The NFL’s 32 teams have successfully shunned Colin Kaepernick long enough to make it ridiculous to even consider the possibility of adding him to a team at this point. To further confirm that the ship has sailed on Kaepernick’s NFL career, the Seahawks did not contact Kaepernick when the sudden need for a quarterback arose.
On Monday, coach Pete Carroll said on ESPN 710 that the team contacted quarterback Cam Newton after Russell Wilson’s finger injury, which will knock him out for several games. Added Carroll, “We’re talking to everybody that could help us.”
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, “everybody” did not include Kaepernick.
Kaepernick could help them, especially since the Seahawks are the only team that brought Kaepernick in for a visit after he became a free agent in March 2017. They didn’t sign him then, and they haven’t even considered him now.
Is he better than Geno Smith? Some would say that Kaepernick is. Those who would say otherwise would point to the fact that Smith has been in the league since the end of the 2016 season, whereas Kaepernick hasn’t. And that’s how four years of an obvious shunning of Kaepernick has made it easier to continue keep shunning him.
Kaepernick recently said he continues to keep himself ready to play.
“I am still up at 5 a.m. training five, six days a week making sure I’m prepared to take a team to a Super Bowl again,” Kaepernick recently said. “That’s not something I will ever let go of, regardless of the actions of 32 teams and their partners to deny me employment. The same way I was persistent in high school is the same way I’m gonna be persistent here. . . . And you’re gonna have to continue to deny me and do so in a public way. And you’re gonna expose yourself by that, but it won’t be because I’m not ready or not prepared.”
That’s not going to make the phone ring. The fact that the Seahawks didn’t call underscores the reality that, at this point, no one will.
It’s no surprise. Another piece of evidence regarding the institutional animosity toward Kaepernick emerged in the Jon Gruden emails sent to former Washington president Bruce Allen. The rest of the 650,000 emails may say plenty more about the attitudes toward Kaepernick. Not to mention the emails and text messages sent by the other teams and the league office during the relevant time period.
They obviously wanted him out of the game. And, like they so often do, they got what they wanted. A certain percentage of the fan base is fine with it because they don’t like Kaepernick. Regardless, the fact that certain forces within the NFL can and will do whatever they please regardless of whether it’s right or legal should be troubling -- even if you don’t care for the person whose rights were violated.