Why it’s still hard to believe an NFL team will sign Colin Kaepernick

It was hard to believe the NFL was holding a Kaepernick workout in good faith. After Saturday, its even harder to believe this will end well for him.

The NFL’s latest move in the Colin Kaepernick saga is a scheduled workout with all 32 teams invited, but that’s hardly the full story. There are also unrealistic demands from the league, widespread doubt about the NFL’s intentions, and the overwhelming public opinion that this is all a farcical PR move. Oh, and Hue Jackson. Yeesh.

Nearly three years after his last NFL game, Kaepernick is suddenly in a bizarrely rushed situation that virtually nobody seemed to know about ahead of time. The possibility of Kaepernick signing with a new team, after so much time being blackballed by the league for protesting racial injustice in America, seems higher than it has since he was last employed.

But there’s a big ol’ asterisk on the whole thing, for a number of reasons.

The circumstances behind the workout came with some weird hangups

Other than the contact stemming from Kaepernick and Eric Reid’s collusion grievance, there had been no real productive discussions between the league and Kaepernick. Then unexpectedly, the NFL contacted his representatives and invited him to a workout in Atlanta on Saturday, as reported by Tyler Tynes of The Ringer.

The initial reports suggested that all 32 teams were invited to a workout, which would include on-field drills and interviews. So far so good. That’s when things got confusing.

• The league told Kaepernick it needed an answer “in two hours” from him on whether or not he would attend the workout.
• The workout was scheduled for only a few days later, on a Saturday. Kaepernick’s representatives asked if it could be done the following Tuesday, or even the following Saturday, despite that being the day of the week when NFL teams prepare for a game.
• No dice there, so Kaepernick’s representatives asked the NFL if the process was legitimate, and if key decision-makers from all teams would be in attendance. Included in these discussions was a request for a personnel list to be provided, and the NFL agreed it would do so on a rolling basis. On Wednesday, the NFL apparently changed its mind and told Kaepernick’s representatives that it wouldn’t be providing a list. Then, on Thursday, after more bad PR, the NFL went ahead and released a list of the first 11 teams to commit to attending.
• Why only 11 teams (a number that the NFL seemed impressed by in its own release)? Because as it turns out, a bunch of teams had no idea this was happening until it was sprung on everyone. Multiple teams reached out to Kaepernick’s reps as a courtesy, saying they couldn’t attend and were ambushed by the entire situation. Keep in mind the original report indicated that all 32 teams were already invited.
• Not only were teams confused, but members of the league office had no idea this workout was happening either, per USA Today. That report also detailed how this came together, including Jay-Z helping to convince Roger Goodell to hold the workout.
• And finally, the cherry on top of this suspicious sundae: the league got Jackson to run the workout, which was apparently not only news to all of us, but to Jackson as well, until Thursday morning.
• The NFL wouldn’t tell Kaepernick who he’d be throwing to in his workout, so Kaepernick is getting help from receivers who volunteered to travel to Atlanta.

That’s a lot of information to digest for anybody. Now imagine you’re in Kaepernick’s shoes and trying to process all of that on a deadline.

The NFL can’t lose here

One of the more frustrating things about this is regardless of the outcome, the NFL can’t really lose. The league has already taken a massive amount of criticism for blackballing Kaepernick in the first place, and it’s proven adept at pretending the controversy doesn’t exist.

Here’s why it can’t lose:

• If it’s a PR move and Kaepernick isn’t signed to a new team, the NFL can say no team was interested because he didn’t perform well. Had Kaepernick not agreed to the workout due to its unreasonable terms, the league could have painted him as not really wanting to play.
• If it’s a PR move and Kaepernick does get signed by a team, the NFL can pat itself on the back for throwing this whole thing together, conveniently ignoring the well-earned skepticism surrounding this move.
• If it’s not a PR move, the NFL will still do those two things above anyway.

Even Reid, Kaepernick’s former teammate and partner in the collusion case, isn’t buying it. Reid pointed out that the “interested teams” reached out to the league and not the player or his representatives, which isn’t generally how the NFL works.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Reid said Wednesday. “At this point, it feels like a PR stunt.”

Reid, who is still close with Kaepernick, is just as stumped as the rest of us.

“It’s disingenuous,” Reid said. “They want the appearance of giving Colin a chance, but they give him two hours’ notice and tell it has to be on a Saturday when they know decision-makers are traveling. So is this real? We’ll see.”

We’ll see indeed, but no matter what happens, any criticism of the NFL will bounce off, as it has all along.

I want to believe this ends with a Kaepernick signing, but it probably won’t

While Kaepernick posted on Twitter that he was looking forward to the workout — and has been adamant that he’s been NFL-ready this entire time — there are too many question marks around this situation.

Even if he’s not signed now, this could potentially help Kaepernick get a job in 2020, if one of the teams in attendance is impressed but doesn’t want to rush into making a decision. But even that outcome is hard to be optimistic about given the history here.

I want to believe it’s true — that Kaepernick will actually throw footballs in front of NFL teams with a real shot at being signed. I want to believe the NFL has stopped blackballing him, and that this workout will be conducted in good faith.

It sure would be nice if a team like the Buccaneers or Broncos, both of whom are among the teams confirmed to be attending the workout on Saturday, liked what they saw and signed Kaepernick to a deal. There are many teams that could benefit from signing him, in fact.

Kaepernick shouldn’t be signed because he’ll instantly make a team a Super Bowl contender; he simply deserves a shot based on his play in the NFL. The man led the 49ers to the Super Bowl, and if you actually watch his film, it’s clear he had the talent of a starting quarterback last time he played. He threw 16 touchdowns against four interceptions in 2016, amid all the 49ers’ turmoil and dysfunction of that time.

It would also be great to see such an important figure in today’s unbalanced world get another chance, even if that chance is mired in the stink of public relations and questionable motives from the league.

Then again, he’s 32 years old, and has been deprived of that shot for the past three years. Would the NFL really change its mind now?

If there’s any chance that this is a legitimate opportunity — and I sincerely hope it is — then I would love nothing more than to see him go out there and kill it on Saturday. But given the nature of this entire dispute and the NFL’s moves thus far, cynicism seems like the smart bet to avoid a letdown if, or when, he isn’t signed.

Update: It was as farcical as expected, unfortunately

About an hour before the scheduled NFL-organized workout, Kaepernick and his team pulled out for multiple reasons. He then held his own workout at a nearby high school, inviting the same representatives who had arrived at the Falcons facility to join him.

Before we get into the reasoning behind Kaepernick’s actions and why he did what he did, a quick breakdown of the increasing NFL ridiculousness over the past 24 hours:

• First, the NFL wanted Kaepernick to sign a waiver that differed from a normal pro day injury waiver, a massive red flag right out of the gate, per Charles Robinson of Yahoo.
• Second, Kaepernick’s camp wanted to take video of the workout alongside the NFL’s crew, because they didn’t trust the NFL to use the film in good faith, again per Robinson. The NFL declined, giving no reasoning behind its decision.
• After Kaepernick’s request was denied, he asked the league to allow the media in to record themselves, and the NFL said no. That was reportedly the breaking point for Kaepernick, who cancelled the workout and took things into his own hands.
• Following Kaepernick’s own workout, with the footage released online, the NFL spin began. The league put out a statement in which it laid all of the blame on Kaepernick, offering nothing of substance to address the ridiculous circumstances it had created. The NFL said it was “disappointed that Colin did not appear for his workout.”
• Not only did that statement not say anything of substance in defense of the league, it also raised an issue with Nike, suggesting that the company wanted to shoot an ad based around the workout and muddying the waters a bit. Soon, many were talking about Nike and how that would be a distraction, before Nike quickly made it public that it did not have a video crew at the workout, and only wanted permission to name the teams at the workout in a future ad. It was a decent diversionary tactic by the league, for a couple hours, at least.
• Remember Jay-Z? He reportedly pushed Goodell to have this workout in the first place, and is now talking about how Kaepernick turned this entire thing into a PR stunt.

Detractors may point out that Kaepernick wanting his workout recorded and released, which isn’t necessarily standard for NFL workouts, could be unreasonable. But let’s not pretend that Kaepernick’s situation is standard to begin with, let alone an out-of-the-blue last-minute workout arranged (using that term loosely given the disorganization) by the league, who also planned to video the workout.

There’s nothing unreasonable about distrusting the NFL if you’re in Kaepernick’s camp, and the league’s refusal to allow Kaepernick’s representatives the ability to record the workout raises so many questions. What possible reason could the NFL have for denying this? There is none, and the lame response is only proof that it has no credible reason to explain its actions this week.

Let’s not forget how easily things can go wrong at a normal pro day-type workout. Just a couple of bad throws by Kaepernick posted on Twitter could easily spiral out of control and paint the picture of a poor performance. And Kaepernick wanted the video released before he ever touched a football. That alone should confirm that the quarterback believes in himself and wants to play.

Kaepernick spent time with fans after his workout, and had a few words for the media as well. He said he has nothing to hide and told the NFL to “stop running from the truth.”

Unfortunately, this ending is exactly what I expected. This is what many people suspected. The only positive is that Kaepernick DID have a workout, the video of Kaepernick throwing footballs in 2019 is out there, and NFL teams are supposedly free to study it and potentially work on bringing Kaepernick in for something more, whether that is midseason or during the offseason. There’s still hope.

But if the past few days have shown anything, it’s that the NFL’s intentions are indecipherable at best and completely farcical at worst.