Doyel: Colin Kaepernick is more dangerous than Deshaun Watson or Tyreek Hill?
We’re nearing closure on Colin Kaepernick, but it shouldn’t end this way. It can’t end this way, not with one side claiming victory and the other side claiming martyrdom and both sides holding up Kaepernick not as a mirror, but as a looking glass. You know, to stare right through as we judge the other side.
You remember Kaepernick, the guy who took a knee and started a movement that tore through the NFL, then other sports, then other countries. When this whole thing began, Kaepernick was a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers.
When it ends – and it ends soon – will he be a quarterback or a martyr?
Let me tell you something: Neither side wants him to be a martyr. Not you on the left, not you on the right. This country doesn’t need that, using Kaepernick as a wishbone and pulling, pulling, pulling until we’re just a little more splintered.
Would someone in the NFL, a league that considers itself so macho, find the courage to let this man into training camp? So he can give the game one last try? And everyone can move on?
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Scarier than Deshaun Watson?
Seriously, if you’re on the right side of the aisle, you don’t want the blackballing of Colin Kaepernick to be the way this story ends. Those of us not on the right, but in the right, we’ll use that as a hammer forever. And we’ll be correct:
The quarterback-starved NFL ignored a quarterback who once reached the Super Bowl, a quarterback still in his prime, because the league was terrified of a portion of its white fanbase.
Is that who we want to be, here in America? A country that encourages an NFL team to give a $230 million contract to Deshaun Watson, accused of sexual assault by 22 different women, but intimidates its NFL franchises into ignoring a quarterback guilty only of protesting racial injustice?
The way this story is going, the way it is ending, has almost nothing to do with Kaepernick’s ability to play quarterback. Not anymore. Frankly, I doubt he could still do it. There are some who would argue he wasn’t able to do it in his final year in the NFL, back in 2016 – has it really been that long? – when he started 11 games, and the 49ers lost 10 of them.
There are numbers within the numbers: Kaepernick threw 16 touchdowns with just four interceptions, which is very good. He completed just 59.2% of his passes, which is very bad. He ran for 468 yards in 11 starts: good. He fumbled nine times: bad. His passer rating of 90.7 was 17th in the league (not great), but still above his career passer rating of 88.9 – and in his career, Kaepernick led the 49ers to two NFC title games and one Super Bowl in five seasons as a starter (great).
But the 49ers were 1-10 in 2016. Bad.
See what you want in those numbers, but believe this: Kaepernick would be a shell of himself now. People in the NFL like to say playing quarterback in their league is the hardest position in sports, and they’re probably right, because the mental requirements are every bit as demanding as the physical.
At age 34, Kaepernick’s arm and legs might well be as fantastic as they were when he last played at age 29. But his ability to read a defense, to react, to make the split-second decisions required play after play? No chance. This is not a position where a player can spend five years out of the game and come back with the same ability as before to see the field.
Understand what I’m saying there. Kaepernick isn’t merely a smart man, but borderline brilliant. He scored a 38 on the Wonderlic test given to NFL draft prospects, and this is information that came out in 2015, back when nobody cared about – or even knew – how Kaepernick felt about the social issues around him. He scored one point higher than Andrew Luck, three higher than Aaron Rodgers and seven points higher, ahem, than I did when I took it for fun 10 years ago.
Kaepernick’s intelligence is beyond question. His ability to play NFL quarterback in 2022, after six years off? That, to me anyway, also is beyond question. As in: I’m sure he couldn’t do it.
So what harm would it be for someone – how about you, Jim Irsay? – to give him a shot?
Scarier than Tyreek Hill?
The NFL is a place where Tyreek Hill can be rewarded repeatedly for his 4.25-second speed in the 40-yard dash, including a three-year, $54 million contract in 2019 from the Kansas City Chiefs, who drafted him in 2016 despite his guilty plea to charges that he choked and punched – in the stomach – his pregnant girlfriend.
Three years after that baby was born, the child suffered a broken arm. The Johnson County, Missouri, district attorney’s office determined a crime had occurred, but couldn’t prove who had injured the child. Charges were not filed, though in a leaked audio recording the child’s mom was heard telling Hill, “He’s terrified of you.”
To which Hill replied: “You need to be terrified of me, too, b–– .”
That was 2019. This offseason, the Miami Dolphins gave the Chiefs almost an entire draft’s worth of future picks for Hill, then signed him to a four-year, $120 million extension.
Because that’s where we are, in this world: NFL teams aren’t afraid to pay a fortune for Deshaun Watson or Tyreek Hill, but they’re terrified to let Colin Kaepernick into training camp. The Cleveland Browns and Miami Dolphins, like every other NFL team that would have acquired either player if given the chance – and there were plenty – aren’t worried their business will suffer with someone like Watson or Hill on roster.
Someone like Colin Kaepernick?
Now, that’s dangerous.
More Doyel:
From 2016: Entire Indiana Fever roster kneels for national anthem
From 2018: Kneeling during anthem started battle that everybody lost
But it feels more dangerous letting this story end so pathetically. Kaepernick clearly wants to give the NFL one last shot. He threw for NFL scouts at Michigan’s spring game nine days ago, invited there by his former coach in San Francisco, Jim Harbaugh. His arm looked fine, which is no surprise. It should be fresh, along with his legs.
His confidence is there, too.
"I can help make you a better team,” Kaepernick said to reporters in Ann Arbor. “I can help you win games.”
Most days, winning games matters more than anything in the NFL. It’s why teams have forever given second chances to players accused and in some cases convicted of horrific crimes. But along comes Colin Kaepernick, who didn’t stick to sports, and NFL owners are allowing a certain segment of their fanbase to call the shots. If he’s never given the chance to play again, one side will have won and will rightly feel more emboldened. Another side will have lost, feeling aggrieved and ignored.
Deshaun Watson or Tyreek Hill is a prize, but Colin Kaepernick is a pariah? We took a wrong turn somewhere.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colin Kaepernick is more dangerous than Deshaun Watson or Tyreek Hill?
