The point made was that it isn’t about you.
Or me.
It’s about that saying,”First they came for the Jews, but I didn’t care or say anything. Next they came for the Christians, but I didn’ care or say anything. Then they came for me, and nobody was left to give a damn or say anything.”
(Paraphrasing badly, but you get the point.)
I still don’t care.
Neither Martin Niemöller's original poem, nor the subsequent revisions ever said anything about coming for Christians. The part of the poem that resonates has to do with " .. then they came for the Jews ..." because the Jews were innocent.
Niemöller's poem is actually more apt than your metaphor, because it says: "First they came for the Communists ..." And why did people do nothing when they came for the Communists? Because they were NOT innocent. The biggest reason the Nazi's came to power to begin with was because of the mass slaughter in the streets, largely instigated by Communists in the early 1930's. In July of the year Hitler came to power, Brown Shirts and Reds murdered an astonishing 700+ people in Berlin in political turmoil that one ineffectual government after another was unwilling or powerless to stop.
In the case of the NFL, what you are saying is: "First they came for the thugs, and I did nothing, because I was not a thug." Trying to defend the concrete evil done by Ray Rice, Ray McDonald, Greg Hardy, Jonathan Dwyer, or Adrian Peterson on the abstract principle that the NFL (sometimes) represents (some) things that are good about America is an idiotic idea that will discredit conservatism, and plays into the narrative that there is a "War on Women."
You need to pick your battles. This is not a hill we can stand on, and there is no reason to do so: The NFL's business model is not an ideal of laissez-faire capitalism by any stretch of the imagination -- it is a government protected monopoly -- and there is no traditional moral value more essential to the preservation of civilization than the protection of women. These men are representative of a violent, misogynist culture that needs to be destroyed.