Colin Kaepernick led the charge of taking a stand against civil injustices in the country last season by taking a bended knee.

Now various athletes and sports teams are following suit.

According to Cleveland.com, before their game's kickoff on Monday, more than a dozen Cleveland Browns players kneeled and joined hands in prayer during the National Anthem.

"You always have to, with everything you do, you have to have respect first and foremost, and we did it in a way, we were saying a prayer," said linebacker Christian Kirksey.

"If anyone was wondering what was going on in that circle, we were saying a prayer and we were just praying over the country, praying over things that we were going on, we tried to do it as respectfully as possible and we respect everything that happened with people in the military, we respect all of that. We just felt it was the right time to do that, say a prayer, pray over this country."

Kirksey led his fellow teammates in the prayer which can be seen below:

"I would say that we have an opportunity to do something with our platform," said tight-end Seth DeValve, "and I think it's our responsibility to do something with it."

It is to also be noted that DeValve is the first white player to participate fully in the National Anthem protest, according to Mashable.

"The United States is the greatest country in the world," DeValve said. "It is because it provides opportunities to its citizens that no other country does. The issue is that it doesn't provide equal opportunity to everybody. And I wanted to support my African American teammates today who wanted to take a knee. We wanted to draw attention to the fact that there's things in this country that still need to change."

"I myself will be raising children that don't look like me, and I want to do my part as well to do everything I can to raise them in a better environment than we have right now," DeValve added, referring to the fact that his wife is black.

The Browns who participated in the action refused to pin their protest to Charlottesville, explaining that while what happened there is troubling, they wanted to focus on racism and social justice as a whole.

"As professional athletes, in our realm and with our platform, we can invoke a lot of change," cornerback Jason McCourty said. "I think guys are trying to do something to stand on our platform and show people that we want to stand up for this country and show that no matter what your color is, no matter what your background is, whatever, we can all come together and work together to make it a better place."

Safety Jabril Peppers added, "There are a lot of racial and social injustices that are going on in the world right now so we just decided to take a knee and pray for the people who have been affected and pray for the world in general."

Kaepernick has not been the only football player to make a statement of resistance during the National Anthem. His protests have encouraged players like Raiders Marshawn Lynch and Eagles Malcolm Jenkins to do the same.

Kaepernick has also encouraged Michael Bennet of the Seattle Seahawks to call out systematic racism particularly in the NFL with his soon-to-be published book Things That Make White People Uncomfortable.

These protests also inspired DeValve and the Cleveland Browns to do something to show their solidarity with their fellow NFL colleagues.

"Just the other day, guys started to talk about it," DeValve said. "We should come up with something that we can do and try to get as many people involved to show that we support Malcolm Jenkins, Michael Bennett, other guys around the league that are trying to use their platform and also doing things in the community to try to help and show we all want to try to come together as a nation and do better for ourselves."

"Hopefully it can start to change things," McCourty said. "That's the big key. It's what, two minutes in the national anthem as a protest, but you'd like to see results during our day-to-day lives of people just getting along."

"We feel as though, at this level, we have a platform with which we can speak on because when we take that helmet off we're all regular people at the end of the day," Peppers said. "We have people who've been affected [by] it, people who may be affected by it in the future, so we just decided to just take a moment, pray, give God the glory and put it all in his hands."