Whereas recounting the season the place he and Colin Kaepernick have been teammates, and when Kaepernick took the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl, Washington Football Team quarterback Alex Smith stated on a current podcast he struggles to know how his former backup is not within the NFL. The dialog the place this got here up occurred on 10 Questions With Kyle Brandt.
“It nonetheless does not make sense,” Smith stated. “The run that he went on the final 12 months we have been collectively once we went to the Tremendous Bowl…[it] was so loopy to look at. Actually one of many historic runs in soccer to see what he was doing. He nonetheless holds information from that point interval. Actually particular. It is loopy that quick ahead to solely a few years after that he is out of the league. You could not even grasp it. You could not perceive it.”
Smith’s confusion in that quote stems from seeing an extremely gifted quarterback take a staff to a championship sport and one way or the other that means not being sufficient to maintain him within the NFL for years to return. In fact, there is a fairly clear timeline of occasions that explains why he by no means made it again to a league roster.
In 2016, Kaepernick famously took a knee throughout the enjoying of the nationwide anthem as an act of protest in opposition to systemic racism and police brutality in the US. This protest made many who have been fast to dismiss his actions as disrespect in the direction of a tune and flag fairly upset — a bunch that apparently included the eventual president, Donald Trump — and when his contract with San Francisco ran out, he by no means received an actual alternative to return to the league.
Kaepernick finally filed a lawsuit in opposition to the NFL, together with Eric Reid, claiming that house owners colluded in opposition to the 2 distinguished protesting gamers to not signal them onto rosters. The 2 sides settled in February 2019.
To Smith’s credit score, he does really perceive that there have been causes past soccer that Kaepernick was stored out of the league.
“I believe it is so tragic it. I believe he was forward of his time, definitely, attempting to name out social injustice, particularly round police reform,” Smith stated of Kaepernick. “The nation wasn’t prepared. No person was prepared for it, and he is sitting there attempting to inform everyone by way of a very peaceable method about a number of the issues happening on this nation that had been happening for a very long time.
“To see the backlash that occurred, yeah, it hurts. The nation wasn’t prepared for it and he suffered the repercussions along with his job after which how courageous he was. He misplaced his livelihood.”
You possibly can watch everything of the dialog down beneath.
