On Thursday night, the number of players on the 49ers not standing for the national anthem increased by 100 percent when safety Eric Reid joined quarterback Colin Kaepernick by taking a knee during the pregame ceremony. The head coach didn’t know it was coming.
“I was not aware of that,” Chip Kelly told reporters regarding Reid’s gesture. “All I was aware of was that Nate Boyer was going to be out there.”
Kelly otherwise tiptoed around questions about Kaepernick’s status on the team and Kelly’s position on Kaepernick’s words and actions from recent days, saying he’s there only to coach the football team.
An interesting question was directed to Kelly regarding whether and to what extent the Riley Cooper situation in Philadelphia from three years ago helped prepare Kelly for the current non-football challenge he currently faces.
“I don’t look at it as the same,” Kelly said. “I look at it as a different deal. And I think you just take every situation that comes up. The one thing fortunate here, the people around our building at the 49ers have done a great job of working with us in terms of how to handle the situation so I don’t know if one compares for the other. I think they’re two entirely different situations.”
On Thursday night, the “people around our building at the 49ers” opted not to post video of Kaepernick’s post-game remarks on the team’s official website, or to send out transcripts of anything anyone had to say after the game, making it harder for the people around our building at PFT to share with the audience exactly what was said. But we’ll manage.