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Five years ago, the NFL illegally colluded against Colin Kaepernick. Five years of collusion later, the NFL won.
It’s all over for Colin Kaepernick. No team would sign him at this point, not after he spent half a decade without playing football.
Yes, he posted a workout video on Thursday. Of course, Shefty quoted an anonymous source as saying that Kaepernick is in the best shape of his life. (It is not clear why anonymity is needed for this particular information, it is hardly a state secret.) This still does not happen.
I’m realist. The NFL’s ability to avoid Kaepernick for five years is frustrating any attempt at a comeback now. If no team wanted to sign him in 2017, 2018 or 2019, no one will sign him three years from now.
This is not happening. Why would anyone want a quarterback who hasn’t played in five years, especially in light of the inevitable 30 percent hostility if he’s already signed?
Is it wrong that he was frozen for so many years? Yes. Were some members of the media involved in spreading lies that allowed teams to justify ignoring him? Absolutely. Regardless, it’s been five years since his decision to forfeit the last year of his contract with the 49ers — at a time when the 49ers would have cut him otherwise — it’s over. Ready. The door was closed in front of his nose for five years. It doesn’t open now.
The Seahawks were the only team to invite Kaepernick to visit. They decided not to add Kaepernick to Russell Wilson’s depth chart, perhaps because the team that supposedly keeps the competition going didn’t want Wilson to have one. Now that Wilson is gone, there are no barriers to signing Kaepernick.
They will not. Too much time has passed. Its end. While it would be interesting if former 49ers coach (and quarterback Kaepernick) Jim Harbaugh got a job in Minnesota, Harbaugh remains in Michigan. Kaepernick remains out of the NFL. This will continue.
Does Kaepernick really want to play at the moment? In 2017 and 2018, I think he did. The clumsy and clumsy argument about the league’s 2019 practice shows strongly that the NFL doesn’t trust Kaepernick, that Kaepernick doesn’t trust the NFL, that neither side is genuinely interested in doing business with each other.
Although Kaepernick previously wanted (and deserved) a contract far above the league minimum, for now, it’s up to any team that wants Kaepernick to offer him a lucrative contract, if only to see if he’ll take the job. Will he call a bluff? We won’t know until there’s a bluff.
It would be stunning if anyone bluffed at all, regardless of whether Kaepernick called that bluff. Kaepernick’s ship has sailed, and the league’s ability to successfully avoid him for five years makes his return to the league incredibly unlikely at this point.
Meanwhile, the quarterback currently at the top of the Pittsburgh depth chart is Rudolph Mason.