Jets WR Brandon Marshall Calls Colin Kaepernick a ‘Patriot’

New York Jets wide receiver Brandon Marshall called Colin Kaepernick a “patriot” in a radio interview Tuesday.

Though a fighting word in the Jets locker room, “patriot” referred here to a lover of the country rather than the nickname for New York’s divisional rival often prefaced in the Exit 16W vicinity of the New Jersey Turnpike by a word that begins in “f” and ends in “king.”

“This guy, he’s one of the biggest patriots out there,” Marshall told hosts Boomer Esiason and Craig Carton on New York’s WFAN, “because he’s standing up for human rights.”

Kaepernick sat for the national anthem during a preseason game against the Green Bay Packers and then took a knee during the song before a subsequent preseason contest against the San Diego Chargers. He wore socks depicting police officers as pigs at practice, donned a Fidel Castro t-shirt at a press availability, and claimed cops receive less training than cosmetologists in explaining his initial protest of “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Marshall called Esiason “100 percent wrong” in his take on the San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback. Esiason labeled his pregame protests “embarrassing” and called the QB “disrespectful” and “under-informed” to Newsday.

“I think President Obama said it best: That’s his constitutional right,” Marshall told the hosts. “But I do think this is very thought-provoking for all. I think that the message was a little diluted because of how much respect a lot of us have for those that served, gave us our freedoms, fought for our freedoms. But the message was clear.”