A report out of Cincinnati’s WLWT Monday shows how fearful one NFL owner, Cincinnati Bengals boss Mike Brown, was of players on his team kneeling during the national anthem in 2017.
1.September 24th, 2017 in Green Bay. Many Bengals players wanted to take a knee prior to playing Green Bay, but not a single player did so. Multiple sources tell me there was an ‘emergency team meeting’ held with one goal, to make sure players did not kneel. A thread.
— Elise Jesse WLWT (@EliseJesseTV) June 22, 2020
“He pretty much says, ‘I don’t want you guys kneeling.’ He said our fans will crush us,” one player who remains anonymous told sports anchor/reporter Elise Jesse.
Another player backed the version.
“He just begged, like really begged. That was my first time seeing or hearing anything like that — very emotional. That was my only time seeing that it was different. The bottom line is that he was begging us, please do not kneel. He didn’t want the backfire that was going to come from it.”
The moment came after Sept. 22, 2017, when President Donald Trump called on league owners to release anyone who got involved in the movement, which was ignited by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick the year before.
The next day, the Cincinnati Bengals got on a flight to Green Bay to face the Packers. As the idea of kneeling that Sunday picked up steam across the NFL, some Bengals players were also thinking of kneeling during the anthem.
Jesse reported speaking to more than 10 players. many requesting anonymity. However, former Bengals safety George Iloka (pictured above) spoke on the record about a players’ meeting.
“… A lot of people, myself in particular, wanted to kneel,” Iloka said. “It was a big issue and that was weighing heavily on my heart, it was weighing heavy on my mind, and obviously it was weighing heavy on a lot of people’s hearts and minds across the NFL, and across the nation particularly with African Americans. It wasn’t just me that felt some kind away about that.”
… “It was about 50% African Americans and 50% of my Caucasian brothers and it was only about 30 people. The meeting left pretty much just like, the African American players feeling like we want to kneel, and then it was the white players telling us, ‘you guys don’t need to do that.’
“It’s almost like saying ‘Go be oppressed somewhere else and keep it out of my sight.’ That sort of thing. So, you know it was like, I understand that you don’t get how we feel and we are not asking you to join us, but just stop telling us not to.”
The report says other players support Iloka’s version.
Players who were present in the meeting remember Iloka’s courage during an uncomfortable moment as he made his voice heard and began to explain the reasons why he felt it necessary to join the movement and take a knee during the national anthem before his team faced Green Bay.
One former Bengals player, Preston Brown, was on the Buffalo Bills in 2017. He says had he taken a knee that season, Cincinnati never would have signed him the following year.
“That’s the biggest regret I have is not taking a knee that day because I was just so scared to do it. I know what could happen afterward,” said Brown, currently a Jacksonville Jaguars linebacker. “You have to play this role as an athlete and toe the line to make sure they still like you. I can’t be all the way black.
“… If I were to take a knee that day, I definitely wouldn’t have played for the Bengals,” he said. “It was in OTAs or something like that, we had a meeting of like 20 guys, and they asked me and Cordy (Glenn) because we came from Buffalo where guys had taken a knee, and they said ‘We are not going to do that here. We don’t need that attention. We don’t need that type of display of protest,’ and that was something that was weird to me.”
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