Back when the first kneeling controversy consumed the NFL headlines, Bengals owner Mike Brown pleaded with the players that they don't kneel according to some who were on the team.

A day after President Donald Trump tweeted that owners should fire any “son of a bi***h” that kneeled for the Anthem, the team held a players-only meeting trying to figure out which direction they wanted to go. After the meeting, there was another Bengals meeting that Brown was involved in.

Elise Jesse of WLWT talked to a number of former Bengals players, including George Iloka who said he believed it was basically split between the whites and the blacks in the room.

“The meeting left pretty much just like, the African American players feeling like we want to kneel, and then it was the white players telling us, ‘You guys don’t need to do that.’ It’s almost like saying ‘Go be oppressed somewhere else and keep it out of my sight.’ That sort of thing. So, you know it was like, I understand that you don’t get how we feel and we are not asking you to join us, but just stop telling us not to.”

That's when Brown entered the room and asked the players not to kneel because the backlash that might come from it. By the time Iloka got a chance to give his opinion to the Bengals owner, he already left.

The Bengals ended up standing and locking their arms during the anthem to show solidarity.