The former San Francisco 49ers safety wasn't on the sidelines during the opening weekend of the NFL season and he wasn't featured in Nike's advertising campaign. His story is one of conviction and sacrifice.
Nike’s announcement that former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick would be one of the key faces in its advertising campaign celebrating the 30th anniversary of the “Just Do It” motto has reignited a debate over the intersection of sport and political protest. Kaepernick, of course, was the first of several NFL players during the 2016 season to protest racial injustice and police brutality by taking a knee during the pre-game national anthem. The protests polarized the country, with some viewing them as a patriotic display of free speech and others seeing them as disrespectful of the flag and the people who had served under it. The debate over the protests continued into the NFL offseason when Kaepernick, who had quarterbacked the 49ers to a Super Bowl three seasons earlier, went unsigned as a free agent. In November 2017, Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL alleging collusion by the owners to keep him unsigned in order to silence his protest. The grievance against the league is ongoing, and so too is the saga of the former teammate who knelt beside Kaepernick in 2016, but will not appear in any Nike ads.
Eric Reid, a two-time All-American safety at Louisiana State University, was drafted in the first round by the San Francisco 49ers in 2013. Coming out of college, Reid was viewed as a player who had the necessary athletic skills to develop into a dependable starter. During his first two years in the league, Reid appeared primed to realize his potential and played at a high level, earning an alternative Pro-Bowl selection during his rookie season. After his second season, rumors swirled Reid was contemplating retirement because of three concussions he had suffered during his first two years, but he emphatically denied them citing his love of the game and his teammates. Matters worsened when the 49ers parted ways with Jim Harbaugh, their highly successful, yet highly abrasive head coach, at the end of the 2014 season. Like several other 49ers players, including Kaepernick, Reid’s production and level of play declined over the next two seasons as the team cycled through head coaches Jim Tomsula and Chip Kelly on their way to compiling a 7-25 record. In 2017, playing on the final year of his rookie contract, and for his fourth head coach and fourth defensive coordinator in four seasons, Reid struggled with injuries and consistency. However, he ultimately finished the season as the team’s starter and went into free agency rated as a top free agent, regardless of position. Despite teams around the league desperately seeking competent defenders to combat increasingly popular passing offenses, Reid remains unsigned after the first week of the 2018 season.
Kaepernick’s, and subsequently Reid’s, protest started during Kelly’s disastrous 2-14 campaign in 2016. Initially the protest went unnoticed as Kaepernick sat quietly on the bench during the national anthem prior to the first two preseason games. It was only after the third preseason game when a media member tweeted out a picture of Kaepernick sitting on the bench that the story gained international coverage. United States Army veteran Nate Boyer convinced Kaepernick to kneel rather than sit in an effort to show more respect to the military, the flag, and the anthem. Reid supported the cause and Kaepernick by kneeling next to him throughout the 2016 season. Reid continued his protest, sans Kaepernick, with several other 49ers teammates during the 2017 season. However, the media focus had shifted from the players on the field to the alleged blackballing of Kaepernick and the constant barrage of tweets about the protest from the country’s Commander-in-Chief. Reid, who used his new-found platform to further dialogue about racial injustice, went from being at the heart of the controversy to being a secondary figure.
Eric Reid’s commitment to the cause runs deeper than simply being the first teammate to kneel next to Colin Kaepernick. Reid grew up and went to college in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and it was the July 2016 shooting of Alton Sterling by police in Reid’s hometown that ultimately led him toward activism as he reflected that the victim could have easily been one of his family members. Less than a month after the shooting, Kaepernick began his protest and Reid, driven by his faith, decided to join him. Reid, whose mother and three uncles served in the Armed Forces, encouraged Kaepernick to take Nate Boyer’s advice to kneel rather than sit during the anthem. Reid expressed several times that he viewed kneeling as being symbolic of flying the flag at half-mast—respectful, but acknowledging tragedy. Reid continued his social activism by joining the Players Coalition during the 2016 season in an effort to engage NFL owners to determine the best way for the two sides to jointly engage the issues of racial inequality and social justice. However, shortly after the league pledged $89 million in donations to social and community causes, Reid left the Players Coalition citing the tacit quid pro quo that owners expected players to stop protesting now that money had been diverted to more civically-minded charities. Reid persisted. He continued his protests during the 2017 season and was briefly thrown back into the spotlight when Vice-President Mike Pence walked out of a Colts vs. 49ers game after witnessing Reid’s protest. Pence’s walkout was little more than political theatre, but Reid used the opportunity to speak to the gathered media about systemic racial oppression. However, the number of news stories Reid generated paled in comparison to those generated by his former teammate.
During the 2017 offseason, sports and political commentators debated daily the reasons why Kaepernick, a former Pro-Bowler, remained unsigned. Some justified his unemployment by focusing on his declining productivity and the fact league defenses had adjusted to his style of play, which relied on running ability. Others argued that any team signing him would face a potential revolt from its fans, particularly those franchises located in more conservative parts of the country. Of course, there were counterpoints to both arguments. From a football perspective, Kaepernick had just completed a season in which he threw an astonishingly low number of interceptions, not to mention that earlier in his career, when he had played under a more stable and effective coaching staff, he had thrived. Politically, the signing of Kaepernick would need to be handled delicately, but it was hardly without precedent. In 2009, the Philadelphia Eagles signed Mike Vick fresh off a two-year prison sentence for running an illicit dog fighting operation. More recently, the Cincinnati Bengals selected Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon in the second round of the 2017 NFL draft despite a horrific video that showed Mixon viciously punching a woman in the face during his freshman year. In both cases there was an initial period of outrage, but ultimately fans of both the Eagles and Bengals continued to support their team. Fueling the debate is the reality that starting quarterback in the NFL is the most high-profile position in American sport. Kaepernick, wherever he would have signed, would have instantly become the face of the franchise. Safeties, like Reid, do not encounter the same scrutiny.
During the 2018 offseason, there were few public debates about whether teams should sign Eric Reid. Theoretically, this should have helped Reid quickly find a new team. Although Reid had joined the Kaepernick grievance case against the NFL and wrote a New York Times editorial supporting his former quarterback, he was hardly a household name, which would lower the profile of his signing and minimize any backlash the story may generate. Additionally, he was still a productive player, as evidenced by his Pro Football Focus (PFF) grade from the 2017 season. PFF, an organization that grades and evaluates players at every position in the NFL, rated Reid as the 43rd best safety in the league and gave him a grade of 81.4, which ranked him as a mid-tier NFL starter. Nevertheless, Reid remained unsigned, and worse yet, he watched lesser players sign lucrative deals.
The New Orleans Saints, who were in the market for a new safety, chose to sign former Panther Kurt Coleman to a 3-year $16.25 million deal despite Coleman being ranked as the 81st best safety in the league with a PFF grade of 52.9. In April, after a workout for the Bengals, Reid was asked directly by owner Mike Brown for a commitment ensuring he would not kneel or protest the anthem in any fashion if he were to be signed. Reid, who had stated publicly a month earlier that he would no longer kneel during the anthem in an effort to refocus his strategy to combat racial injustice, refused because he believed his right to protest should not be used as leverage in contract negotiations. The Bengals decided to look elsewhere for safety help. Then in August, Jonathan Cyprien, one of the starting safeties for the Tennessee Titans, suffered a season-ending injury. The Titans brought in for a tryout veteran Kenny Vaccaro, ranked as the 84th best safety in the league with a PFF grade of 50.3, and scheduled a workout session with Reid. However, three of Reid’s flights to Nashville were canceled due to bad weather and rather than wait for Reid to reschedule his visit, the Titans chose to sign Vaccaro the next day. As the preseason opened and Reid was still without a team, it was revealed the 49ers had offered to re-sign him to a one-year deal at the veteran minimum to be a back-up. Reid rebuffed their offer, convinced he is still a starting-caliber safety, a belief that is well-founded considering over one-third of NFL teams start safeties rated lower than Reid.
In light of Reid’s continued unemployment, one must reevaluate the Kaepernick grievance against the NFL. It was easy to explain Kaepernick’s expulsion from the NFL as a by-product of declining play, his early-career standoffish locker room behavior, or the sometimes-offensive way in which he chose to speak out against police brutality. However, when his lawsuit is viewed in conjunction with Reid’s plight, the idea that NFL owners, 94 percent of whom are white, are blackballing prominent black protesting players seems more plausible. Nike’s selection of Kaepernick to be the face of their campaign on sacrifice is compelling and financially lucrative, but it distracts from the ongoing struggle of those who knelt with him and continue their sacrifice out of the spotlight. Eric Reid is 26 years old and, given the opportunity, would be in the prime of his career. There is an adage, “Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a trend.” Perhaps Eric Reid is just a coincidence, but it is no fluke that he no longer plays on Sundays.
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