As new Carolina Panthers defensive end Stephen Weatherly sees it: If you're a Black man who happens to play in the NFL, then your life matters.
But what if you don't play a professional sport, and you're not a famous singer, and you didn't grow up, as Weatherly said, holding either "a microphone or a ball"?
Your life matters, too, Weatherly said _ but sometimes it doesn't seem that way.
That's why Weatherly wants to wear a decal on his helmet that says "All Black Lives Matter" this season. As part of a social justice initiative, the NFL is reportedly going to allow NFL players to wear decals on their helmets this year with a variety of messages, something similar to what NBA players are now doing on the backs of their jerseys.
Weatherly on Tuesday became the first Panthers player to declare he'll wear one of the social justice decals, although he certainly won't be the last. When I asked him about the idea and whether he would embrace it, Weatherly said:
"Yeah, I am going to wear a decal. The one I (will) wear is a variation of 'Black Lives Matter' and (I'll) just put 'All Black Lives Matter.' Especially given my standing, like where I am in the community. Oftentimes when I meet with people, my life has been validated because of what I do _ because I play for the Panthers and I'm a professional athlete.
"So people see value; see worth in me as an individual. But when people don't know what I do for a living, I get treated differently.
"And it shouldn't take what someone does, or when you learn who they are, for them to deserve to be treated fairly. And so that's something that I definitely want to echo.
"And that's a real thing that happens, that a lot of people in this world will see me and see what I do and think that I'm an amazing person or might give me value. But then my cousin, my mom, my brother, all aren't (valued) _ because they don't do what I do for a living. So that's why we're a decal that says 'All Black Lives Matter' _ not just the ones you root for."
While Weatherly, a 26-year-old defensive end, is firmly a part of the NFL world, he thinks far beyond the 120-yard rectangle that makes up a football field and always has. Growing up in a household that encouraged trying things out, Weatherly says he has dabbled at playing nine musical instruments. He has taken classes in glass blowing and martial arts. He's been on a robotics team.
He has a Renaissance-man way about him, although the Panthers signed him to a two-year, $12.5-million contract in March because of one particular skill. Weatherly can rush the passer, and he is competing for a starting job because of it.
"I'm super-excited to come out here and legitimately fight for a spot _ a bigger, more expanded role," Weatherly said. "And I do feel I have something to prove."
In Minnesota for the first four seasons of his NFL career, Weatherly was a seventh-round pick out of Vanderbilt who only started seven times. Playing behind Pro Bowlers like Danielle Hunter and Everson Griffen, Weatherly had a handful of impact plays in each of the past two years and also made some special-teams contributions. The Panthers project him as being able to do much more when he gets more playing time to do it.
Weatherly also will become one of the few Panthers' players to ever wear goggles on the field. He needs prescription glasses to see and believes the goggles will offer another COVID-19 related layer of protection when he and an offensive lineman are sweating on each other.
Entering his fifth year, Weatherly is one of the older players on a defense that will likely be the NFL's youngest. The 6-foot-5, 265-pounder is trying to learn Carolina's new system while also teaching the rookies what he already knows.
"Every offense pretty much runs the same plays _ but with window dressing," Weatherly said. "So it's taking everything I've seen over the last four years and compartmentalizing it, and then given the information out to the rest of the guys on the D-line. Because you don't have to be the biggest, the fastest or the strongest if you know where you need to be."
Weatherly has already been working as a member of the Panthers' Player Impact Committee and said he plans to stay active in social justice issues and on the field during his time in Charlotte.
"It's been a stereotype," Weatherly said, "that there's only a handful of ways to make it out (of poverty). I feel like as someone that is successful _ not only in sports, but also off the field _ it's partly my job to show the next generation that you can succeed in multiple different ways."
