Buried in the midst of a long-running GQ interview in which he belittles the skills of Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, and Joe Flacco; players who have five Super Bowl rings between them. Jags cornerback Jalen Ramsey also weighed-in on whether he believes Colin Kaepernick should be in the NFL.
Spoiler alert, he does.
When asked for his thoughts on whether the league’s original anthem protester should be in the league, Ramsey said:
Oh, hell yeah. He’s way better than some of these second-string quarterbacks out here. Possibly better than some of these first-string quarterbacks out here. And some teams have third-string quarterbacks. He’s definitely good enough to be in the league, but he won’t be.
Given his clear belief that Kaepernick is being kept out of the league for reasons other than football, Ramsey explained why he believes NFL owners won’t sign him :
I think it’s like a pride thing now. It’s kind of like, if all of a sudden we pick him up now, people might be like, ‘So why didn’t we pick him up last year? Now we gonna pick him because he has the opportunity to stay in the locker room?’ It’ll reflect bad on teams if they pick him up now. So I don’t think he’ll get picked up.
There’s more than an element of truth to this. Even if an NFL team were inclined to sign Kaepernick, why do it now? He was a statistically average quarterback two years ago. NFL players do not take two years off and get better. So what would be the football argument for bringing him back now?
Instead, ironically, the only argument for bringing Kaepernick back now is if you wanted to make a political statement, not a football statement.
Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter @themightygwinn