An NFL team reportedly used San Francisco 49ers star Nick Bosa’s Donald Trump-supporting stunt to warn its players about the potential cost of speaking out ahead of Election Day. In his weekly notebook at Sports Illustrated, NFL insider Albert Breer said the conversation in NFL circles about the U.S. presidential election has been “way more toned down” compared to the past two elections. But to see whether that was intentional or not, Breer checked in with nine NFL teams to see what the teams were telling their players.
According to Breer, one of the teams used Bosa going on “Sunday Night Football” to show off a “Make America Great Again” hat as a negative example.
“The first team had its public relations director address the team Thursday,” Breer wrote. “The PR chief raised the example from last weekend of Nick Bosa — telling players he’d lose a sum of at least five figures from the fallout, and he didn’t even utter a word — in emphasizing to the players that, while they’re free to speak out, there can be a cost to it.”
As SFGATE first reported last week, Bosa’s stunt was in direct violation of the NFL rulebook, with Rule 5, Section 4, Article 8 stating that the NFL expressly prohibits messages related to “political activities or causes” during any moment a player is “visible to the stadium and television audience,” including during pregame warmups and postgame interviews.
That unnamed NFL team’s PR chief then apparently lied to the team’s players, based on what Breer reported from the PR person’s message: “He added that, as a result, Bosa’s teammates had to answer questions they otherwise wouldn’t have had to, as an example of how a personal statement can become a team matter.”
No 49ers player was asked to address Bosa’s political hat stunt in the aftermath of Sunday’s game — and other than the three players being interviewed by NBC, tight end George Kittle, quarterback Brock Purdy and running back Isaac Guerendo, most likely didn’t even know it happened until after the game. With the Niners on a bye, players didn’t have mandatory media availability for the entire week after Sunday’s win over the Cowboys.
In that light, the anonymous first NFL team’s PR chief seems less like a warning to help your teammates and more of an active discouragement of political commentary. For the other eight teams Breer spoke to, only one addressed Bosa’s actions, according to Breer: “The PR staff also met one-on-one with team leaders and more outspoken players, and some players came back to the PR staff to ask about handling any questions on the Bosa situation.”
