Who is Jeremy Lane, the 'other' national anthem protester?
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On Thursday, just before kickoff of each game around the NFL, beat writers dutifully tweeted that all the players were standing for the national anthem. For each game the message remained the same: Nobody was sitting in protest.
It looked like San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick would be on an island with his protest over racial injustice, even if others around the NFL perhaps wanted to join him but worried about retribution from their teams. All we knew was one of Kaepernick’s teammates planned to join him.
Then Seattle Seahawks cornerback Jeremy Lane sat down during the anthem in Oakland.
[Related: Colin Kaepernick protests national anthem again, is joined by teammate]
While Kaepernick and 49ers safety Eric Reid had long conversations about Reid joining Kaepernick’s protest and how they’d do it on Thursday night, Kaepernick had no idea Lane was joining the protest.
“I didn’t know that. But I’m very happy, I’m very proud of him for doing that,” Kaepernick said after Thursday’s game. “I think there are a lot of people who know there are issues and want to address them. I think one of the issues is going about it the right way and also having a clear course of action.”
Lane was the only NFL player outside of 49ers teammates Kaepernick and Reid to sit or kneel during the national anthem.
Aside from following each other on Twitter and both playing for NFC West teams, it doesn’t seem Lane and Kaepernick have any clear common bond. Lane grew up in Tyler, Texas and went to Northwestern State in Louisiana; Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee, went to high school in Turlock, Calif. and played in college at Nevada. Lane said after his game on Thursday he had no relationship with Kaepernick.
But now they’re linked in a strong way.
“I wasn’t trying to say anything, just standing behind Kaepernick,’’ Lane told the Seattle Times. “I just liked what he’s doing and I like standing behind him.’’
So who is Lane? If we would have guessed that one non-49ers player in the entire NFL would also sit during the anthem, the often outspoken Seahawks would have been a good pick for the team. But Lane was a bit of an unlikely candidate on a team full of stars.
Lane has been a fine role player during the Seahawks’ remarkable run the last few years, but unfortunately he might be best known (before Thursday) for a horrific broken arm injury suffered on his interception return during Super Bowl XLIX against the New England Patriots. And, unbelievably, Lane also tore his ACL on that play. But he’s a valuable player for the Seahawks, as they showed when they gave him a four-year, $23 million deal this past March.
Hardcore football fans knew Lane, and so did those who remember his Super Bowl injury. Now he’ll have a whole new group of people who know him, and many will be critical of his decision.
“Yeah, I am prepared for it,” Lane told the Seahawks’ website. “I don’t mean any disrespect to anybody. But I’m just standing behind what I believe in.”
[Eric Adelson: How the internet changed Colin Kaepernick]
Although Lane was the only player in the other 15 NFL preseason games this week to sit down during the anthem, maybe others will eventually do it too. Russell Okung, an offensive tackle for the Denver Broncos, wrote a powerful piece praising Kaepernick in The Players’ Tribune, although he didn’t say he would also protest during the anthem. Protesting during the anthem is not an easy thing for any player to do, especially after seeing all the criticism — which was often misplaced — that Kaepernick dealt with this week.
But Lane said he plans to keep sitting during the anthem until “justice has been served.”
“Right now, I don’t think it accomplished anything for me, or the cause,” Lane told Seahawks.com. “That’s the plan.”
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Frank Schwab is the editor of Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at shutdown.corner@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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