Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers has seen what quarterback Colin Kaepernick can do, in a couple of postseason games. And Rodgers believes that Kaepernick currently should be gainfully employed by an NFL team.
“I think he should be on a roster right now,” Rodgers tells Mina Kimes of ESPN The Magazine. “I think because of his protests, he’s not.”
Rodgers also explained that he understands why some players are protesting during the national anthem, even though Rodgers isn’t inclined to join in.
“I’m gonna stand because that’s the way I feel about the flag -- but I’m also 100 percent supportive of my teammates or any fellow players who are choosing not to,” Rodgers told Kimes. “They have a battle for racial equality. That’s what they’re trying to get a conversation started around. . . . I don’t understand what it’s like to be in that situation. What it is to be pulled over, or profiled, or any number of issues that have happened, that Colin was referencing -- or any of my teammates have talked to me about. . . . But I know it’s a real thing my black teammates have to deal with.”
The anti-Kaepernick crowd surely will find a way to discredit or discount Rodgers’ opinion, the same way that the anti-Kaepernick crowd finds a way to twist and reject any other facts or opinion that support the notion that Kaepernick should be employed. The process began as a clumsy effort to make it all about football, and it has evolved into a clumsy effort to suggest that Kaepernick’s activities constitute the kind of baggage/distraction that can’t overcome his skills. It will culminate in a clumsy effort to claim “next man up” if/when starting quarterbacks get injured and teams insist on going with substandard understudies who consistently prove the adage that bad quarterbacks are hard to find.