Although no team has offered quarterback Colin Kaepernick a contract or even engaged in substantive negotiations with him, Kaepernick has drawn some interest, according to one of his advisors.
Harry Edwards, a well-known sociologist with long-time links to pro football, tells Jarrett Bell of USA Today that three teams have asked Edwards about Kaepernick since he became a free agent on March 9.
“They’ve asked, ‘Can he play? Does he want to play?’” Edwards told Bell. “The last question I can’t answer. The first question, absolutely. If Kaep makes up his mind, he wouldn’t only go in and make a team, he’d put pressure on somebody to start.”
That response hasn’t sparked the formal pursuit of Kaepernick by any of the three teams, none of whom Edwards named. Meanwhile, Edward believes that Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest from 2016 has become a factor in his ongoing unemployment, even though the reasons leaked by unnamed sources to various media members focus on more innocuous factors.
“I don’t think there’s any question that there are some owners who wouldn’t have him in the league, much less on their team,” Edwards said. “But I fully expect one [team to sign him], because it’s in the best interest of the league to have him on a team.”
This suggests that, eventually, the league office could get involved with this one, twisting arms and/or trading favors to get someone to give him a job -- like the league office reportedly did three years ago with Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to attempt to play in the NFL.
Still, if Kaepernick eventually will be on a team, it makes sense both for him and his employer for that to happen during offseason workouts, so that he’ll have the best chance to learn the offense, the coaches, and the personnel. If he’s thrust into an unfamiliar environment at the outset of training camp, it will become much harder for him to make a 53-man roster.