Colin Kaepernick's protest during the 2016 NFL season is on the verge of getting dwarfed. This weekend's start of NFL preseason games and the left-stream media narrative that President Trump failed to "condemn far-right demonstrators" at Charlottesville has ignited a heightened new state of athlete protests.

Marshawn Lynch, a new member of the Oakland Raiders, made the All-NFL "malcontent team" without even playing against the Arizona Cardinals Saturday night. He started off a bitter weekend by sitting on an ice chest eating a banana during the national anthem.

Additionally, The Bleacher Report's lefty writer Mike Freeman claims five NFL players told him they'll be protesting the national anthem this season.

Michael Bennett, an over-rated pass rusher for the Seattle Seahawks, however, clearly remains the captain of the league's "All Malcontent Team." Kaepernick's BFF also refused to stand Sunday for the national anthem. Afterwards he popped off to the media and promised to continue his protest all season. The Guardian reported "his stance was influenced by the far-right violence in Charlottesville over the weekend":

The last week, with everything that’s been going on in the last couple months – especially after the last couple days seeing everything in Charlottesville Virginia... I just wanted to be able to continue to use my platform to be able to speak on injustice.

Bennett said he loves the military, but he sure has a strange way of showing it. Dissing the flag our brave warriors risk life defending is worthy of more respect than sitting out the Star Spangled Banner. The NFL is 70-percent Black, but he's stressing about segregation and oppression. LGBT rights are trampling on the First Amendment, but he's worried about "gender slander" and "equality." He's got so many issues bugging him that you wonder how he can possibly focus on football. He's got a "free" year of protesting, though, because his contract isn't up yet.

Bennett says people need to talk with others who are of different race, gender and religion and push unity. But he's the same guy who, later this year, will release a race-themed book that may well create racial division -- "Things That Make White People Uncomfortable."

Bennett, the hypocrite, isn't as far out there in left field as Lynch is though. The Guardian reported on Lynch's protest in Arizona and re-posted a bizarre quote from Lynch's appearance last fall on Conan when, according to ESPN, he said, of Kaepernick:

With what’s going on, I’d rather see him take a knee than stand up, put his hands up and get murdered. So my take on it is, s--- has to start somewhere, and if that was the starting point, I just hope people open up their eyes to see that there’s really a problem going on, and something needs to be done for it to stop. And if you’re really not racist then you won’t see what he’s doing as a threat to America, but just addressing a problem that we have.”

Lynch seems to have conflated Kaepernick's protest with the fake claims of the Michael Brown "hands-up, don't shoot" incident in Ferguson. Out of football last year, the "Beastmode" must have been in lala looney mode. No matter, neither ESPN nor The Guardian were interested in correcting the record.

It's only mid-August in the summer of our discontent. And it's going to be a long, long, bitter football season ahead. Kaepernick may soon become yesterday's news.