Washington Football Team quarterback Alex Smith is still bamboozled as to why Colin Kaepernick is not on an NFL roster.
Describing the situation as ‘tragic” and “sad,” the current Washington signal-caller and one-time teammate of Kaepernick told the NFL Network’s Kyle Brandt that the league’s original anthem protester not being on a roster “still doesn’t make sense.”
“The country wasn’t ready. Nobody was ready for it,” Smith said. “And, he’s sitting there trying to tell everybody through a completely peaceful manner about some of the things going on in this country and that have been going on for a long time.
Smith added, “And, to see the backlash that happened, yeah, it hurts. It hurts looking back at it that the country wasn’t ready for it and he suffered the repercussions.”
The “repercussions” suffered by Kaepernick, so far, have included a contract with Nike that pays him at the level of an NFL star, numerous awards from universities and social justice activist groups and, basically becoming the hero of the radical left.
Does he have a job in the NFL? No, though he was offered opportunities to work out for NFL teams in addition to offers from other professional football leagues. Kaepernick made a mockery of the NFL’s attempted workout and spurned other leagues with ludicrous financial demands.
Smith continued, “The run that he went on, at the end of that last year that we were together [in 2012] and went to the Super Bowl … was so crazy to watch. Truly one of the historic runs in football to see what he was doing.
“It’s crazy to fast forward only a couple years after that and he was out of the league,” Smith added. “It’s hard to — you couldn’t even grasp it. Couldn’t understand it. You couldn’t.”
Indeed one would have trouble understanding the rise and fall of Kaepernick if one were either living in a cave or just being completely dishonest. Colin Kaepernick regressed as a quarterback after the 2014 season. He started only 21 games in 2015 and 2016, after starting every game in the previous two seasons. He also failed to throw for as much as 2,300 yards in 2015 and 2016, after eclipsing the 3,000-yard mark in each of the previous two seasons.
And much of this regression was caused by Kaepernick himself, as he shifted his focus to social justice instead of football.
Of course, Alex Smith knows all of this. However, given Kaepernick’s legendary status in NFL locker rooms and Smith’s likely upcoming free agency, he won’t endear himself to future teammates by pointing any of this out.
Oh, and there’s the fact that Kaepernick’s protests heralded the beginning of the largest two-season ratings collapse in the history of the NFL. That might also explain why he doesn’t have a job.
But of course, Alex Smith knows that too.