The 2020-21 NFL season will go down as one of the craziest seasons in recent memory, but in some eyes, it will go down as a meaningful season in terms of what the league stood for over the last year in the fight for social justice and trying to play the game amidst a pandemic. 

On Tuesday night’s episode of Inside The NFL that looked ahead to Super Bowl LV this Sunday, ESPN’s Bomani Jones was a guest with James Brown, Phil Simms, and Ray Lewis to talk about how the NFL has addressed social injustice, the Rooney Rule, and the impact COVID-19 has had on the NFL. 

After a montage of clips looking back at the season that was from NFL Films, Brown first asked Jones, who he called one of the “most knowledgeable and distinguishable voices in sports broadcasting” about how significant it was the NFL has expressed their concern about social injustice. Jones said it is a message still going in the NFL compared to other sports.

“When you think about it, the NBA got out of the bubble and you don’t have Black Lives Matter on the floor anymore, you don’t have the things on the back of the jerseys. Right now, in sports, the NFL is carrying that messaging in a way that nobody really has been in professional sports. It hasn’t been out front as some people would like, but I think the number one goal in this is the product. Whatever you do can’t interfere with the football that is being watched.”

Jones also brought up the example of DeAndre Hopkins wearing Denmark Vesey’s name on the back of his helmet to help educate people on a slave revolt that happened in the United States. He mentions that having that name being introduced to people by Lisa Salters on ESPN can make people think about history during a game.

“After a while, you can tune out the things that you see week after week, but I find the little things that pop up that make me say I think they are really doing something here to put things in places where people wouldn’t ordinarily probably wouldn’t think of discussing some of them.” 

While the messaging by the players has continued to grow, Jones said it is up to the NFL to “make people believe that they believe it.” 

“When they do the stuff for the military, we know that they believe it. Can you make people feel like you believe it in that same way when they are doing those things? That’s where the owners are going to be important in this. The NFL owners command a different level of respect. The ones who have put themselves forward, those are the ones when you look up and see they are invested in it and it doesn’t take much to convey that, I don’t think.” 

The topic shifted to the Rooney Rule and whether or not it is working with just 2 black head coaches in the NFL. Brown told Jones, Simms, and Lewis that it is “pitiful code words” when he hears a coach does not interview well. Jones used an example of 2 coaches to say if the interviews were really poor, we would know about it.

“When you talk about the interviews, the Eagles interviewed a candidate who was on vacation, so he did not have his suit, so everyone put on their Tommy Bahama shirts or whatever it was to make him feel more comfortable. They made the interview well for this guy. I believe this on Eric Bieniemy (Chiefs offensive coordinator). If Bieniemy really interviewed that poorly, we wouldn’t have heard whispers, we would know about it. If someone believes typically that a black person can’t do something, they are going to tell you loud and proud why they believe they can’t do it.”