Colin Kaepernick wants to play. The former NFL quarterback became a free agent in 2017 and has not gotten anything more than a visit to the Seahawks in 2017.
In 2020, coach Pete Carroll said, via Gregg Bell of The News Tribune, the Seahawks “wouldn’t hesitate (signing Kaepernick) if Russ (Wilson) ever got tangled up and couldn’t play or something. Kaep would have been an extraordinary candidate to take over. He deserves to be playing.”
Two years later, Wilson is in Denver; the Seahawks are looking for a quarterback; and Kaepernick remains available.
During a long take on free agency being a second chance for players, Carroll brought up Kaepernick unsolicited.
“I thought about another guy,” Carroll said. “You can ask questions about Colin Kaepernick. I know. You’re going to ask me, so let me just put it out there. He contacted me the other day. Said, ‘Hey, I’d like to get a shot. I’m working out.’ He sent me some vidoes. Next thing I know, he’s working out with Tyler Lockett. I don’t know how that happened. Does that guy deserve a second shot? I think he does. Somewhere. I don’t know if it’s here. I don’t know where it is. I don’t know if it’s even in football. I don’t know.”
It feels like the NFL has run out the clock on Kaepernick’s opportunity to play again. Even the Seahawks didn’t call Kaepernick last season when Wilson was injured.
Kaepernick has not played since 2016, parting ways with the 49ers in the 2017 offseason. The NFL has backballed him for being the first player to protest social injustice and police brutality during the national anthem.
In 2019, the NFL and lawyers for Kaepernick and Eric Reid reached a settlement in the players’ collusion lawsuit against the league.
It will come as a major surprise if the Seahawks or any other NFL team signs Kaepernick, or, for that matter, even gives him a workout.
