Former Seahawks WR Doug Baldwin says NFL has ‘obligation to give back’ to Black communities

Doug Baldwin, a two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver with the Seattle Seahawks, thinks the NFL has an “obligation to give back” to Black communities, he said on The Athletic podcast series “Between the Lines.” Here’s what you need to know:

• Baldwin and host Tashan Reed discussed why donating money to social justice causes is the minimum the NFL should be doing, and why Baldwin became increasingly interested in social activism when he was in the league, in an episode released Tuesday.
• “If you’re going to benefit from the drive and motivation of these players comes from a very specific place, and I’m not trying to get too deep into this, but there’s a reason why players are willing to do what they do on the football field and disregard their bodies,” Baldwin said. “If somebody benefits from that, then I think, yeah, they have an obligation to give back to the community, to the sources, to the origin of why that is what it is in the first place.”
• On social activism, he added: “I couldn’t sit around and not do anything about what was going on in our country or at least address it from a perspective or an angle that I thought that I could have some impact in.”

Backstory

Baldwin played for the Seahawks from 2011 to 2018 after signing as an undrafted free agent out of Stanford. Baldwin said that before Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the national anthem in 2016, he had no plans to get heavily involved in activism and politics.

But once Kaepernick started his demonstrations, they became a topic of conversation in the Seahawks’ locker room and Baldwin eventually found himself motivated to make an impact, specifically when it came to police brutality.

He reached out to law enforcement in Seattle in an effort to understand their perspective. From there, he attempted to bridge the gap between them and the citizens in his community.

In 2022, Baldwin joined forces with former Seahawks teammates Cliff Avril and Michael Bennett to start Champions of Change, a non-profit organization with a broad focus on providing children with the resources they need to flourish and to assist their families in raising them.

For more from Baldwin’s interview, go to The Athletic Football Show podcast feed to listen to the latest episode of “Between the Lines,” a deep dive into how America’s biggest game grapples with America’s biggest issue.

(Photo: Otto Greule Jr / Getty Images)