Once it became obvious that there currently aren’t enough good quarterbacks to go around (there are barely enough bad ones), Colin Kaepernick launched one of his most public efforts yet to get back to the NFL.
Through a series of workouts in the backyards of NFL teams, Kaepernick has gotten his name back in the news. Seahawks coach Pete Carroll has been asked on multiple occasions about Kaepernick’s potential return. Last week, it came up during the press conference regarding the Russell Wilson trade. This week, it came up during an interview with Dave “Softy” Mahler and Dick Fain on KJR radio in Seattle.
“We’re watching him,” Carroll said as to Kaepernick. “He’s been working out, doing a lot of good things, trying to get prepared for an opportunity here. It’s amazing that he’s stayed with it for all these years. It just shows you his resolve to try and prove that he can play. I think a lot of the effort that he’s made to this point.”
If they’re watching him from afar, why not bring him in for a workout and watch him more directly? That’s a question that should be addressed not to a coach, but to an owner.
Any flirtation with Kaepernick will result in an immediate backlash from a portion of the fanbase that hates Kaepernick for kneeling during the national anthem. As the first to do it, he became the player most plainly attached to a practice that became widespread and controversial.
He became a free agent five years ago. No one wanted him. Bogus storylines were fed to reporters (who relayed them to their audiences) to justify not doing business with him. Eventually, he filed a collusion grievance. It settled in early 2019 for an amount widely believed to land between $5 million and $10 million.
In other words, he was right.
Since then, there has been intermittent optimism that Kaepernick will get another opportunity. A window seemed to open following the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, causing many to admit the connection between that incident and the concerns previously raised by Kaepernick in explaining his decision to protest during the anthem.
At some point (possibly from the get-go), Kaepernick’s unemployment became about not his skills but the impact of doing business with him on a team’s broader business interests. Nearly five years ago, Giants co-owner John Mara admitted that teams don’t want to anger customers by signing Kaepernick.
“All my years being in the league, I never received more emotional mail from people than I did about that issue,” Mara said. “If any of your players ever do that, we are never coming to another Giants game. It wasn’t one or two letters. It was a lot. It’s an emotional, emotional issue for a lot of people, moreso than any other issue I’ve run into.”
Now that the league has moved past the short-time ratings dip that happened when certain politicians seized on the subject in 2016 and 2017, no owner is willing to stir up a hibernating hornets’ nest for a backup-at-best-caliber quarterback who may be good enough to win a roster spot and eventually (potentially) the starting job.
Right or wrong (the fact that Kaepernick violated no laws or league rules should help you resolve that one), teams don’t want the headache, the criticism, the potential impact to the bottom line for associating with someone who has been engaged in unpopular conduct. Of course, this is all happening at a time when the Browns shipped multiple first-round picks, multiple second-round picks, and more to Houston for a quarterback who promptly received a five-year, fully-guaranteed contract worth $230 million -- despite 22 pending civil cases alleging sexual misconduct during massage sessions and the looming possibility of criminal charges.
Some would call the ongoing shunning of Kaepernick good business. Others would call it the absence of moral or financial courage by NFL ownership. Whatever the explanation for the fact that Drew Lock, Davis Mills, Marcus Mariota, and Mitch Trubisky currently have positions atop depth charts while Kapernick can’t even get an in-person tryout, it should be coming not from the coaches of the league’s teams but from the owners.
Coincidentally, the owners will be gathering next week in Florida. Maybe one or more of them will be asked about it.
