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Does He Want to Play?
Last Saturday the NFL set up a tryout for Colin Kaepernick. Recently, a few teams had shown interest in him but were afraid to bring him in for a workout. In the past, Kaepernick had sued the league, a suit that was eventually settled. Teams feared that if they brought him in for a tryout and did 
not sign him, he would turn around and call them racists and maybe try to sue again. So, the NFL set up a workout and invited all teams to send representatives. This way they could evaluate the QB without being singled out and possibly face a bad public relations situation.
Kaepernick last played in the NFL in 2016. His play then was not great, but not terrible. Today, he may not be one of the top 32 quarterbacks in America, but he likely is one of the top 64. In other words, he could at least be a back up in the NFL. I believe the most important part of this workout was not going to be his throwing or running, but the interview. His protests, not his play, are why he is out of the league. No doubt some owners would be willing to help with the causes he stands for off the field, but they want to know how he will represent their franchises on the field and in press conferences.
Then came Saturday. Twenty-five teams sent people to watch the workout. A half hour before the scheduled start, Kaepernick pulled out and instead held his own workout at a high school field. He gave excuses including one about a standard NFL injury waiver. When the workout started he wore a Kunte Kinta shirt, which I guess was to compare himself to the slave from the book Roots. That would then make NFL owners the slave masters? The question now is, does he really want to play in the NFL?
I believe that if Kaepernick gave a good interview to the scouts, he would have gotten an NFL contract. Instead he pulled a publicity stunt that shows he is not serious about playing football. ESPN host Stephen A. Smith, a Kaepernick supporter through most of his protests and trials, couldn’t even wait to get back to work and filmed this video from home to show his disgust. I think Mr. Smith is spot on with his analysis.
Published in SportsHe doesn't want to play. pic.twitter.com/ZuSI1IVW9r
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) November 17, 2019
Having watched Mitchell Trubisky for a couple of months, he should be happy Kaepernick went for the publicity stunt.
That’s the thing. Someone would have signed him if he just showed up.
I disagree. Defenses have learned how to stop him. Each team has a dozen full-time people studying film and looking for weaknesses of opposing QBs. Once one team finds the kryptonite, all teams deploy it. This is why new QBs can have a hot start, but after 20 games are not usable any more.
Looking at the 38 QBs drafted in the year after, year of, and year before, who is still playing? Wilson, Foles, Cousins, McCoy. [Newton and Dalton on the bubble] (IIRC). Few make it.
Is that Kunta Kinte jersey for real? Because . . . cringe.
Nice info. My guess is that he’s been away too long, but, considering what I’ve seen on the field this year, I don’t think it’s a slam dunk. When Harbaugh dumped Alex Smith for him, Kaepernick was kind of the Lamar Jackson of his day, but defenses did eventually figure him out, as you indicated. But if he retains some mobility. there might be a back up role for him. There are some pretty bad QB’s out there who are basically stationary targets.
Obviously not. If he wanted to play he would have shown up at the workout.
He just reinforced the impression that any team that signed him would be insane, inviting a circus and cancer into it’s locker room.
Luke Falk started two games for the Jets this year. No doubt Kaepernick is better than some of the back ups in the league.
If he was elite, teams wouldn’t have cared what he did during the anthem (Marshawn Lynch, aka BeastMode, sat on the bench and ate a banana during the anthem). But a back up needs to show a better attitude than that.
Yes, it is real. He took it off when he started to throw. Again, he isn’t serious about wanting to play in the league.
It’s like the sophomore slump in college. Once other teams have played against a new talent, they learn how to defend against said talent better the next season. It’s a game of both sides readjusting to each other season after season.
Kaepernick’s problem goes beyond his now being an average, if not below average quarterback. His bringing politics into the game ruined the entire league in the eyes of fans. To be fair, the league didn’t help themselves with their response. They should have laid down the law that you do not dis the country, the military, or our men and women in blue without severe repercussions. There is no First Amendment for a private company, and that extends outside employment into private life as well.
Saying less. Who cares.
He’s very poorly suited to being a backup quarterback. Some potential as a starter. But he’d be a terrible backup. For several reasons.
One criticism of him is that he’s not one of the smarter quarterbacks in the league. QB’s are usually very intelligent, and can assess a lot of info quickly. Defenses ran lots of gimmicks against him. Once you get a reputation that you can’t read a defense, you see nothing but gimmicks, and everything gets really complicated.
The other problem with his lack of brain power, is that a backup gets maybe 10% of the reps in practice. The starter gets the rest. So you need to figure out the offense on very little real practice time. Watch film, and be able to apply it to real situations on the field in a heartbeat if you need to. That’s not easy for anyone, and he’s not known as a quick study.
Next, his skill set doesn’t fit with most offenses. The offense really needs to built around his mobility, and it needs to be relatively simple. It would be hard for him to walk into the average NFL offense and run it like a stereotypical NFL Brees/Brady/Manning type of QB. Not his fault – he’s just not good at that. The offense will be built around the starter, not the backup. And his skill set is very specific. Not adaptable.
Next, a backup QB has to be comfortable with the starter getting all the limelight, while the backup gets ready and watches film. I just can’t imagine him receding into the background.
Not to mention all the unwanted attention he will bring, all the tension in the locker room, all the drama that coaches really don’t want to deal with. Why would a team volunteer for all that?
For those, and lots of other reasons, I think he’d be MUCH worse as a backup QB than he was as a starter. And he was a mediocre starter.
I can’t imagine that any NFL team is seriously looking at him. Who knows, I guess. But I really doubt it.
Well, no, it’s not for real, but not for the reason that Kapernick might think.
Roots was supposedly a documentary about the ancestors of black author Alex Haley. A documentary from the right wing conservatives at BBC pointed out that the whole thing was a hoax, and it was banned on PBS and other outlets in the USA. As The New York Post pointed out:
So, no. Roots is not for real. Kunta Kinte never existed.
Lots of slaves went through lots of unspeakably awful things. But Mr. Kapernick chooses a fictional one.
Which sort of makes sense, if you think about it.
When I look at Kapernick, with his upper middle class white upbringing, acting like the victim of cultural racism, I think of the “Stolen Valor” of those who pretend to have fought in the military but never did.
Kunta Kinte isn’t real.
Neither is Colin Kapernick.
That’s a great comparison. For all those “I’m so oppressed!” upper middle class lefties
Although now that I think about it, “Selma Envy” is a close approximation.
But we’re also reminded of why people didn’t sign him before. I’m sure he’s at least solid enough to be a backup in the league. But as a business decision – and I mean a basic one – why would you want to create tension within your own fanbase? They’d do it for a superstar, I’m sure. If only because a superstar will make the difference that would allow fans to disregard their issue.
But for a backup? Nupe.
True dat. Still, of no particular relevance, I learned this important factoid when reading the Wikipedia article on the fictional Mr. Kinte:
Now I can’t say I’ve been a follower of the Bloodhound Gang (or even heard of them) but this makes me wonder if perhaps I’ve missed something.
My favorite song by them is Firewater Burn.
Which I will not be posting a link to.
And I cannot believe I actually agree with Stephen A. Smith on something.
Kaerpernick’s supposed outrageous outrage at the original practice location and rules was in part linked to the NFL not wanting to allow him to have his own camera crew there, after which is emerged that maybe, possibly that camera footage was going to be used in a new Nike commercial.
Which in the end is what this is all about.
The myth of Colin Kaepernick, and the ability of him, his agent and Nike to monetize that myth, hinges on people believing the narrative that the supportive media has put in place, which in turn is that Kaepernick is one of the Top 32 to Top 64 quarterbacks in the world, and NFL teams would rather lose games than give him a job, because of his political beliefs (and possibly some racism). That Narrative has been able to obscure the reality that teams had figured out his game, and he never improved the weaker parts of his skill set, which included both reading defenses so he didn’t take off running, and putting a lighter touch and more accuracy on his short- and mid-range passes. That’s why he lost the starting job twice in his final season in San Francisco to Blaine Gabbert, and why the 49ers went 1-15 that season.
Nike and Kaepernick need the myth that he’s still the QB of 2012 that went to the Super Bowl. If he’s currently on the level of, say, Mark Sanchez he’s not selling sneakers to anyone, even to his hyper-woke girlfriend. In that world, signing an NFL contract and getting out on the field against an NFL defense would be a disaster, while feigning anger and walking away from the official practice to hold your own while giving teams little time to get there allows you to continue to claim martyr status.
That’s why he walked out, and figuring out the truth is why Stephen A. Smith (and Jay-Z, who helped broker the tryout) were both irate about his actions.
The money from Nike is much more than what he would have received if he was just another so-so QB. On top of that is whatever he got in his settlement from the NFL. So it is safe to say that martyrdom paid better than playing.
His first year out of the league people brought up his name every time a QB went down. The second year people still did it again. I thought that was silly until Mark Sanchez came out of retirement to play for the Redskins. This year, his third out of the league, Kaepernick no longer seemed like a realistic alternative. So, he needed to do something to show that he still wanted to play. He didn’t do that. Hopefully the media will see this for what it is. He is not in the league because he doesn’t want to be in the league.
Stephen A. Smith caught tons of flack for his post Sunday lambasting Kaepernick, because he had finally seen the light on what the scam here was, and he went off on them Tuesday morning on ESPN. But the reaction shows there’s lots of people still out there who are invested in The Narrative that it’s only the evil NFL and its team owners who are keeping Kaepernick out of the league, because they’re rather lose game after game with bad quarterbacks than let one with woke beliefs play for their team.
Nailed it.
You have, some of their songs are hilarious (though definitely NSFW). You’ve probably heard their one hit single The Bad Touch at some point. Speaking of football, the Cal Band sometimes plays The Bad Touch at games, it works surprisingly well as a marching band tune.
I’m wondering what could possibly be less important than this guy?
The gearbox for my boxster’s convertible top is malfunctioning. I am expecting a replacement bat wing crank for it tomorrow and I hope to get my car back up and running pretty soon. I’m tired of driving the spare car.
Nope, fixing the car is more important. Here’s a picture of my zenith blue ’99, sadly no longer on this earth and replaced by an ’07 black that I’ve yet to take a picture of.
My dog needs a bath, and I’ll have to work out the time to clip his hair too.
Nope. Dog’s grooming is much more important. Here’s Bond guarding a sealyham terrier egg.
I’m getting ready to send my Selmer Mk VII alto saxophone to get overhauled. It is 42 years old (back then it wasn’t so clear that the Mk VII wouldn’t be as good as the Mk VI) and it’s just about due for one. I’m pretty sure some of the pads are leaking by now. This will hopefully improve intonation and maybe make the low notes blow easier.
Nope, that’s more important too.
As soon as my car is fixed and the dog is groomed, I’ll have room in the garage to make a new walnut dining room table top. That’s been on my list for quite a while, so no, it’s not imporant than that.
Let’s see. I clipped my finger nails this morning so they aren’t due for a while. But in a week and a half I’ll need to clip them again. I don’t really schedule such things, but even that is more important than some fuzzy headed dip who thinks he’s being picked on when people say that they don’t like him and his lies about our nation.
Some of you probably watch football when Notre Dame isn’t playing and maybe your priorities are different. But I’m hoping in regard to this evil fool that we aren’t too far apart.
If he wanted to play football he would have taken the opportunity seriously. Instead he used this as an opportunity to reestablish his brand and stay relevant. Mission accomplished from a SJW marketing standpoint, but he burned his last bridge into the NFL.
Why would he WANT to play? That’s hard work and can lead to injury. He’s doing fine now making money by being aggrieved. This “work out” was always a publicity stunt for the
Kunte Kinte Jessie Jackson Al Sharpton Deval PatrickColin Kaepernick brand, never anything more.I’m not familiar with him, but he nailed this one.
They specialize in the “So offensive it’s funny” genre, so if you’re not into that, stay away. I like Three Point One Four and I Hope You Die, both album tracks, and both NSFW.
I would think at some point Nike would grow tired of paying him, but what can they do? If you cut him loose he will call you a racist . . . cause that’s kind of what he does for a living now.
Interesting contract spin: Nike bought him. He owns them forever.