He is just digging a deeper hole and made it up. There was no protesting during the event. There was only protesting when they were winning two WCs and going 44 games undefeated. If anything, that means they would have won gold if they protested during the event because obviously they perform much better when they protest, right? Clearly it couldn't have been age finally catching up to them according to Watfly. In comparison, MNT players have never protested anything and played so poorly they couldn't qualify for the Olympics or WC. Clearly it is not protesting and its attendant lack of passion and moral courage that is the problem. We need more strong and outspoken women, just younger ones, if the WNT is to continue dominating.
Even if the WNT had protested during the Olympics, which they didn't, the only way to rationalize that they can't still be 100% focused although that has not been a problem with male athletes, is gender bias. There is no other explanation. He'll never admit it, but he would need to if he ever honestly answered "How then did the WNT manage to win two WCs, go 44 straight games without a loss, and develop into the greatest women's soccer team in history while simultaneously supporting civil rights if it isn't possible to focus 100% on soccer and civil rights at the same time?" I'm sure he also honestly believed Carlos and Smith did not protest before they ran their races, but he clearly never even looked into it because he would have realized how much bs wrong that was had he done so. How does a false assumption like that even pop into someone's head, and so strongly that one doesn't even bother to figure out whether it is even true? Gender bias, probably mixed with a touch of race bias and/or homophobia since fundamentally he is rationalizing why he thinks WNT players should be silent on the issues they support.