Seahawks coach Pete Carroll regrets not signing Colin Kaepernick

Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll regrets not signing quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2017 after his visit with the team.

Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll regrets not signing quarterback Colin Kaepernick when the team had the opportunity in 2017.

After Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the 49ers, he had a visit with the Seahawks. Carroll said Kaepernick had had actually reached out to him the year before for some career advice.

“We had great meetings,” Carroll told reporters during a video conference on Thursday. “I don’t know if I had ever explained it in as much depth, but we spent half a day together and he spent time with our people throughout the building and almost a full day, and he was awesome. He just backed up even more of the play that we had seen and the character and his smarts and his togetherness and his competitiveness to the point where it was so obvious that he’s a starter in the NFL.”

Carroll explained Seattle clearly had a starter in Russell Wilson, a justification for not signing Kaepernick at the time. But many believed Kaepernick was unable to garner a contract in the NFL because of the attention his kneeling in support of social protest would bring to teams. Carroll now acknowledges Kaepernick’s message was clear.

“He was right on it,” Carroll said. “He was right on the topics about police brutality and inequality, and he was right on the subject matter at the time. That’s so obvious now where maybe all of the flak that flew about not honoring the flag and all the other things that were not even a part of the demonstration or what his intent was at all, that just skewed the whole discussion, I don’t think that’s around now. It’s different at this time frame.”

So while Carroll and the Seahawks believe they are set with Wilson as the starter and Geno Smith as the backup quarterback for now, Carroll still has regrets about what could have been.

“I regret that we weren’t the one way back when that just did it just to do it, even though I thought that it wasn’t the right fit necessarily for us at the time,” Carroll stated. “The reason it wasn’t the right fit is because I held him in such a high regard I didn’t see him as a backup quarterback and I didn’t want to put him in that situation with Russ. It just didn’t feel like it would fit right. That’s the way I felt about it. So I just wish it would happen, and I wish we would have been a part of it when the time was available then.

“We’re kind of set up right now, so football-wise, it doesn’t seem to fit us like I said. But there’s a lot of time here. We’ll see what happens.”

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