Week 4 of the NFL season is about to get underway Thursday, and any rumors of Colin Kaepernick being considered by an NFL team have gone quiet.
The free-agent quarterback remains unemployed since starting the national anthem protest movement last season, with some believing the league is blackballing him.
Cam Newton has yet to be among those that kneel during the anthem, but he doesn't want the NFL world to forget about the "ultimate sacrifice" Kaepernick made with his career by protesting against racial inequality and police brutality.
"My hat goes off to the Colin Kaepernicks of the world," the Carolina Panthers' star quarterback said, according to Jourdan Rodrigue of the Charlotte Observer. "He's made the ultimate sacrifice (as a player) and I respect that wholeheartedly. I can't let a moment go by without shedding light to that: A person that does have the talent to play, a person that should be in this league, but I feel as if he's not getting his just due because of his views.
"But that's a legend, right there. For him to think outside of himself, to raise awareness of something that, this is 365 days removed from his first initial stand, and now here we are doing the same things. And now everybody is kind of understanding what his reasoning was, and I respect that."
The Panthers, save for Julius Peppers, who stayed in the locker room during the anthem, were one of the few teams who didn't do any demonstrations.
Newton has previously been wary of talking about his social views, but he said he believes it's his "duty" to speak for the oppressed after witnessing injustices growing up just outside Atlanta.
"That doesn't mean where I'm from, they don't see it," Newton said. "How I view things, it's not the Cam you see (before you) today. I often remind people of where I'm from - I'm from Atlanta, Ga., by way of College Park. And it's a lot of stereotyping, it's a lot of cultural division, so to speak, in those areas.
"So the person that I am now, if I were to see a person of a different race, of course I'm going to get their best behavior. But when you go back to those sides of College Park, of East Point, Ben Hill, Bowen Homes. ... A person growing up, walking down the street, may not have the same cushion, so to speak, from a policeman. That's what I mean.
"I feel like it's my job, my duty, my fine print as a person that people do look up to and people love to critique, that I represent those people knowing that we haven't been getting our just due. And I would want the people from the top to understand that as well as the bottom understand the top. It's going to take us to come together and unify."
