Thomas Rawls
Thomas Rawls courtesy Corky Trewin/Seahawks


The Seahawks won their fourth and (mercifully) final preseason game of the year 23-21 over the Oakland Raiders. The game was boring until the end when it got exciting, as preseason football is wont to do. Decisions on the fringes of the roster will be made based on tonight. Football was played. Some guys got hurt, but none of those guys were starters, so good job everyone! High fives all around!

The Seahawks will have to cut down their roster to 53 players this weekend. They have some tough decisions ahead. Most interesting is the decision that the organization has to make about the team's fourth running back, Alex Collins or Troymaine Pope. They both are good options, and hopefully the organization manages to stash whoever doesn't make the team onto the practice squad. Really though, when the most interesting thing about a football game is its implications for the backup running back's backup, the game was not particularly interesting.

Aside from another damn injury to rotational defensive lineman Jordan Hill, Thursday's game was most noteworthy for what happened before kickoff. Following in San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick's non-footsteps, Jeremy Lane refused to stand for the National Anthem. He said after the game he did so in solidarity with Kaepernick's protests of institutional police brutality.

A few things on these protests:

These protests are not about the troops. They are protests about policing within our borders. This is not to say that America's foreign policy over the past two (five?) decades does not deserve to be criticized. It's that these players are not choosing to criticize that aspect of our country in this moment.

Also, let's say these protests by Kaepernick and Lane were about the war. Let's say that Kaepernick was sick of the forever war in the Middle East (again, this is very explicitly not what's happening, but as a hypothetical, let's consider the possibility). This is a reasonable thing to protest, and many Americans have done so. Why on Earth would that be perceived as a criticism of the troops, and not the decision makers who sent the troops on ill-advised missions?

It's infuriating that it doesn't go without saying that a protest of America might not be specifically protesting infantry members serving abroad. But Colin Kaepernick did in fact have to say so specifically after his team's preseason game. Again, the flag is not troops. A song is not troops. Police brutality is often the most visible manifestation of institutional racism and deserves to be protested. This conflation is a deliberate tactic by conservative forces in our society. If you're not allowed to protest anything in America without it being turned into to a direct attack on our nation's infantrymen, then that severely and unjustly limits the capacity for anyone to meaningfully criticize the status quo.

Rather than go on, I'm going to link to some of the reported work this paper has done on the subject of police brutality, as that's the issue Kaepernick and Lane are attempting to draw attention to:

• Federal Judge Threatens to Steamroll Over Seattle Police Union If It Blocks Reforms, Because "Black Lives Matter"

• Here's the Law That Would Radically Strengthen Civilian Oversight of Seattle Police

• Police Reform Advocates Say Federal Oversight Hasn't Gone Far Enough


Real football starts next Sunday. We'll be dropping a full season preview next week, and publishing a Seahawks Q&A on Friday before the opener against the Dolphins. Send us your questions here: