The answer came quickly during Thursday night’s opener between the Super Bowl champion Broncos and Panthers. During the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall took a knee. He was the only player on either sideline to do so. 

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The low-key way NBC Sports covered it likely will be the gameplan NFL broadcast partners implement if more players follow the example of Colin Kaepernick.

NBC didn’t clutch its pearls and faint like Miss Pittypatt in “Gone with the Wind.” The sky didn’t fall. The world didn’t end. The U.S. Marines standing at attention at midfield didn’t charge Marshall with bayonets. The fighter jet streaking overhead didn’t strafe him while he was on one knee.

NBC play-by-play announcer Al Michaels simply reported that Marshall (a college teammate/fraternity brother of Kaepernick’s at Nevada) appeared to be the only player on either sideline not standing for the anthem.

“Well, the national anthem has become the big story. You saw all of the Panthers standing. And except for Marshall, Brandon Marshall the linebacker who was down on one knee, the rest of the Broncos were standing,” Michaels said. “That is the national anthem post-script in Denver tonight.”

And that was it. Michaels and analyst Cris Collinsworth quickly turned back to the kickoff, the game and the football storylines.

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I wished sideline reporter Michele Tafyoya had tried to grab Marshall for an interview. She’s one of the best in the business. I thought that was the gameplan when I watched an NBC cameraman sneaking in behind the kneeling Marshall.

Instead, when Michaels threw it to Tafoya on the sideline, she talked about DeMarcus Ware’s offseason rehab from a lingering back injury.

After kickoff, NBC wisely focused on the game and not the protest. Even when Marshall left the field for a possible concussion, Michaels, Collinsworth and Tafoya only discussed his concussion history. They didn’t rehash the kneel down during the “Star-Spangled Banner.”

In other words, NBC played it strictly down the middle.

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They didn’t ignore the news of Marshall’s protest. Not showing Marshall kneeling for the anthem would have made the network look like total propaganda tools for the NFL.

But NBC didn’t get hysterical, either. By not dwelling, they satisfied the millions of TV viewers who see Marshall and Kaepernick’s protest as an insult to the flag, police and the U.S. military.

Don’t forget — most of the Week 1 games will kick off Sunday on the 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that slaughtered thousands of U.S. citizens, firefighters, police and military.

Emotions are still raw regarding Kaepernick’s protest, as well as the pro athletes who have followed his lead such as Marshall and soccer star Megan Rapinoe.

When I noted on Twitter that NBC showed Marshall taking the knee, my feed lit up. Some celebrated when Marshall was forced to the locker room due to a possible concussion.

In the end, I liked NBC’s approach. It was a compromise between covering legit news and not letting it overwhelm the game.

I think you’ll see CBS Sports, Fox Sports and ESPN follow NBC’s lead on covering in-game protests during NFL game telecasts this season.

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Some other quick-hitters on NBC’s Broncos/Panthers coverage Thursday night:

Best Interview: Cam tells Tirico he cried like a baby after Super Bowl 50 loss

Despite the NFL insisting that Michaels, not Mike Tirico, call the network’s Thursday Night/Sunday Night games this season, the former play-by-play analyst for ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” was a big force during NBC’s pregame coverage.

Tirico had a great interview with reigning NFL MVP Cam Newton of the Panthers where he asked the Panthers quarterback’s pouty press conference after Super Bowl 50.

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Tirico: “But Cam, don’t you understand that some people see you after you lose, which you didn’t do a lot of last year, and they say, ‘Where’s the guy who was doing this (gestures) and the dabbin’ and all of that – don’t you have to take the bad with the good, and be better about how you take the bad?”