DENVER — Last season, the Seattle Seahawks led the league when it came to the number of players willing to make a statement while the national anthem played.
To start this season, that wave of Seahawks has dwindled to only two players.
Linemen Duane Brown and Quinton Jefferson walked off the field and waited in the tunnel while a field-sized American flag was unfurled and the national anthem played before their season opener Sunday in Denver.
In a league where more than 200 players once took some sort of action to protest police brutality and social injustice in America during the anthem, The Associated Press counted fewer than 10 across the league who did so on the NFL’s opening Sunday.