Gary Seymour, sports@wolfrivermedia.com
Stand-up guy Colin Kaepernick made waves in last Saturday’s preseason game against the Green Bay Packers by sitting down, and in breaking off a nice gain, Packers running back Eddie Lacy became entrenched in a hairy dilemma.
Who said preseason games are boring?
The Packers beat San Francisco 21-10 to go 3-0 in the exhibition season, but it was Kaepernick making headlines by refusing to stand during the pregame national anthem.
Kaepernick, one of the 49ers’ quarterbacks, explained his action by saying that he could not support a country that oppresses black people and other people of color.
Those backing Kaepernick’s position drew parallels to Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be inducted in the U.S. Army in the mid-1960s.
The difference, though, is stark. Standing up for a song that lasts about a minute isn’t quite the same thing as a years-long tour of duty in Southeast Asia trading gunfire with guerrillas on their home turf.
“To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way,” Kaepernick said. “There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
The screaming irony is that Kaepernick is a multi-millionaire whose financial security was forged in the only country in the world where it would be possible. Quarterbacks in Micronesia, for example, have a much lower standard of living.
Kaepernick said he was speaking out because he had a forum that others do not. He also has the wherewithal that others do not.
How much change his sitting will bring about is questionable, but if he is truly motivated to make a difference, he has the means to make a philanthropic splash in many lesser-privileged communities.
As for Lacy, he demonstrated a nimble bearing that wasn’t there last year when he took a first-quarter handoff and blasted it to the outside for 21 yards.
His overall performance was encouraging, and interesting. He’s got the speed back to turn the corner again, but he needs a haircut. On the 21-yard scamper he was pulled down from behind by the locks, which, oddly, is a legal tackle even though it mimics the neck-snapping, hip-grinding effect that a ball carrier suffers from the 15-yard-infraction horse tackle.
In the same vein that a pro baseball or basketball player should be allowed to have hair like Rapunzel as long as it doesn’t get in his eyes when he’s tracking a fly ball or shooting a jump shot, a football running back should have the freedom to grow it as long as he likes. It’s when a defender can legally grab it and pull your head back like a Pez dispenser that you should seriously re-consider your extended target area.
Lacy is quicker, but he’s still not the Road Runner, and in a best-case scene there will be many instances where he will have broken a run into the secondary with faster defenders in pursuit.
Under the NFL’s present rule, Lacy wasn’t horse-collared. He was horse-maned, and it could easily happen again, with far worse consequences. Maybe one of the coaches could gently nudge Lacy around to this point of view.
As Lacy said of the tackle, “That’s how most guys hurt their knees, because you get pulled from the back, which is why the horse-collar rule is there. So, luckily that didn’t happen.”
Maybe he was joking when he said that if he was going to cut his hair, it would not be until the Packers’ bye week – the fourth week of the season – so that he could go to his regular barber back home in Louisiana.
Hopefully, Lacy will weigh the options and get it cut sooner. It usually grows back. If not, for the sake of the team, he might consider the advantages of a scrunchie.