It’s been almost a week since Jim Harbaugh invited Colin Kaepernick to throw footballs at halftime of Michigan’s spring game and, as far as we can tell, the program hasn’t been abandoned by its fan base, the student body hasn’t turned into a band of unpatriotic anarchists and the football team itself hasn’t toppled at the hands of some unsolvable quagmire of political debate. The “distractions” brought on by Kaepernick’s arrival—if they exist at all—didn’t seem to curtail the number of articles written about Michigan’s freshman receivers, who seem to have impressed all in attendance.
The Lions, who were prominently represented in Ann Arbor, did not have their facility buried underneath a feverish letter-writing campaign from concerned citizens. Dan Campbell was not challenged to some kind of bareknuckle standoff (though it might seem silly to try something like that under any circumstances).
In other words, life moved on, which is probably what would happen if an NFL team were to formally work out or even sign Kaepernick right now.
Kirthmon F. Dozier/USA TODAY Network
This has been an interesting week for NFL truth telling. Reports from league meetings revealed that Pete Carroll dressed down owners over their collective inability to step out of their comfort zones and relate to coaching candidates of color the way they comfortably associate with their white counterparts. While it would have been cool if Carroll actually said all this in front of owners—he was in a meeting full of coaches and GMs—and while it would have been really cool if he said it during any of his dozens of press conferences each year or to his 2.1 million followers on social media, at least something critical about ownership regarding their laughably insular old-boys’-club hiring practices was uttered. That’s better than nothing being uttered at all. What a marked improvement a loud game of telephone seems to be when you’re used to seeing grown men duck behind a podium every time they’re asked about something remotely difficult in America.
In addition, Bruce Arians retired as head coach of the Buccaneers and handed the job over to Todd Bowles. He did this, in part, because he knew that if Tom Brady got hurt and the staff disbanded, Bowles would be left applying for crappy jobs with bad quarterbacks, which has largely been the story for coaches of color as far back as we can remember. Arians knew what a big deal it was for a Black head coach to lead a team with Brady under center.
Bundle these moments together and you have what seems to be a willingness—be it strategic or from the bottom of one’s own heart—to have the kind of conversations that initially catapulted Kaepernick off every team’s emergency QB shortlist. While we’re not equating what happened to the former 49ers quarterback and the plight of historically excluded coaching candidates (these are two wholly different buckets), we’re simply recognizing the awareness some prominent white figures have developed around football: that their life experiences and avenues to power may not be the same as some of their coworkers.
From that awareness, could we as a society have developed enough of a space to collectively digest Kaepernick’s trying out for an NFL team without losing our minds? Without hiding behind the most transparent of dodges? Without having to cover for all the NFL owners who may be the only ones left who truly care anymore? Could we have an honest conversation about what scouts saw on the field and accept the answer, whether it be this guy could start for 10 NFL teams right now or, he falls slightly above (or below!) Mike Glennon on our priority list?
Nothing will change how anyone felt or acted in the past. There are still some comment section headhunters who pounce on every article about Kaepernick with the same old buzzwords they continually use to rile people up. There are still some who will say the NFL was robbed of another Aaron Rodgers, when we know that probably wasn’t true either (and wasn’t ever really the point). But there is a middle ground in there somewhere, and golly it feels good to go looking for it.
There is so much we don’t know about Kaepernick’s own expectations or desires at the NFL level, but it’s difficult to watch him throw (including in sessions with NFL receivers), to see what good shape he’s in, to know that he could probably help some team do something somewhere and just throw up our hands defeated, resigned to the idea that he’ll never set foot in an NFL facility again. Especially when we look at the long list of retreads, washouts and draft busts who have received second and third chances during his forced absence.
We are in a quarterback dearth so pronounced that a handful of NFL teams auditioned for the right to overpay Deshaun Watson amid sexual harassment and assault allegations. Even the folks most cemented in their opinion about Kaepernick cannot look at the current quarterback landscape, Nos. 1 through 64, and say with complete conviction he doesn’t belong in the mix, even at age 34. A football coach lost his job last year because he was so terrified of the idea of his backup quarterback throwing a pass that he ran a QB sneak on third-and-9 and then gleefully punted to his own demise.
That’s a conversation we’d like teams to be having internally right now. That’s a conversation we’d like to see us, as a sporting community, have right now without resorting to our holsters for the tired, inflammatory, go-to retorts that have ground the discussion to a standstill for years now. That’s a conversation that feels more possible at this moment than it did a few years ago, which, like it or not, we owe Kaepernick some level of credit for.
