Injuries plague NFL quarterbacks early in the 2019 season, but one constant remains: Colin Kaepernick remains unsigned, as he has for years.
The latest quarterback signing was a fatal blow to fans of the man who started the league’s national anthem kneeling movement in 2016. On Tuesday morning, the New York Jets signed David Fales to be their emergency backup quarterback. Picked in the sixth round of the 2014 NFL Draft, Fales has appeared in three NFL games since. He will back up Luke Falk, who began the season as the Jets third string quarterback.
The Jets aren’t the only team with quarterback injuries. The Pittsburgh Steelers lost Ben Roethlisberger for the season with a torn UCL. Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints will soon undergo thumb surgery and Cam Newton of the Carolina Panthers is dealing with a midfoot sprain. Kaepernick’s agent has reached out to teams with QB injuries in hopes of a team signing him, but the answer to this question has been clear for years now: No NFL team wants anything to do with Colin Kaepernick, and not signing him is absolutely justified.
When Kaepernick knelt for the national anthem during the 2016 NFL season, his empty gesture irked more than half the country and hurt the NFL’s bottom line. The league’s ratings dropped by about 17%. According to a JD Power poll and a UBS poll, the top contributing factor to that was the national anthem protests. A Washington Post poll also found that 53% of Americans feel it is never appropriate for someone to kneel during the national anthem compared to 42% who say it can be justified (not even in Kaepernick’s particular case, but in general).
At this point, it should not be a surprise that NFL teams aren’t interested in Kaepernick, considering he wore socks depicting police officers as pigs, wore a t-shirt glorifying late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, donated $25,000 to a foundation honoring domestic terrorist Assata Shakur, and has been photographed with Louis Farrakhan supporter Linda Sarsour. After all, it’s not like Kaepernick has the Patrick Mahomes kind of talent that can sling 50 touchdown passes in a season.
Problematic politics aside, Kaepernick posted a 49.5 quarterback rating in the 2016 NFL season, ranking 23rd among 30 qualified NFL quarterbacks. Plus, he fumbled nine times in 11 starts. That happened in his age 29 season. In November, he will turn 32. As Wired points out, elite athletes peak in the 27-30 age range, so Kaepernick would likely be worse now than he was then, especially since he has not faced NFL competition in years.
The NFL settled a grievance lawsuit with Kaepernick earlier this year in which he accused owners in the league of colluding to keep him out. If they don’t want Kaepernick in the league because he is bad for business, that should be their decision to make. After all, every NFL contract has a provision in it saying, “He agrees to give his best efforts and loyalty to the Club, and to conduct himself on and off the field with appropriate recognition of the fact that the success of professional football depends largely on public respect for and approval of those associated with the game.”
Kaepernick’s conduct has been divisive, his performance poor, and therefore, no teams want him. No team signed him in 2017. No team signed him in 2018. No team has signed him this year either, and no team will sign him next year either.
The NFL has moved on from Kaepernick. He should move on from them too.
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.
