Colin Kaepernick Might Be Getting Blacklisted From The NFL And It’s Completely Ridiculous
Apparently Colin Kaepernick upset some people by kneeling during the national anthem last NFL season. Apparently that might have something to do with him struggling to find a new team since he hit free agency. Apparently teams and their owners are worried about the backlash that it might spark if they offered Kaep a contract.
Kaepernick was a breakout star in the 2012 season, stepping in for an injured Alex Smith with the San Francisco 49ers and doing enough in his seven starts that Smithy would be flipped off to the Kansas City Chiefs instead. On the back of a few designed runs and a monstrously effective play-action game, Kaepernick helped take Niners all the way to the Super Bowl, where they lost 34-31 to the Baltimore Ravens. They probably should’ve won but whatever. The next season Kaep helped them to 12 wins and an NFC Championship appearance (where they lost by six points to the eventual champion Seattle Seahawks).
But Kaep turned out to be a bit of a one-trick pony. Teams started to take away his out-option – the quarterback scramble – and with the Niners also losing a few deep threats on offence his yards per completion dropped from 13.2 in his first two seasons to 11.5 in his 37 games since. His career completion rate lingers below 60%. Kaepernick would lose his starting gig to Jacksonville offcast Blaine Gabbert, though injury to Gabby meant that Kaep would start 11 games in the 2016 season. He lost 10 of them. Hence there aren’t so many franchises out there desperate to grab him in the first place.
Although… his 16 to 4 TD:INT ratio was rather good. That’s a career best 1.2% interception rate, which is outrageously good. Sixth best mark in the league, only Tom Brady (who broke the all-time record there), Dak Prescott (who broke the rookie record for the most passes attempted before his first NFL pick), Sam Bradford, Derek Carr and Aaron Rodgers were better than him. MVP Matt Ryan was in seventh.
It’s not like Kaepernick’s stats also spread nicely out over other categories the way they do for most of those other names but it’s a start, it’s something to work with. Funnily enough, his fall from grace happened at a time where he was battling a few injuries, even going under the knife a couple times. He’s much fitter now and secretly his last few games of the 2016 season were amongst the best he’s ever played in the NFL. Away to the Falcons, away to the Rams and home to the Seahawks in weeks 15-17, Kaepernick logged a 70.7% completion rate with 5 touchdowns to 1 interception, as well as another TD on the ground. All three were very strong defences, two of them playoff teams, one of them the beaten Super Bowl reps. Seems like some team out there could surely use a bit of that.
You’d also have to imagine a more talented team than that 2-14 49ers side would be able to get a lot more out of a guy like him. Give him some decent receivers, maybe an offensive line that can block a little, a running game with some consistency and a defence that doesn’t pile pressure on its offence to score quick points and miracles could happen. You might win one but you don’t win four playoff games accidentally.
The way that Kaepernick plays won’t suit certain teams. Other teams might already be sorted for a starting quarterback. Chances are Kaepernick will be able to find a suitable role as a backup if that’s what he wants, he just might have to wait a short while. There might even be a role as a starter still but bear in mind that as of this moment, if you need a starter then you’re calling up the Dallas Cowboys about Tony Romo first. Once Romo’s situation is sorted, then guys like Kaepernick and Jay Cutler will start getting cursory calls. Plus we haven’t hit the draft yet, where much cheaper prospects can be found.
However when Mark Sanchez, Josh McCown, Mike Glennon, Matt Barkley, Nick Foles, Geno Smith and E.J. Manuel have all found themselves new homes and even Johnny Manziel is getting recruiting dinners, it seems unlikely that this is entirely down to performance. Especially when that performances is nowhere near as bad as his reputation would suggest – Kaep’s been undercover impressive lately, just for an irrelevant team with nobody looking. The feeling is that there’s a political aspect to this… well, blacklisting.
Agent Orange Small Hands, at a rally in Florida this week: “Your San Francisco quarterback, I’m sure nobody ever heard of him. There was an article today, it’s reported, that NFL owners don’t want to pick him up because they don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Can you believe that?”
Yes, I can believe that, actually. The article in question was a Bleacher Report scoop, the GM worked for an unnamed AFC team. Probably the Patriots if we’re making a Trump connection here, but there are a few other teams with outright associations. Unfortunately the news somehow must’ve made it onto Fox because the overgrown muppet himself got a hold of it and now you can pretty much guarantee some twitter action when Kaepernick’s name emerges in the rumours once more. After all, there’s nothing that guy likes more than twiddling his little fingers on twitter and seeing an army of digital sheep start bleating his tune.
Kaepernick used a symbol of patriotism to make a controversial statement. He knelt during the national anthem. Apparently that also means he hates the flag too because the anthem is about the flag but most of all it means he hates America. Certain people out there, roughly 49% of voters but a majority of the electoral college, get extremely upset about things like that. Not sure why, but they do.
So a symbolic gesture begets a symbolic villain and Colin Kaepernick became easy fodder for conservative pundits and politicians, who could all conveniently ignore the message he was trying to make. And you can’t say you agree with the message but don’t agree with his methods – the methods were supposed to be provocative, that’s how he got attention. Sadly the attention was simply deflected onto his character rather than his deeper intentions because surface judgement is about all anyone’s got time for in a country that disperses politics in easily swallowed capsules, manufactured to the taste of your existing views. They tell you what you want to hear, having already raised you to be who they want you to be (a consumer). All of which suits the capitalistic parasites who fund the American political system but that’s a matter for another day.
When it comes to team sports you always hear the same things about chemistry and teamwork and togetherness, etc. Sure, those things are crucial to a successful team, you’ve all gotta be pulling in the right direction. But what comes from trying to create that atmosphere is a stigma against players who speak out above the crowd. Players like Kaepernick, who use their platform for perceived goodness, are considered ‘distractions’. Maybe if he was Tom Brady or Peyton Manning then it’d be tolerated but Brady doesn’t appear to have ever had a non-football related opinion in his life while all Manning ever speaks up for are his many, many endorsements (more cash-wringing capitalism in progress there).
In some ways you can even parallel the manipulating of the American public into whatever the hell led them to think a sloppy businessman who inherited his entire wealth with no political experience somehow constituted not only a valid presidential candidate but even one who actually represented the forgotten lower and middle class of America! He’s never wanted for a cent in his life, come on. He’s never gone hungry at meal time, he’s never been made redundant. He has no empathy. Anyway, you can sort of parallel that moulding of the masses to the way an NFL team is arranged. Everyone stand in line and do as we say and you’ll be healthily rewarded (but not with your actual health).
Colin Kaepernick doesn’t kneel for the anthem anymore (he also wasn’t the only player doing so, by the way). Instead he goes about affecting change on the ground level. This apparent criminal, this enemy of America just donated $50,000 to Meals on Wheels after the charity got its funding slashed in Trump’s new budget proposals, as if robbing millions of people of basic healthcare wasn’t callous enough already. That’s on top of a further $50,000 that Kaep’s donated to a Somalian famine relief fund. Or the $100,000 that he’s gifted to charities around America in support of civil rights, reproductive rights, environmental issues and immigration rights during January 2017. All of which means he’s well on track to complete his goal of gifting $100k every month for ten months, plus the proceeds of his jersey sales, to worthy and helpful causes.
This man who has supposedly offended so many people by standing up to an effectively meaningless patriotic ritual, an act which caused absolutely no physical harm to anyone and which nobody was forced to watch, will have soon donated over a million US dollars to hand-picked and relevant causes in the space of less than a year despite effectively being unemployed at the moment.
So wait… who’s the bad guy here?