After the killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake, the Patriots have mostly shied away from discussing social justice issues in their locker room.
Bill Belichick bringing ACLU director Rahsaan Hall in earlier this offseason to educate his team on systemic racism really had a lasting affect with quarterback Brian Hoyer, who offered support for his Black teammates on a video conference call Monday.
“To hear those guys speak, I don’t know how anybody can sit there and hear the cries from the Black community and not say ’we’re with you,’” Hoyer said. “And I know we have a unique perspective being football players and interacting with guys of different color, race, religion, whatever it might be on any day. I always look at how fortunate we are to get to come together as one, see that we all have differences and that’s OK, and that we embrace people’s differences.
You look out in our country right now and there’s a lot of division and I think if we can be an example of unity I’m all for it. So I fully support them and that movement.”
Even with the team getting set to play a regular season game for the first time in 20 years without Tom Brady — Hoyer says that has taken a back seat to something much more important.
“Look, it’s more important than football,” Hoyer said. “I mean you sit there and you hear them talk and hear how they have to teach their children if you get pulled over, ’do this or else you might not come home alive.’ My wife always jokes I’m not a very empathetic person, but when you sit there and you see a tear running down Devin McCourty’s face and he’s explaining that that’s what he’s gonna have to tell his kids, I’m thinking to myself ’how is this even possible?’”
“I was fortunate enough to be raised to treat everyone the way you want to be treated, and I know that seems so simple, but it’s obviously not happening in our country and throughout the world really.”
