New York Giants head coach Joe Judge has officially named Nick Gates the team’s starting center.
The intrigue and guessing is over when it comes to the New York Giants’ starting center job.
Head coach Joe Judge announced on Saturday that Nick Gates will be snapping the football to quarterback Daniel Jones on Monday night when the Giants host the Pittsburgh Steelers in their 2020 season opener at MetLife Stadium.
Joe Judge: "We're going to start Nick Gates at center." #NYGiants
This was really no secret but Judge played it close to the vest who the center would be, Gates or Spencer Pulley. He did not want the Steelers to have a full week to prepare for Gates, who will be making his career debut at the position Monday night.
It’s troubling enough they are starting a rookie, first round pick Andrew Thomas, at left tackle and journeyman Cam Fleming on the left side.
Joe Judge on #NYG offensive line: "There's not a lot of time for patience, but there's always time for development."
Judge’s patience will be tried as the Giants’ new lineup tries to fend off the NFL’s most primitive pass rush, led by T.J. Watt, Cam Heyward and Bud Dupree. Gates will not only be charged with snapping the football for the first time in a real game, he’ll be responsible for making the calls.
Judge and offensive line coach Marc Colombo both raved about how much they liked the 6-foot-5, 307 pounder over the more established Pulley.
#NYG Joe Judge on #Zoom says Nick Gates will start at center Monday night vs. #PIT. Giants have made no secret of how much they like him. Impressive rise by Gates, who went undrafted out of Nebraska in 2018. Steelers defensive front will be formidable.
It’s been a long time coming, but Colin Kaepernick is finally back on a Madden NFL game despite him still not being on a team in the actual NFL.
Kaepernick worked with EA Sports to virtually return to the field for Madden 21. Players can add him to whatever team they want and use him in franchise mode.
It’s pretty dope to see him back on the field, even if it is only virtually for the time being. People have already begun adding him to their favorite teams after getting the update and we’ve gotten some good glimpses of virtual Kap in action.
Kaepernick is rated at 81 overall – which has caused some controversy on Twitter. In Madden 21, Kaepernick currently has a higher rating than Kyler Murray, Cam Newton and several other starting quarterbacks across the league. In Madden 17, the last game in the series Kaepernick appeared in, he was a 74 overall.
The game has his real life look down to the last detail. He’s even got the afro on the game — on Madden 16 he still had cornrows.
According to multiple sources familiar with negotiations, @Kaepernick7 was “hands-on” in determining exactly how he was depicted in his @EAMaddenNFL return. He requested an Afro and his signature celebration: a Black Power fist✊🏾
He’s also got his own signature celebration — a Black power fist. He personally requested this for his player, according to The Undefeated.
When you score a touchdown with Colin Kaepernick in #Madden21 and choose "signature" celebration, Kap holds up the Black Power fist. pic.twitter.com/rclVIFjXze
This is pretty cool to see. Of course, it’s just a video game. But Kap being back on it feels like a step in the right direction. And his involvement in bringing his likeness back to the game makes it even better.
EA Sports has added Colin Kaepernick to Madden 21.
Colin Kaepernick is back in the game … the video game, that is.
EA Sports announced Tuesday the quarterback has a place in Madden 21.
Per the release:
“Colin Kaepernick is one of the top free agents in football and a starting-caliber quarterback. The team at EA sports, along with millions of Madden NFL fans want to see him back in our game. We’ve had a long relationship with Colin through Madden NFL and worked through our past soundtrack mistakes,” EA Sports said in the statement.
“Knowing that our EA SPORTS experiences are platforms for players to create, we want to make Madden NFL a place that reflect’s Colin’s position and talent, rates him as a starting QB, and empowers our fans to express their hopes for the future of football. We’ve worked with Colin to make this possible, and we’re excited to bring it to all of you today,“ the statement continued.
“Starting today in Madden NFL 21, fans can put Colin Kaepernick at the help of any NFL team in Franchise mode, as well as play with him in Play Now. We look forward to seeing Colin on Madden NFL teams everywhere.”
Colin Kaepernick is still not in an NFL uniform as the 2020 season approaches.
But per EA Sports in a release that dropped on Tuesday, he will be a part of Madden 21.
“Knowing that our EA Sports experiences are platforms for players to create, we want to make Madden NFL a place that reflects Colin’s position and talent, rates him as a starting QB, and empowers our fans to express their hopes for the future of football,” the release reads, in part. “We’ve worked with Colin to make this possible, and we’re excited to bring it to all of you today.”
That last sentence is a big deal — as The Undefeated notes, the company had to work with Kaepernick to get his likeness into the game again:
According to EA Sports, after Kaepernick became a free agent following the 2016 NFL season, he was not included in the group licensing agreement, which is negotiated through the NFL Players Association, meaning Madden lost the rights to the quarterback’s likeness. Thus, Kaepernick did not appear in Madden 18, Madden 19 or Madden 20. …
This past summer, ahead of the release of Madden 21, EA Sports approached Kaepernick to negotiate the rights to his likeness so that he could return to the game for the first time in four years. According to multiple sources familiar with the negotiations, Kaepernick was “hands-on” in determining exactly how his avatar was depicted in Madden 21. EA Sports confirmed that Kaepernick requested that his player in the game wear an Afro — an update from his most recent head image in 2016 that portrayed him in Madden 17 with cornrows. Also, according to multiple sources, Kaepernick weighed in heavily on his avatar’s signature celebration — a Black Power fist — to reflect how he celebrated scoring plays the last time he took to the real-life football field during the 2016 NFL season.
This move comes two years after Kaepenick’s name was edited out of Big Sean’s verse in a song included on the Madden 19 soundtrack, Big Bank, a move ripped by many including Big Sean himself. EA Sports later said it had made “an unfortunate mistake.”
JUST IN: EA Sports says it didn’t mean to omit Colin Kaepernick’s name in YG’s song it licensed for use in Madden ‘19. Will add his name back in update. pic.twitter.com/ck8UhxI1fu
Here's one thing we know: Colin Kaepernick is good for business. Nike stock reached an all-time high in 2018 after launching it's Kaepernick campaign. Now, EA has placed Kaepernick as a free agent in this year's Madden. He has an 81 rating. Curious how the stock trends.
Even if it’s a decision that’s good for the business and marketing of a much-panned video game, there’s a silver lining here: it reminds us that Kaepernick still isn’t wearing an NFL uniform, that his fight for racial equality and against injustice cost him his job.
As my colleague Steven Ruiz recently wrote, it’s too late for the NFL to make up for blackballing Kaepernick. But maybe having him in the game brings the awareness that Kaepernick’s fight — and that of countless others — is far from over.
Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick sent a note of appreciation to Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James. James shared the note he received from Kaepernick on Friday on Instagram, with the caption, “standing/kneeling right next to you brother! Appreciate you.” The three-time NBA champion shared it on the heels of players sitting out games this week in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a Black man, on Sunday by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is now in Colin Kaepernick’s corner. Too bad he wasn’t when it really mattered.
One of the most disturbing trends in political media in the age of social media is the automatic, uncontested repetition of any lie, no matter how egregious. Politician A can say the most obvious untruth, and the majority of political media will throw the direct quote up on their accounts without the slightest hint of contention, fact-checking, or blowback. It’s an easy way to get clicks, and a very bad way to cover, say, a Presidential administration.
When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently sat down with former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho in Acho’s “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man” video series, Goodell was asked to express what he would now say to Colin Kaepernick, who has not played in the league since the end of the 2016 season despite his obvious qualifications to do so. Kaepernick’s pre-game protests, and his calls for an end to police brutality, are commonly and obviously cited as the reasons why.
“I wish we had listened earlier, Kaep, to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to,” Goodell responded.
Goodell then expressed regret at how the increased social awareness of today’s NFL player has been cast incorrectly by many upset observers.
“What our players are doing is being mischaracterized. These are not people who are unpatriotic. They’re not disloyal. They’re not against our military. What they were trying to do is exercise their right to bring attention to something that needs to get fixed. That misrepresentation of who they were and what they were doing was the thing that really gnawed at me.”
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man: The National Anthem Protest- PT. 1
NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, & I discuss Colin Kaepernick & the protests during the national anthem that polarized America. pic.twitter.com/PcL02732ys
Well, here’s the thing about that. Goodell got his pull quote around the Twitterverse in record time, and most people didn’t push back on it. It’s a great quote, after all — the guy in charge of the league that blacklisted a player for his political beliefs sees the light! — but in the end, all it is, is talk.
In what we might call the post-George Floyd era, it is expedient, convenient, and profitable for those in charge of the NFL to claim solidarity with its players. But where was this solidarity from the Commissioner when Kaepernick was first saying what he was saying, and knowingly putting his career on the line to do so?
SANTA CLARA, CA – SEPTEMBER 12: Colin Kaepernick #7 and Eric Reid #35 of the San Francisco 49ers kneel in protest during the national anthem prior to playing the Los Angeles Rams in their NFL game at Levi’s Stadium on September 12, 2016 in Santa Clara, California. (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
In June, 2017, Goodell insisted that Kaepernick was not being blackballed, saying that the NFL is all about who can do the job.
“[All teams] want to get better,” Goodell told Andrea Kremer of the NFL Network back then. “And if they see an opportunity to get better as a football team, they’re going to do it. They’re going to do whatever it takes to make their football team better. So those are football decisions. They’re made all the time. I believe that if a football team feels that Colin Kaepernick, or any other player, is going to improve that team, they’re going to do it.”
Yeah, well… not so much. The teams that overlooked Kaepernick in favor of huckleberries like Nathan Peterman, Trevor Siemian, Case Keenum, Tom Savage, and Kyle Allen might disagree with this theory, given the right amount of truth serum.
And in December, 2017, Goodell went on CNBC and said this about the matter:
“We’ve always invited Colin to come over,” Goodell said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “He’s welcome to come over and meet at any point and time. We had an open door on that. There was some meeting set up with the player’s coalition, and they were invited by the player’s coalition.”
Asked flat-out if Kaepernick was being blackballed, Goodell said, “Each and every club’s got to make those decisions… They make those decisions based on a lot of factors that are best for their football team. And when they do that, that’s what’s in the best interest.”
Squawk box, indeed. And quite disingenuous given what history has shown about a quarterback who could barely get a tryout, much less a real opportunity to compete for a starting job, despite throwing 16 touchdowns and four interceptions in 2016 for a 2-14 49ers team that had the league’s worst offensive roster, and Bad Chip Kelly in charge of it.
In January, 2019, at his “State of the League” press conference, Goodell continued, and thus amplified, the lie.
“I’ve said it many times — privately, publicly — that our clubs are the ones that make decisions on players that they want to have on their roster…I think if a team decides that Colin Kaepernick or any other player can help their team win, that’s what they’ll do. They want to win, and they make those decisions individually in the best interest of their club.”
Riiiiight. This was after a 2018 season in which the Buffalo Bills gave Nathan Peterman a four-game opportunity in which Peterman may well have been the worst quarterback in NFL history (adjusted for era, of course). There were NFL teams clearly more interested in avoiding Kaepernick than winning games, and it wasn’t just the Bills.
In 2019, the NFL assembled a hasty opportunity for Kaepernick at the Falcons’ facility in Flowery Branch, Georgia. The idea was that NFL teams could watch Kaepernick work out and get an honest assessment of his abilities. The workout was altered when Kaepernick’s representatives asked that media be allowed to attend and film the event, and were told that this was not going to happen. Ultimately, Kaepernick put on a show in front of a skeleton crew of observers at a high school field about an hour from the Falcons’ home.
The NFL had given Kaepernick minimal notice of the workout. The NFL set the workout for a Saturday, when most NFL shot-callers are at college games — as opposed to a Tuesday, the standard day for free agent workouts. Kaepernick was not informed of the names of the league-provided receivers he was to throw to in the league’s version of this workout, leading Kaepernick to bring his own guys. And the media blackout was highly interesting, given that the NFL would film Goodell feeding his dog if the NFL thought it could make money from the exercise.
Still, Kaepernick put on a show, and made it clear that he was able to help a team if given the opportunity. He also showed that he was still unafraid to take a stand… which, back then, was still a Bad Idea in the NFL’s collective eyes.
“It’s important that y’all are here,” Kaepernick said to a group of reporters and supporters after the workout. “Y’all been attacked for the last three years; y’all continue to be attacked. We appreciate what y’all do, we appreciate you being here today, we appreciate the work you do for the people in telling the truth. That’s what we want in everything.
“I’ve been ready for three years. I’ve been denied for three years. We all know why. I came out here today and showed it in front of everybody. We have nothing to hide. So, we’re waiting for the 32 owners, the 32 teams, Roger Goodell, all of them, to stop running. Stop running from the truth; stop running from the people. We’re out here. Ready to play, ready to go anywhere. My agent Jeff Nalley is ready to talk to any team. I will interview with any team at any time. I’ve been ready, I’m staying ready, and I continue to be ready.
“To all the people who came out here today to support — I appreciate y’all, I love y’all. To the people that aren’t here, I’m thinking of you, I appreciate your support from where you are. We’ll continue to give you updates as we hear. We’ll be waiting to hear from Roger Goodell, the NFL, the 32 teams — we’ll let you know if we hear from them.”
Kaepernick never heard enough to continue his career. He had already won a settlement from the league in his collusion lawsuit — his insistence that the league had conspired to deny him a job he was qualified to do — and here he was, still trying to prove the point.
The point is still proven in Kaepernick’s case, and it remains unproven in Goodell’s. If what was happening to players exercising their right to peaceful protests really “gnawed at” Goodell as he told Acho, what happened to Kaepernick never would have happened. What happened to Panthers safety Tre Boston, one of the best deep coverage players in the league over the last half-decade, wouldn’t have happened — Boston wouldn’t have had to play on a bunch of lowball one-year deals with different teams because he wanted to protest, and the word got out.
“In 2016, we saw a world that… even with peaceful protesting with Kap, we saw a world that didn’t understand, and was not willing to listen or hear what we were trying to say,” Boston told Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network in June. “It was hard times. We were screaming back then, ‘Help.’ We need help. How can we help out our community so that we’re one? And it’s tough when you hear from the top down that the people who watch football come here to get away from that stuff, even though we had protesting going on the day of the game. So, to hear open-ended promises — them telling us to do nothing, we’ll get you in the community. Then, the next week comes around, the week after that comes around, and nothing’s been said to you. Nothing’s been brought up to put you in the community. They did what they wanted.”
“You know, it’s not like that anymore. I’ve been assured, when I first came back, that it wasn’t like that anymore. I’ve had phone calls with owners and our coaches now, who have called me and told me how much they appreciate what I’m doing, and that they would love to help. Tepper calling me and telling me how much he appreciates that I was out there with the guys. It’s a 180 from what we used to be. When I was thinking about coming back, I wanted to know — did I have the stability in my job to be who I am as a man, as a black man, as a very intelligent University of North Carolina alum? They assured me that they believed in everything I believed in, I was allowed to be myself, and I was allowed to stand up for things that were right.”
That Boston and players like him are now “allowed” to stand up for things that are right only means that the NFL understands the political expediency of that concept. If the NFL had truly believed this all along, and if Roger Goodell had believed this all along, Goodell wouldn’t have parroted the meritocracy lie for as long as he did.
And that, along with Colin Kaepernick’s continued status of Qualified but Unemployed, make Goodell’s words now ring utterly hollow. A lie is a lie, no matter how it’s framed.
“I apologize for not being a stronger leader for [Colin] Kaepernick [in 2016],” Broncos linebacker Von Miller said.
Four years ago, former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the playing of the national anthem in protest of police brutality and social injustices in the United States. Several players across the league joined him but by 2019, few players were still protesting during the anthem.
Following the death of George Floyd and other instances of police brutality this year, it wouldn’t be surprising to see many NFL players protest this season. When asked about potential protests during his Zoom conference call on Tuesday, Broncos linebacker Von Miller referenced Kaepernick’s early demonstrations.
“I felt like I could have stood taller with Kaepernick at the time,” Miller said. “I felt like I could have supported Kaepernick a lot better at the time. I apologize for not being a stronger leader for Kaepernick at the time. The things that players are doing now, Kaepernick was doing four years ago. I felt like I — now in hindsight, I felt like I could have stood taller with Kaepernick and [former Denver linebacker] Brandon Marshall at the time.”
Miller was among the Broncos players who participated in a Black Lives Matter march in Denver earlier this offseason. When the season draws closer, Broncos players will likely meet to make a unified decision on possible protests.
“I feel like there are a lot of ways we can impact viewers on this subject and impact society on this subject,” Miller said. “I definitely reached out to all of my guys around the league. I reached and talked to all of the guys around the league on what’s the best way and what’s the best message to get out.
“Justin Simmons is huge with the social justice movement. I reached out to him and I’ll see exactly what he wants to do. Whatever it is, we’ll be united on the message that we have to put out.”
