Initially, Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall had a different reason to kneel during the national anthem before Thursday night’s season opener. He found disdain in the words and meaning behind the national anthem, particularly the third stanza.
The third stanza of The Star-Spangled Banner, which was written by Francis Scott Key in 1814, reads:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.