Azeez Al-Shaair made sure his message landed before kickoff. On Sunday, the Houston Texans’ linebacker stepped onto the field at NRG Stadium with “stop the gen-cide” written across his eye black. He did it knowing the league had already come down on him once after the wild-card round. Still, Al-Shaair chose the message over the money. Now he also addressed the fine.

So when asked about it, Al-Shaair did not dodge the moment.

“I understand it’s a fine,” he said. “It’s bigger than me. It makes people uncomfortable. Imagine how those people feel? There’s people dying. I’m a human being, and I care.”

Meanwhile, cameras caught Al-Shaair earlier in the day firing up his teammates. Before the loss to the Patriots, he delivered a pregame pep talk while still wearing the eye black. However, once the ball kicked off against Patriots Nation, the message disappeared. He followed the rules during play, but the statement had already been made.

Later, Al-Shaair went even deeper into his mindset.

“If you have a heart and you’re a human being, you can see what’s going on in the world,” Al-Shaair said. “You check yourself real quick. Even when I’m walking off this field, that’s the type of stuff that goes through my head that I have to check myself when I’m sitting there crying about football when there are people who are dying every single day.”

Meanwhile, the league’s stance stayed firm. Al-Shaair took an $11,593 fine for wearing the eye black against the Steelers on Monday night at Acrisure Stadium in the Steel City. The NFL cited that he violated Rule 6, Section 4, Article 8 of the NFL rules.

According to the rules, “Throughout the period on game day that a player is visible to the stadium and television audience (including in pregame warmups, in the bench area, and during postgame interviews in the locker room or on the field), players are prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages either in writing or illustration, unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office.”

This situation is not new territory for the league. The NFL has fined players before for putting messages on uniforms, even when the intent was personal and emotional. Back in 2015, Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams was punished for writing “Find the Cure” to honor breast cancer awareness after losing his mother.

As for the footballing side, in the game, the Texans lost 28-16 to the New England Patriots. And Al-Shaair had 4 solo tackles, 5 assists, and 2 fumble recoveries against the Patriots.

At the end, Al-Shaair accepted the hit. His message, however, clearly mattered more.

Why was the message important to Azeez Al-Shaair?

This was never a random statement from Azeez Al-Shaair. The Texans linebacker regularly brings children to NRG Stadium, many of them amputees affected by violence in the Middle East.

So, the message itself came from a place of deep concern. Al-Shaair’s stance connects to what is happening in Gaza, where tens of thousands have reportedly been kil-ed following Israel’s military response to the Hamas attack in October 2023. But Israel has strongly rejected gen-cide accusations, calling them antisemitic.

However, Al-Shaair did not frame this as politics. Instead, he framed it as a human issue that he could not ignore.

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Interestingly, CAIR-Houston praised Al-Shaair for speaking up, even drawing a powerful comparison. The group said the league “should have no problem with an NFL player opposing gen-cide, whether the gen-cide is in Gaza or Sudan or elsewhere.”

Moreover, this was not new behavior from Al-Shaair. He has backed this cause before, most notably during the NFL’s My Cause My Cleats campaign. At that time, he wore cleats supporting the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

“If my platform can bring even a little hope to families in Palestine, then that is what I want to use it for,” he said in a statement earlier this season.

So even if the message makes people uncomfortable, Al-Shaair knows football is not the biggest thing happening in the world. And he is willing to live with that reality.