Former Seattle Seahawks player and Green Beret Nate Boyer tweeted Sunday that it wasn't unpatriotic to kneel before the American flag.
He called it a "symbol of freedom and hope, not yet experienced by ALL":
Boyer famously consulted with Colin Kaepernick in 2016 when the then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback was sitting during the national anthem before preseason NFL games, as a protest to racial injustice and police brutality.
Boyer said that he reached out to Kaepernick because he was upset given what the anthem and American flag symbolically meant to him as a veteran, though he understood and supported the message Kaepernick was sending.