Shaquille O’Neal on his experience as a guest at Saints team meeting

Drew Brees apologized for his insensitive comments to his New Orleans Saints teammates during a group meeting with Shaquille O’Neal on hand.

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The New Orleans Saints didn’t plan to hold a team meeting on Drew Brees’ divisive comments this week, but it worked out so that they were able to hash things out internally anyway.

Having scheduled a group conference call two weeks ago with NBA legend and LSU Tigers great Shaquille O’Neal in attendance as a guest speaker, Brees was able to apologize eye-to-eye for his condemning of hypothetical peaceful protests during the national anthem before NFL games later this year.

And while the Saints intend to keep further conversations private within the organization, O’Neal was able to shed light on those discussions in an appearance on TNT.

“I was on the call today when Drew apologized to his teammates, and most of his teammates accepted his apology,” O’Neal said. They said, ‘Drew, we knew your character. We knew you stepped into some stuff that you can’t get out of. But guess what? We want you to do more, more positive things and less talking.’ And they all said, ‘We accept your apology.’”

O’Neal specified that one of the first players to speak up was veteran safety Malcolm Jenkins — someone who has known Brees as a friend and teammate for nearly a decade, and who shared several videos on Instagram reflecting on Brees’ perspective and misinterpretation of the gestures as criticisms of America’s military rather than actions protesting police brutality.

You can find O’Neal’s takeaway in the video embedded below:

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