Tuesday’s news that the NFL would be holding a private workout for Colin Kaepernick should have been good news. It was the first sign of progress in this whole ordeal, which has become an ever-growing PR nightmare for the league and led to the prolonged unemployment for a player who clearly belongs in the NFL.
But as more details were revealed, it’s becoming harder and harder to maintain any level of optimism that this will lead to the 32-year-old landing with a team.
A quick summary of how things will go, via reports from Adam Schefter and Mike Silver:
- Having been offered the opportunity on Tuesday, Kaepernick will have only a few days to prepare for the workout. His people asked the NFL to move the workout to Tuesday — when workouts are typically held — but the league wouldn’t budge. It would have to be on Saturday.
- As a result — with coaches and team execs traveling to games — the workout will mostly be watched by scouts who don’t carry any decision-making power.
- Silver reports that Kaepernick will be made available for interviews with teams but, for whatever reason, the league did not ask Kaepenrick’s permission and his people were not made aware of it when the offer was made.
- It’s also unclear who will run the workout and which receivers Kaepernick will be throwing to.
The odds are greatly stacked against Kaepernick, but, at the very least, he’s getting a shot to prove to NFL talent evaluators that he still has it, which is nice and can be seen as progress. Just one problem: There will be no media access to the event. So that means any reviews will be coming from anonymous employees who work for a league that has already paid to get out of a lawsuit that alleged it had colluded to blackball Kaepernick.
From a public relations standpoint, the best-case for the NFL would be Kaepernick bombing the workout. That is undeniable, as it would allow the league to point at the failed workout whenever it is accused of keeping Kaepernick out of the league not based on merit but because his politics make some people uncomfortable.
The NFL not allowing media to attend the workout makes little sense. This is a league that never turns down an opportunity to bring in viewers, and a broadcast of Kaepernick essentially playing for an NFL job would bring in millions of viewers. This isn’t just a football story. It’s a news story that would capture the attention of the country. There is so much money to be made and the league is just turning it down. You HAVE TO wonder why that is. Sure, teams would NEVER allow media to cover individual player tryouts, but this clearly isn’t that. It appears to be an unprecedented, pop-up NFL Combine meant for one former player — and the combine gets plenty of coverage. As do pro day workouts for NFL prospects.
With no media in attendance, NFL employees will have total control over the narrative, so if you are looking for a potential benefit for the league, there it is.
The media thing isn’t the only curious aspect of this workout. You have to wonder why now? Why would the NFL wait years after Kaepernick played his last game to do this (and then do it in November)? You also have to wonder what it’s going to take for him to impress scouts. If he’s the same guy we saw in 2016, will that be good enough? And if that’s the case, and NFL teams are interested in that version of Kaepernick, why did it take this long for him to get a workout? In 2013, Jamarcus Russell had no problem getting a private workout with the Bears. This was FOUR YEARS after his last NFL appearance and Russell was one of the worst quarterbacks of all-time. Teams also showed interest in J.P. Losman years after he flamed out of the NFL. The dude was drafted in 2004 and last played in 2011, yet teams were asking if he’d consider a comeback in 2019! Meanwhile, Kaepernick hasn’t worked out for a single NFL team since his last game with the 49ers on Jan. 1, 2017.
So, again, I ask, why now? Could it be that the league tried to show everyone that it was looking to mend bridges with the announcement of the partnership with Jay-Z and Roc Nation and after that failed, this Potemkin workout is what they came up with? That makes a lot more sense than the league changing its mind after years of claiming that this was an issue of merit.
I could very well be on the wrong side of this. Maybe this interest is genuine and Kaepernick will land a job with an NFL team. But this skepticism is well-earned and if the league is getting undue criticism, it has nobody to blame but itself.
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