Football Star Blasts Kaepernick and Reveals He Stopped Watching the NFL

Brian Urlacher spent 13 seasons giving everything to the Chicago Bears. But when national anthem protests swept through the NFL, the Hall of Fame linebacker says he walked away from watching the sport altogether.

Now, a decade after Colin Kaepernick’s protest became a national flashpoint, Urlacher is making clear how strongly he still feels about it.

During an appearance on OutKick’s The Craig Carton Show, the Bears great said having a teammate kneel during the anthem would have pushed him to his limit.

“The thing with him taking a knee would have been really, really f—king hard for me to put up with in the locker room,” Urlacher said. “That would have been something that would have probably been a line in the sand for me when it comes to stuff like that.”

The comments came during a discussion about politics and team chemistry. Viewers can watch the interview clip here. foxnews.com

Asked whether politics had been a major presence in Chicago’s locker room, Urlacher said it barely registered with him during his playing days.

“Politics — I didn’t even know what I was back then. I didn’t care, man,” he said.

His priority, he explained, was keeping teammates united around winning. Arguments happened, but players had to settle them and move on.

“We have to get along,” Urlacher said. “There are going to be spats, don’t get me wrong. There are some times where you get into it with your teammates, but then literally 30 minutes later it’s squashed.”

For Urlacher, however, the anthem protests crossed a different boundary. He said he and his wife stopped watching professional football for somewhere between two and three years.

“I’d retired, so I was watching all this happen on TV, and we quit watching,” he said. “My wife was fully on board.”

Urlacher’s comments describe how he believes he would have responded, rather than a confrontation that actually happened in his locker room. His final NFL season was in 2012, four years before Kaepernick began protesting. He played his entire career in Chicago and entered the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2018. Pro Football Hall of Fame

The history behind Kaepernick’s protest also adds context to the dispute.

Kaepernick said in 2016 that he was protesting the oppression of Black people and other people of color. NFL.com

He initially sat during the anthem. The switch to kneeling followed a conversation with Nate Boyer, a former Army Green Beret and NFL player who suggested the alternative.

In a later interview with Freedom Forum, Boyer explained that he disagreed with some of Kaepernick’s views but supported his right to protest. He also praised the quarterback’s willingness to listen to a veteran’s perspective and adjust his approach. freedomforum.org

That history illustrates the divide still surrounding the gesture. Boyer saw their conversation as an opportunity for understanding. Urlacher says the resulting protest would have been difficult for him to accept on his own team.

Ten years later, Urlacher’s account shows just how deeply the controversy affected even someone whose career had already ended. For a player who built his reputation on football, his response was to stop watching it.