The NFL calling a one-man combine for Colin Kaepernick on a Saturday in the middle of an NFL season never made any sense for anyone other than NFL owners.
The whole thing was designed to do exactly what it did: Implode, and in doing so give Kaepernick’s critics fresh proof that the QB doesn’t care enough about football and doesn’t truly *want* to be in the league.
It created a circus around a player who is out of the league because his peaceful protests during the national anthem, meant to spark discussion of racial and social injustice, created too much of a circus. The NFL managed to reinforce all the negative stereotypes around Kaepernick by giving him no leverage and leaving him no option but to spin away from a rigged tryout at the last minute.
This was all a ploy, from the beginning (which our Andy Nesbitt pointed out). What were Kaepernick’s representatives supposed to say when the NFL made the offer out of nowhere and gave them two hours to accept a workout scheduled for later in the week? They should have declined — but they also knew that the league would have leaked that news immediately.
So they went through a sham of a process that was designed to break down, and then it did — and Kaepernick ended up throwing at a high school 60 minutes away, in front of just a few scouts, and nobody really learned anything. According to multiple reports, the NFL-sanctioned workout was contingent on Kaepernick agreeing to a waiver that would prevent him from suing the NFL if he wasn’t signed; that’s ludicrous, and proof that the NFL offered the tryout only so it could sabotage it in a way that would force Kaepernick to react.
Now, in the wake of this whole bizarre week, it’s easier to see the calculus from Roger Goodell and the league: You convince enough franchises to spend a few thousand dollars to send scouts to this workout and as a result no individual team has to be labeled by angry fans as the one that dared to give Kaepernick a chance. And no single team is blamed, in the end, for not signing him; many bright NFL minds came together and just happened to make the same determination after thorough and honest vetting! The official narrative, such as it is, moves on: Kaepernick is just not good enough.
Kaepernick’s people would have had no way to counter that sentiment; they weren’t going to be allowed to film the session.
Sham. Sham. Sham.
But also a small price to pay for NFL owners to be able to say, Hey, we gave him his shot! And to get it in writing that Kaepernick couldn’t sue? That would have been everything. But a little “See, he’s a head case who doesn’t want to do what it takes!” narrative is a nice consolation prize.
As Doug Farrar over at Touchdown Wire pointed out, Kaeperick was able to answer questions about his arm in his impromptu session. He wasn’t able to answer questions about playing football — dealing with pass rushers, reading a defense, etc. etc. — because he wasn’t, you know, playing football. But those questions aren’t valid anyway. Our Steven Ruiz has shown over and over and over again that Kaepernick is most certainly one of the best 40 or so QBs on the planet right now and undoubtedly deserves — at the very least — to get the same treatment as other NFL free agents: to be brought to a team’s campus for workouts and discussions.
That’s probably the most frustrating thing about this whole charade. A bunch of people acted like the NFL was going above and beyond in planning this. That an olive branch had been extended. That the league was earnestly trying to make this work.
That’s bull. If any team actually had interest in signing Colin Kaepernick, it would go through the well-established methods already in use. NFL teams routinely bring free agents in during the season for authentic tryouts, conducted by coaches and involving in-real-life discussions. The fact that Kaepernick can’t even get those is proof that no team in the NFL cares to really know whether he can play — let alone what he has to say about his protests and where he plans to go from here. The Seahawks thought about bringing him in but didn’t when he wouldn’t promise to stop kneeling. The Ravens thought about it, too — until there was fan backlash. Those are the facts that matter: NFL teams are avoiding Kaepernick for one reason, and it has nothing to do with football.
So here we are, right back where we were. Colin Kaepernick’s supporters see a man who’s been blackballed from the league for daring to take a knee during the anthem as a way to shine light on causes beyond the field. His detractors see a player who simply isn’t good enough — and who is selfish enough to hurt his team by bringing off-the-field issues onto the field (it’s weird how Tyreek Hill, a selfish distraction, still has a job). This whole “tryout” was built to give the latter group cover.
This is the most “news” we’ve had surrounding Kaepernick in years, and it did nothing to change anything. Ruiz, writing earlier this week, said the whole thing felt like public relations move by a league still reeling from criticism over its deal with Jay-Z to take over the NFL’s entertainment and social justice initiatives. And it turns out that Jay-Z himself had input on the whole thing, per USA TODAY’s Mike Jones.
There’s only way to look at what happened here. We need to accept that the NFL office exists to put fresh paint on the league when it needs it. To stage the room just so. To take the whole thing and make it feel wholesome and meaningful to fans. Whether anyone at the league truly cares about issues like racial injustice or domestic violence is impossible to tell; the first instinct — and duty — is to make everything seem a certain way that will alienate the fewest fans. Or at least muddy the discussion enough so that it mostly goes away.
That was the goal with this Kaepernick tryout all along. For the people it was meant to appease, it likely worked.
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