Is Colin Kaepernick not good enough to play in the NFL or is he being blackballed?

very much agreed

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I have a great deal of respect for the kneelers. None for the booers or threateners. None.

Really? the last ones?

I've followed american football since I was twelve or just after that time seeing a game at the house of neighborhood friends (Chicago area). Soon after, I read sports pages in the newspapers, long a news and magazine reader as a kid, and long long later.

I know there are very messed up and despicable players; if not right now, there have been, but I tend to doubt they are worse than the rest of us as a group.

That was one of the articles that most influenced my take on the matter. Thanks for bringing it here.

That police officers are allowed to defend themselves when someone tries to murder them is not really a problem.



They are calling for police officers to be murdered with impunity (at least so long as the murderer has black skin). Most Americans find their cause to be morally repugnant.



Threats and violence are of course wrong. But Americans just aren't going to be receptive to the idea of allowing black people to freely murder police officers.

Probably more than I do.



No. The kneelers are calling for police officers to be murdered with impunity.



Just the opposite. The booers know that they are morally superior than the kneelers.



Probably so. But that is OK.



"I wanna be able to murder police officers with impunity" isn't much of an appeal to moral conscience.

Threats are wrong of course. But the kneelers are calling for the murder of police officers. The booers merely object to that.

What if a member of your family were a police officer? Would you want them to be murdered?

The Colin Kaepernick tracker

Is he better than your team’s quarterback?

By Reuben Fischer-Baum, Neil Greenberg and Mike Hume

Updated through Week 8

Nearly halfway through the 2017 season, Colin Kaepernick is still unemployed – and still the topic of contentious debate. And even with injuries piling up for NFL starting quarterbacks, a signing looks nowhere in sight. On Oct. 15 it was announced he would file a grievance against the NFL's owners for collusion in keeping him out of the league.

Here's how the 2016 performance of the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback compares to the 2017 performance of each team’s most recent starter, using a stat called adjusted net yards per attempt.

Kaepernick (2016)

Among starting quarterbacks, 11 are worse than Kaepernick, 4 are about the same (plus or minus 0.35 ANY/A) and 17 are better.

ANY/A is a tweak on yards per attempt that gives QBs credit for throwing touchdowns and penalizes them for interceptions and sacks. It’s calculated as: (yards + 20 * TD - 45 * interceptions - sack yards) / (attempts + sacks).

Having a capable starter under center in the NFL is a requirement for success, and adjusted net yards per attempt is one of the best measurements available for QB passing performance. It correlates more closely with winning than either traditional passer rating or yards per attempt.

Note that ANY/A only measures passing. Quarterbacks who run a lot – such as Kaepernick, Cam Newton, Russell Wilson and Marcus Mariota – are not given credit for those contributions. Here’s the full starting QB ranking, from worst to best:


Player

Team

Total seasons

2017 Passing Stats

32. Brett Hundley Green Bay 2 52.5% comp, 1 TD, 4 INT 0.88
31. DeShone Kizer Cleveland Rookie 52.1% comp, 3 TD, 11 INT 2.75
30. Matt Moore Miami 10 58.5% comp, 2 TD, 3 INT 3.41
29. Joe Flacco Baltimore 10 64.0% comp, 6 TD, 8 INT 3.62
28. C.J. Beathard San Francisco Rookie 52.7% comp, 2 TD, 3 INT 3.82
27. Mitch Trubisky Chicago Rookie 47.5% comp, 2 TD, 2 INT 4.35
26. Trevor Siemian Denver 3 61.5% comp, 9 TD, 10 INT 4.56
25. Cam Newton Carolina 7 63.1% comp, 10 TD, 11 INT 4.89
24. Jacoby Brissett Indianapolis 2 60.4% comp, 5 TD, 4 INT 5.19
23. Eli Manning N.Y. Giants 14 64.2% comp, 10 TD, 5 INT 5.30
22. Andy Dalton Cincinnati 7 63.3% comp, 11 TD, 8 INT 5.50
21. Josh McCown N.Y. Jets 15 70.5% comp, 12 TD, 7 INT 5.70
20. Carson Palmer Arizona 14 61.4% comp, 9 TD, 7 INT 5.86
Kaepernick (2016) San Francisco 6 59.2% comp, 16 TD, 4 INT 5.92
19. Matthew Stafford Detroit 9 60.4% comp, 12 TD, 4 INT 5.95
18. Tyrod Taylor Buffalo 7 63.8% comp, 8 TD, 2 INT 6.14
17. Ben Roethlisberger Pittsburgh 14 61.1% comp, 10 TD, 9 INT 6.28
16. Blake Bortles Jacksonville 4 58.7% comp, 9 TD, 5 INT 6.29
15. Derek Carr Oakland 4 64.6% comp, 12 TD, 6 INT 6.31
14. Marcus Mariota Tennessee 3 62.5% comp, 4 TD, 4 INT 6.52
13. Philip Rivers L.A. Chargers 14 60.5% comp, 13 TD, 6 INT 6.54
12. Case Keenum Minnesota 6 63.9% comp, 7 TD, 3 INT 6.60
11. Jameis Winston Tampa Bay 3 61.8% comp, 10 TD, 6 INT 6.67
10. Matt Ryan Atlanta 10 65.9% comp, 9 TD, 6 INT 6.84
9. Dak Prescott Dallas 2 62.8% comp, 14 TD, 4 INT 6.95
8. Jared Goff L.A. Rams 2 59.9% comp, 9 TD, 4 INT 7.12
7. Deshaun Watson Houston Rookie 61.8% comp, 19 TD, 8 INT 7.19
6. Kirk Cousins Washington 6 67.9% comp, 13 TD, 4 INT 7.28
5. Carson Wentz Philadelphia 2 61.0% comp, 19 TD, 5 INT 7.33
4. Russell Wilson Seattle 6 63.6% comp, 15 TD, 4 INT 7.41
3. Drew Brees New Orleans 17 70.6% comp, 11 TD, 4 INT 7.62
2. Tom Brady New England 18 66.7% comp, 16 TD, 2 INT 8.02
1. Alex Smith Kansas City 12 69.1% comp, 16 TD, 0 INT 8.40

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/sports/kaepernick-tracker/?utm_term=.ce822ae4034f

Do you think Kaepernick could set up his own team with like-minded players? That'd be awesome. Like if a female movie producer would start her own film producing firm in response to the sexual arrassment problem in Hollywood. These issues are structural and should be solved steucturally, by diversifying the production ecosystem.

Interesting concept, but a concept that floats like a butterfly and wouldn't last. Soon there would be other issues taking up peoples' arguing time.

Perhaps, owners and other decision makers already do sometimes consider team stability when they pick one player over another to join the team. If someone with the most pure talent is a human stinker, I figure talent wins, but probably not always.

I don't know what I'm talking about though. This is just conjecture I'm putting out there for the fun of it.

ABSOLUTELY they do. There have been plenty of talented players fired who are assholes in the locker room. Usually they are mediocre players like Kaepernick is. I'm not saying that Kaep is a locker room cancer, but he is certainly a below average-bad QB.

There are plenty of articles talking about his demise as a passer even in 2015, before the kneeling began.

http://nypost.com/2015/10/25/colin-kaepernick-and-the-49ers-have-a-locker-room-problem/

He could certainly set up a team but he'd have to find a way to get the team into the league - and that is a sticking point, as #45 once discovered.

Ah okay. Not so simple...

Yes. I guess that's already the case.

Very interesting editorial by a former NFL executive on Kaepernick. Some of the background in this article about how the back offices were responding to Kaepernick's protest has things I hadn't heard before.

This football guy (I'm not going to try to spell his name) supports the murder of police officers. It is reasonable for respectable people to not want to associate with him.

NFL Commissioner wishes he had "listened earlier" to Kaepernick

Roger Goodell says he should have "listened earlier" to the free agent quarterback about
the reasons behind his kneeling protests against police brutality and racial injustice.

"These are not people who are unpatriotic," Goodell said. "They're not disloyal. They're not
against our military. In fact, many of those guys were in the military, and they're a military
family. And what they were trying to do is exercise their right to bring attention to something
that needs to get fixed..."

They are people who think that black people should be free to murder police officers and white people.