After President Trump put the NFL’s taking-a-knee debate smack dab on the 50-yard line of the national consciousness, scores of NFL players pulled off their own personalized protests on the sidelines during the national anthem before Sunday’s games.
Some took a knee, in the spirit of former San Francisco 49er Colin Kaepernick. Some team members locked arms. And some stayed completely off the field to show their solidarity with one another in what has become a spirited national debate: What exactly is the propriety of publicly sitting out the national anthem as a way of protesting social ills?