Baker Mayfield made good on his promise to not make good on his promise to kneel

Baker Mayfield decided to stand for the National Anthem, despite making an earlier commitment to take a knee to support Black Lives Matter. 

Some of us expected an about-face from Baker Mayfield this season, but this isn’t what we were talking about.

Mayfield changed his mind about kneeling during the national anthem on Sunday before the Browns-Ravens game. Earlier this offseason, when protests erupted across America in response to yet another police killing, Mayfield made the declaration that he would ‘absolutely’ be kneeling in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests when the season rolled around.

The season is here, but Mayfield is standing.

At the time when support for BLM hit a fever pitch — with brands and celebrities alike posting social media messages in support of the protests — many wondered how much of what we were seeing was performative allyship.

Turns out quite a bit.

Earlier this week, Mayfield flipped on his commitment to support Black Lives Matter and made it clear that the only thing he’d be kneeling for is the powers that be. He made a point of saying kneeling would only create more of a problem and draw attention away from the important progress being made on the social justice front.

https://twitter.com/bakermayfield/status/1304821443109289984/photo/1

That’s a lot of words to say he chickened out at the first sight of some NFL fans not being cool with this.

Just like when Drew Brees tried to make Black people not wanting to be murdered by police officers about the American Flag, Mayfield’s cowering back into the All Lives Matter corner out of fear is fair game to be called out for what it is. He can post a short story on his social media accounts about why he decided to make the decision to reverse course all he wants, but the fact remains he backed down when the fire started to get too hot for him.

Not for nothing, but Mayfield’s decision to reverse course on kneeling during the anthem came after NFL fans booed a planned moment of unity before Thursday night’s game. Fans booing when neither the anthem nor the flag isn’t involved shows the backlash was never actually about either of those things. Mayfield decided to change his stance after that happened, so take that for what it’s worth.

It’s a free country, and Mayfield is allowed to do whatever the hell he wants when it comes to standing or kneeling. But the fact that he’s able to choose whether to stand or kneel much in the same way he’s picking out what to buy with his Hulu endorsement dollars, is very much the point. Mayfield, like many other prominent white quarterbacks, had a chance to use his privilege to continue the fight for social justice and continue to challenge the status quo. He could have used his privilege as a shield to those who have been subjected to hatred and vitriol simply for saying that the life of a Black human being matters.

Instead, he used that privilege as a shield for nobody except himself.