The explanation is simple. The National Football League has no values, just assorted and unrelated reactions dictated by money, expediency, fear of activist groups, and stupidity.
This was the most recent example:
Washington Redskins cornerback Josh Norman was flagged after his fourth-quarter interception Sunday in a win over the Browns. He pretended to shoot an arrow from a mimed bow–veteran MLB relief pitcher Fernando Rodney has done this after every save his entire career–and was penalized for the unsportsmanlike foul of ” shooting a bow and arrow,” as announced by the ref. Fox analyst Mike Pereira explained to the TV audience that “Shooting a bow and arrow is just like simulating shooting guns. It’s a foul and it’s not allowed.”
The NFL refused to allow the Dallas Cowboys to commemorate the Dallas officers shot in a Black Lives Matter fueled massacre of police. Then it announced its support of the ridiculous Colin Kaepernick’s grandstanding protest of the National Anthem because, he says, “the United States systematically oppresses African-Americans.” Next, it submits the name of Darren Sharper—one of those oppressed African Americans, by the way— as a nominee for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He is serving 20 years in prison for drugging and raping women. Now it deems a bow-and-arrow gesture as so offensive to the sport that it requires a major game penalty.
Meanwhile, the league still officially denies that the concussions it routinely inflicts on its players are the cause of their brain damage when they cease to be able to function and slide into depression and dementia in middle age.
Those who continue to support the NFL knowing all of this (you put money in the league’s coffers by just watching the games) are allowing their own values and their children’s to be compromised and corrupted in exchange for a few visceral thrills.
Ethics Alarms 
This is really ironic. All the anti-celebration rules came in in response to black guys doing all sorts of goofy things after scoring touchdowns. Many of the celebrations were definitely non-white. The Icky Shuffle all the way to twerking. Well the league couldn’t have that. So they clamped down on it and probably even had it approved in the collective bargaining agreement.
Then Colin Kapernick came along and went all Black Power (sort of) and they couldn’t clamp down on that. No sir.
Ah, the irony.
Billions of dollars make people do strange, inconsistent things.
You know, Jack. Running a modern day plantation (aka the NFL and NCAA football andNBA and NCAA basketball) just isn’t as easy as one would think.
Anyone notice that this whole thing started in the last year of the Obama administration?
Apparently football players did not think the country as racist during the Bush administration.
Oh, sure, I noticed. Obama’s most damaging legacy is how thoroughly he presided over a deterioration of race relations and trust. Great job.
And yet, I read from Facebook commenters as well as Occupy Democrats®™ that George W. Bush was the worst president ever, that Barack Obama fixed the mess he made and everything is great, people have more jobs.
How could these football players be wrong about their beliefs?
A bunch of pretend Cowboys and Indians should allow to pantomime the shooting of guns. And arrows. These guys are all going to end up dead from years of head trauma anyway, they should at least be allowed to play and have fun.
Nope. It’s cultural appropriation.
As an American, he doesn’t get to use imagery associated with Plains Indian weaponry. As a Black guy, he doesn’t get to use imagery associated with the English Longbow. As a Black guy, he ONLY gets to use imagery associated with the assegai. But as an American he also gets to use gun related symbols.
But nope. No bow and arrow symbols. That’s the sinister crime of cultural appropriation.