club fooled them all.Eric Reid will play football this season 49ers Jaquiski Tartt Jersey , and for that everyone who believes in fair play should be happy. After all, the only thing keeping Reid out of the NFL before Thursday was that he stood — make that kneeled — with Colin Kaepernick in San Francisco.Now he's a Carolina Panther, and for that he can thank new Carolina owner David Tepper. It was Tepper who signed off on a deal for the free agent safety, something 31 other NFL owners — and certainly not former Panthers owner Jerry Richardson — had any intention of doing.It was carefully labeled as a football decision, and in some ways it was. The Panthers lost safety Da'Norris Searcy to injury last week and Reid is expected to start when Carolina returns from a bye week to play the New York Giants.But this was also a statement that the old guard may be changing. And it could be Tepper, the hedge fund mogul who bought the team for $2.2 billion in the offseason, leading the way."It shouldn't have taken this long, a person with his talent. We all understand the reason why," said Panthers wide receiver Torrey Smith, who lobbied his team to sign Reid earlier in the week. "This says a lot about the men and the leaders here. They're making a football decision, but Eric is also a great man and leader."Yes, it's only a one-year contract. And, no, it doesn't mean Kaepernick should brush up on his throwing in case another team calls.But Tepper clearly took a stand by signing Reid to a one-year deal, even at the same time Reid continues his collusion case against the league for not being signed earlier.And that was far different than Jerry Jones ranting and raving about what he might do to any Dallas players who would kneel during the anthem. Far different than the silence from most other teams when asked why they didn't sign Reid or Kaepernick.But maybe we should have expected it all along.Tepper showed early he wasn't going to march lockstep with his other billionaire owners on the issue, saying in a CNBC interview earlier this month that it was "dead wrong" to accuse NFL players of being unpatriotic if they knelt during the national anthem to protest social injustice.During the interview 49ers Mike Person Jersey , Tepper also recited the Pledge of Allegiance as a patriotic act, ending it with an emphasis on the words "and justice for all."In this case it's justice for one. Reid is one of the better safeties in football and is in his physical prime. To deprive him of a chance to play because he exercised the right every American has to protest was simply wrong.And, really, Tepper and the Panthers aren't taking a big chance. The same fans who threaten to boycott the NFL for player protests will be on their feet cheering Reid if he can bring stability to the secondary of the 2-1 Panthers.Still, while Reid gets some form of justice, the man who started it all waits for the phone to ring.Kaepernick has a new Nike ad and contract, and the movement he started still looms large over the league. But he doesn't have a job playing football, and could do little more than congratulate Reid in a tweet on his signing."He was the 1ST person 2 kneel alongside me," Kaepernick tweeted. "Eric is a social justice warrior, continues to support his family. and communities in need."The NFL still finds itself in a quandary about what to do with protests during the anthem. A handful of players took a knee last weekend, though the league has been lucky recently in being spared the Twitter wrath of President Donald Trump, who has used the issue to rally his base.One of those kneeling was Dolphins wide receiver Kenny Stills, who has been vocal all season about his reason for protesting and his view that the NFL needs to employ both Reid and Kaepernick if there is going to be any resolution of the issue."He's good enough to play," Stills said. "He deserves to play."He could play, even back in San Francisco, where the 49ers could surely use an experienced backup in the wake of Jimmy Garoppolo's season-ending injury. But whether Kaepernick will play depends on how enlightened NFL owners are becoming — and remember http://www.49erscheapshops.com/cheap-authentic-weston-richburg-jersey , this isn't a very socially enlightened bunch.Signing Reid was a necessary first step, but Reid was the easier of the two.It was Kaepernick who started everything, Kaepernick who remains the face of the protest.And Kaepernick who is still out of a job.Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at Ten adres pocztowy jest chroniony przed spamowaniem. Aby go zobaczyć, konieczne jest włączenie w przeglądarce obsługi JavaScript. or ://timdahlberg The Browns might have obviously preferred trading Josh Gordon out of their conference (so he doesn’t impact their playoff run), and the 49ers were initially interested in a deal for the talented-but-high-maintenance wide receiver.But 49ers General Manager John Lynch said during a radio interview on KNBR that they ultimately decided Gordon would have been more trouble than he was worth.“I think in that situation, like any situation, if there’s a chance to improve your team, you always look into it,” Lynch said, via Eric Branch of the San Francisco Chronicle. “But in certain situations, particularly when you have knowledge of a player, you sit back and you weigh it. Sometimes it鈥檚 intriguing. But then, . . .聽 particularly when you have knowledge of someone, the more you look into it: You know what 鈥?we’re going to stay away from that.”The 49ers have some background on Gordon, since coach Kyle Shanahan was the offensive coordinator in Cleveland in 2014. Also, 49ers special team coordinator Richard Hightower and assistants Mike McDaniel and Jeff Hafley were on that staff. That was the season in which Gordon was suspended 10 games and had a DUI arrest, and was suspended for another game later in the season for missing a practice. Number two, is it something . . . we’ve got a really good thing in our building in terms of the guys and the type of guys we’ve got in here. And do you want to mess with that? . . .“I understand that people get frustrated and sometimes feel like, ‘Why aren’t we getting every player that’s out there?’ But when you look at what we done in two years in terms of just completely overturning the roster, we’ve been very active. And I can promise everybody out there that any chance we can have to improve our team, we’ll look into it.”And the longer they looked, the less interested they became.