Eric Reid has a job. What happens now?

On Thursday, the Carolina Panthers announced they had signed Eric Reid to a one-year deal. The announcement was shocking. Reid was the first athlete to protest alongside Colin Kaepernick at the beginning of the 2016 season, and had been unemployed for the past six months as his collusion case against the NFL waged on.

Reid finding a new home with an NFL team had previously seemed unfathomable, given the hatred that’s been seen toward black players who dared protest. Dissenters are typically never rewarded for upending the status quo, and this has been painstakingly true in the NFL.

Reid signed his documents in a video shared by the team. In a subsequent picture, Reid launched a black power salute while nailing pen to paper. Yes, black protest were amplified again in the NFL’s ranks. But the assumption that the same Reid who left football nearly a year ago — angry, defiant, boisterous — is returning may be a lofty ambition. Football was nearly stolen from him. To believed he’d put his profession in jeopardy again shouldn’t be a blanket conclusion.

Reid said earlier this year that he planned to stop protesting:

“I’m not saying I’m going to stop being active because I won’t. I’m just going to consider different ways to be active, different ways to bring awareness to the issues of this country and improve on the issues happening in this country,” Reid said in March. “I don’t think it will be in the form of protesting during the anthem. I say ‘during’ because it’s crazy that the narrative changed to we were ‘protesting the anthem,’ and that wasn’t the case. I think we’re going to take a different approach to how we’re going to be active.”

For a dying NFL protest movement that has existed solely in Miami in football’s early weeks, Reid can maintain a redeeming visage for this moment of athletic resistance — whether he protests or not. By just seeing him on a team, scampering on a field and flying to the ball, he will be remembered for what he stood for.

It is interesting to ponder whether the men making football run have moved past the Kaepernick era of protest. In one regard, it can be seen that Panthers officials are willing to accept men like Reid back into football’s fold and look past protest. Yet, that feels too generous.

Panthers officials were quick to explain this had nothing to do with protest. Marty Hurney, the team’s general manager, said this was “strictly a football decision.” And while that may be true for the Panthers specifically, this is where things begin to feel disingenuous. It ignores the truth in front of our eyes. If Reid’s employment status was only a “football decision” for every NFL team, he would’ve found a roster much earlier. Reid was not an early signee during free agency, nor was he at training camp. He was only hired once injuries swept his position of play. At this point, Reid is as much protest as he is football. To erase that is a grand disservice.

Reid is here out of necessity. There is a hole to be filled and the best player got the job. That is not courage. These moments are not products of fortitude. It is doing the baseline of good in service of money and winning.

Upon hearing the news of Reid, one’s mind was tempted to immediately jump to Colin Kaepernick. Does this provide new hope that we’ll see the ousted quarterback on an NFL field again? There has been a mighty call for his return. People have filled to street corners, enraged that the quarterback has been forced out of the game.

And yet, thinking that he will ever play in the NFL again feels impractical. Kaepernick is the face of football protest; a much larger mountain to tackle. If Reid’s hiring felt like an anomaly, Kaepernick’s return to football feels even more far-flung. But for a league still lacking high-level quarterbacks on many rosters, it would be, as it always has been, foolish not to consider his talents.

For the time being, Eric Reid has a job. That should be met with zeal. It is unknown if progress has been made or if Reid will return to the glory he had before he was unemployed like Kaepernick. But at the very minimum, the fact that a player who protested could return to the profession that gave him joy is inspiring, while long overdue.