The Buffalo Bills were one of a number of teams that saw protests during the national anthem from some of their players following the comments from President Donald Trump. Among the notable players that did so for the Bills: star running back LeSean McCoy.
Why did he choose to protest? Read his full answers below, or watch above:
On why he chose to protest during the national anthem:
I can’t stand and support something where our leader of this country is just acting like a jerk. You know… angry, upset about NFL players protesting in a peaceful manner. A lot of people go to different areas and subjects but, in this country a lot of different things are going on where people are protesting in a violent way. If a guy wants to take a knee or express himself in a different manner… he has that right. The biggest thing is that it’s in a peaceful manner. You know, that really bothered me. I think us as a group, as a team, we wanted to display that, hey, we come together as a team and show to the world that no matter how different each other, person are, we can come together.
On why things have changed since his comments about Colin Kaepernick within the past two months:
The good thing about this country is you can do what you want. The freedom to express yourself and I felt that, hey, if that’s something he wanted to do… it’s perfectly fine. At the time, I thought I wouldn’t do something like that. And then you hear the remarks and comments from our leader — from our President of the United States. This is a great country. People strive hard to get over here. They do a lot of things to get over here — for a reason. When your leader, your president, makes different comments, it’s hard for me to respect and try to represent something that I don’t believe in.
On why the team chose to step forward off the sideline:
We talked about it as a team. Everybody that was bothered and felt like they wanted to kneel and express themselves — the coach and the owner, the owners — they granted our wishes if that’s what we wanted to do. As you’ve seen around the NFL, a lot of players have responded. And not only the players — the owners responded — not in the president’s favor. I think it just showed that around the NFL, that unity to come together, man… and that’s really it.
