In a viral video he tweeted out Wednesday afternoon, Colin Kaepernick claimed he is “still ready” to play in the NFL once again.
The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and national anthem-kneeler posted a video of himself working out, something he claims he has done at 5 a.m. five days a week for about three years in hopes of making an NFL comeback. The video even flashed the number 889 on the screen, the number of days he has been “denied work.”
5am. 5 days a week. For 3 years. Still Ready. pic.twitter.com/AGczejA1rM
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) August 7, 2019
It’s unclear if Kaepernick really wants to play in the NFL again or if he just wants more PR. But if he does want to play again, he should just give up.
Thursday marks the first week of NFL preseason games for most of the league for the 2019 season. Kaepernick is not on anyone’s roster competing for a spot. It’s been three seasons since he last threw a pass in the league.
No teams want Kaepernick, who is a toxic and divisive brand. There are many reasons why his name is not taken seriously across the league.
First and foremost, he started the national anthem kneeling stunt which hurt the league’s television ratings. His movement not only caused division, but the league’s TV ratings also declined by more than 17% points over the course of the 2016 and 2017 seasons when kneeling was most prevalent. That’s not to say Kaepernick himself caused that entire rating drop, but a JD Power poll and a UBS poll found kneelers were the biggest reason for fans tuning out.
That makes sense, since a February 2018 survey from the Washington Post found that 53% of Americans think it is never appropriate for a player to kneel during the national anthem. Just 42% agreed it would be OK for a player to kneel under the right circumstances.
In addition to Kaepernick’s kneeling, he wore socks depicting police officers as pigs, and a T-shirt glorifying Fidel Castro. He donated $25,000 to an organization honoring domestic terrorist and cop killer Assata Shakur. Plus, he has been photographed with controversial Women’s March leader and Louis Farrakhan supporter Linda Sarsour. Such actions are not exactly a great way to build up a fan base.
Social justice warriorism aside, Kaepernick is not such a great player that all of this can be forgiven. Three years ago, his 49.5 quarterback rating ranked 23rd of 30 qualified NFL quarterbacks and he fumbled nine times in 11 starts.
That occurred in the season where he was 29. He is set to turn 32 this November, which would make him one of the older quarterbacks in the game. Conventional wisdom states that elite athletes typically peak somewhere in the 27 to 30 range, according to Wired. Since Kaepernick is older than that, his athletic ability has likely declined in the past three years like it did over the final two playing seasons of his NFL career.
Not to mention the NFL settled a grievance lawsuit with Kaepernick earlier this year because he accused the league’s owners of colluding to keep him out of the NFL. They paid him millions of dollars to end the debacle, which is a pretty good indication they wanted to get past it and move on from the Kaepernick saga.
Kaepernick earned $43.5 million playing in the NFL. He’s partnered with Nike in their woke capitalism conquest and surely will have plenty of good money-earning opportunities over the rest of his life.
At this point, he should stop hitting the gym so early and sleep in for once. The call from an NFL team hasn’t come yet and it never will. Tossing around dumbbells before the sun rises isn’t going to change that.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
