been something that would have probably been a line in the sand for me when it comes to stuff like that.”
Kaepernick, 38, was the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers when he made the controversial decision to take a knee during the national anthem to protest ongoing police brutality and racial inequality. The quarterback explained at the time that he made the decision after speaking with former Army Green Beret and fellow NFL player Nate Boyer, who suggested kneeling as a way to respectfully protest while still beginning attention to systemic racism.
The quarterback became a free agent after the 2016–2017 NFL season, and was ultimately passed over by every team in the league. He has not played in the NFL since.
“I’d retired, so I was watching all this happen on TV, and we quit watching,” Urlacher recalled of watching Kaepernick protest on television in 2016. “There were probably two, two and a half, three years where we didn’t watch football. I was like, as long as this s***’s taking place, I’m not watching.”
He further claimed, “My wife was fully on board. She’s all about that as well. So we just didn’t watch pro football for a few years there because of all the s*** that was going on.”
Kaepernick, who has stood by his decision to protest despite it arguably costing him his NFL career, opened up exclusively to Us as he prepared for the September 15 release of his new book, The Perilous Fight.
When asked how he thought he compared to the current starting quarterbacks in the league, Kaepernick was candid in his response.
“It’s tough to say because I haven’t been watching the games, but I will check the stat lines to see where quarterbacks are at,” he replied. “Based upon that, I think there’s a good amount.”
He added of the possibility of returning to the football field should a struggling team need his services, “We got the cleats by the door. We’ll be out the door.”
