Kaepernick has not played in the NFL since he sparked controversy by sitting, then kneeling, during the national anthem before multiple games to confront the police shootings of Black men and other social injustices by the Black community.
Apparently on Emmanuel Acho’s ‘Uncomfortable Conversations with Emmanuel’, Goodell was asked how he would apologize to Kaepernick.
“Well, the first thing I would say is that I wish we had listened earlier, Kap, to what you knelt down and what you were trying to bring to attention,” Goodell said.
“We had invited him several times to have the conversation, to have the dialogue. I wish we had the benefit of it. We never did.”
‘It’s not about the flag’
The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback became a free agent in 2017 after no team offered him a contract. In October, he filed a grievance against the league and accused team owners of collaborating to sign him.
He and former teammate Eric Reid, who nodded with Kaepernick, eventually decided their cases of collusion grievances against the NFL.
Goodell says he now better understands why players are protesting and frustrated when others misjudge their actions.
“It’s not about the flag,” Goodell said. “These are not people who are unpatriotic. They are not disloyal. They are not against our army. In fact, many of those boys were in the army and they are a military family.
“What they were trying to do was exercise their right to bring attention to something that needed to be fixed. That misconception of who they were and what they were doing was the thing that really gnawed at me.”
In June, Goodell and the NFL publicly supported the Black Lives Matter movement and allowed themselves to make mistakes in the past.
“We, the National Football League, admit that we were wrong not to listen to NFL players before and encourage everyone to speak out and protest peacefully.”
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