Colin Kaepernick's protest and it's impact on the NFL
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@kjayhawks With the baggage Kaep brings to the jobsite it’s just a poor strategic business decision to put him on your roster. Fans pay the bills & salaries & his actions & words alienate too many in different ways. Personally IDT he even wants to play, he just wants to be a statesman known for ideology. We were all young once, but sometimes you have to pay your own bills so things evolve for most.
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All but a handful of backup QBs in the NFL earn more than the $900,000 veterans minimum that CK was offered. Offering him the veterans minimum would be the equivalent to offering an experienced person in your field an entry level salary. Yeah, a million dollar offer sounds like a lot, but every starter in the league except Dak Prescott (rookie deal) makes more than that, as well as Matt Barkley, Ryan Mallett, Mark Sanchez, Scott Tolzien, DeShone Kizer, Christian Hackenberg, Dan Orlovsky, Josh Johnson, Luke McCown, Ryan Griffin, Brandon Weeden, Landry Jones, Colt McCoy, Chase Richardson, Drew Stanton, Mitch Frazier, Kellen Clemens and Chad Henne, among others.*
Simply put, even mediocre QBs in the NFL make more than what CK was offered. Only guys on rookie deals make less. Why should CK take less than many backups would make? If I offered anyone on this board less than their subordinates made, it would be turned down, and it wouldn’t be to create a media frenzy.
- I made up two of the names in that list. I wonder how many people noticed…
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The amount offered is the minimum for an 8 year veteran. Keep in mind tha CK lost the starting job to Blaine Gabbert, one of the bigger busts in the NFL, so how good is he anymore?
You pay an employee based on what he/she brings to the table; he brings a set of diminishing skills and a whole lot of negatives and creates a distraction that no coach would want to have and a team would have to be desperate to consider.
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I’m glad you brought up Blaine Gabbert in comparison to Colin Kaepernick.
Gabbert’s QB rating last year was 68.4 in 6 (5 starts) games.
Kaepernick’s was 90.7 in 12 (11 starts) games.
Kaepernick had a higher completion percentage, more yards per attempt, a better TD/Int ration (4 to 1 for CK, 1/1.17 for BG).
Going to the advanced stats, Kaepernick was higher in Yards per attempt + (100 is average for all of these) with a 90-66 advantage. CK also had an 80-70 edge in net yards per attempt, 102-65 in average yards per attempt, 95-67 in average net yards per attempt, 85-76 in completion percentage plus, 105-84 in TD percentage plus, 120-74 in Int percentage plus and 101-68 in Rate plus.
Gabbert holds a 96-66 advantage in Sack percentage plus.
I look at all of those numbers and determine that Colin Kaepernick was, at worst, a fairly average quarterback last season. I look at those same numbers and determine that Blaine Gabbert was very much below average last year.
So Blaine Gabbert gets the veterans minimum because he was very decidedly below average last year. The numbers dictate that Gabbert is a backup at best.
Kaepernick was not. He was average or even above. He could very well be a starter. He was 23rd by QBR last year. That means there are 9 guys starting this year that were worse than he was last year at a minimum.
This article shows every free agent QB over the last several years (from fivethirtyeight.com). You see that CK is the best QB to go unsigned for this long after a performance like he had last year.
If this were about football, CK would have been signed months ago, and likely would be starting for the Rams, Bills, Broncos, Jets, Texans, Jaguars or 49ers. This is not about football.
As bad as some of those team’s QB situations are, they are beyond desperate - look at the QBs they will start instead. Those guys are terrible. They should be pleading with CK to come play for them. Instead, they are silent, which makes it pretty clear that there’s an informal agreement not to sign CK.
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I think you’re overlooking or looking past a few points of Truth.
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CK doesn’t have a job. I’m sorry but he’s done nothing on the football field that affords him the right going around demanding a certain amount for his services.
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The NFL is just as much a brand as it is a sport. To stay in business you have to protect that brand.
Whether you think CK is a fine OB or not, he brings a lot of baggage to the table. An owner would have to weigh the risk of CK versus protecting his team’s brand.
The BG point is a fine example. You showed us the numbers that CK was in fact the better QB. Yet the 49ers chose BG. Now why is that? Is it because the 49ers are racist? No It’s because CK has made himself tainted with off the field comments, and on field antics.
People don’t watch football to see what some guy thinks about BLM, or racism. We watch because we played the game at one time and enjoy watching the game being played by others.
As a huge fan of the NFL. I would absolutely get tried of a QB like CK playing for my team. At some point shut up and play the game.
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That’s a fine point you make. But the thing is, the NFL owners are, to a large degree, trying to claim this is a football talent issue. A lot of fans are too. You are not trying to make that point, but many are, so I laid out the points that refute that. I even made that point (or tried to) in my own post by saying:
If this were about football, CK would have been signed months ago, and likely would be starting for the Rams, Bills, Broncos, Jets, Texans, Jaguars or 49ers. This is not about football.
The thing is, the NFL doesn’t want to admit that this is about Kaepernick taking a public stand that they happen to not agree with. They want it to be about football. They need it to be about football.
If it’s not about football, the NFL has just entered some very ugly territory:
Drunk driving (a crime by the way) is okay. You can get re-signed as long as you can produce.
Domestic violence (also a crime) is also okay, so long as you produce you will have a spot in the league.
Protesting how minorities are treated by cops - not okay, we will blackball you out of the league.
And that’s a problem in a sport where almost 70% of the league is black. Maybe it doesn’t matter to most fans what the players think about BLM or racism, but as a black man in this country, I know that matters to me every single day.
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I respectfully disagree. There are multiple factors taken into considerations when you want to hire some one to do a certain job and what he does on the field is by no means the only one.
As an employer I can tell you that when hiring someone you look at how qualified that person is for the job? how is that person going to represent your firm when he interfaces with clients? How is he going to get along with other employees? Is he going to get you more clients or lose you existing clients? and most importantly of all…is he going to make you or lose you money.
Obviously some positions, such as secretaries, are what we call overhead and are not expected to produce revenue. In football positions such as equipment managers, office personnel and the proverbial water boy do not make you money directly but are an integral part of a successful organizations. Players on the other hand are directly responsible for putting butts on seats since fans pay good money to see them perform; likewise, a player that causes fans to stay away is effectively causing a loss of income.
I don’t care what the owners say, they are obviously constrained by political correctness and have to give the political correct answer. The bottom line is that owners see fans staying away if CK is hired and no responsible business person in his right mind would purposefully hire some one that will negatively affect the bottom line. In CK’s case, the negatives greatly outweigh the positives. If it was a Tom Brady or a Russel Wilson or an Aaron Rogers or a Cam Newton, I could see owners taking a chance, but for a marginal, on his way down QB, no way.
LeBron James famously said: “The first time I stepped on an NBA court, I became a businessman.” For the players, football is a business not a cause and likewise, the owners are businessmen and they are not in it to lose money. There is plenty of evidence that CK caused the 49ers and the League at large to loose a great deal of money; they will not make that mistake again.
In my opinion, if CK would have made his statement on his own time and not at his employer’s place of business and not being so antagonistic and alienating people, the result would have been quite different. Yes,the effect would have been smaller but which one is better? a large but mostly negative effect or a smaller but mostly positive effect? I would think that most unbiased observers would pick the second as the better outcome, I know I would.
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CK needs to make up his mind on what he wants to do. Play football or be a political activists.
I’m not sure why we should point the blame on the owners? Look last year the numbers of watching viewers of the NFL game went down for the first time in forever. You can bet the NFL brass noticed and investigated on why. The results and polls showed that the average watching football person got tired of the disrespect of the American Flag and constant attention CK was getting pushing his political agenda.
We can debate whether kneeling down is disrespecting the flag, or what the flag really means? We can also argue If CK has a the right to use the NFL press to push his agenda. Yet at the end of the day the American people got tired of it and stopped watching. That is just how it is.
CK can make a fine living being a political activist. Give paid speeches, right a few books, and start a few for profit organizations. Life would be good for him.
So lets stop bashing the NFL. Nobody in their right mind wouldn’t be cautious about hiring CK. If you didn’t then you don’t care about making money. And lets stop acting like CK is some star QB in the NFL. He’s not. He should be thankful that someone offered him a chance to still play the NFL game.
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Again, you are comparing CK to Blaine Gabbert, one of the bigger bust of all time as rated by many publications like this, and this, and this and I could go on.
You are not doing CK any favors and setting the bar almost close to the ground by saying he is better than Gabbert, who actually took the starting job from CK at San Francisco before he proceeded to stink up the place. Neither one is now a decent QB and unless he is locked on an existing contract, neither should be getting starting QB salary on a new contract.
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@JayHawkFanToo I’m just guessing your secretary, part of your overhead, is a female too.
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If you look at my post, you will see that while I compared him to Gabbert, I pointed out the numbers CK posted.
Here are CK’s leaguewide rankings in several different passing categories (there are 32 starting spots in the league):
Completion% - 26th
TD% - 13th
INT% - 6th
Yard per attempt - 23rd
Average yards per attempt - 16th
Yards per completion - 17th
Rating - 17th
QBR - 23rd
Kaepernick ranks in the middle a lot, and even shows up in the top 10 once. He is legitimately better than probably half a dozen STARTING QBs in the league right now at a minimum.
I’m not disagreeing with you at all when you say the league is considering “other factors” in evaluating CK. Let’s just not push under the rug the fact that CK is physically capable of playing in the NFL right now, but the “other factors” are preventing that. Heck, I’m not even arguing the merits of whether those other factors should keep him out of the league. What I’m saying is the NFL needs to fess up that it is the “other factors” and not skill level because the statistical data is showing that it’s not production. Go look up the QB depth charts for Cleveland, Denver, Jacksonville, Los Angeles and Buffalo, the look at the stats and tell me there’s a football talent reason why those teams wouldn’t be better off with CK under center.
Once we agree that there’s not a football reason, we can move to the truth, which you have already hinted at - that CK is not employed for “other reasons.”
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I am not sure what point you are trying to make; I have had both male and female secretaries.
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Ok, so let’s assume that he is better than 6 starting QBs, it would place him in the bottom 20%, not exactly a ringing endorsement.
If you think an owner would come out and say we will not take CK because he is just bad for business then I have some Florida water front property I can sell you. Any owner that says this would be crucified by the liberal MSM and labeled a racist even when it would be a sound business decision…and the NFL IS a business. Nobody that has made enough money to own a NFL franchise is that stupid.
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That’s my point. The owners won’t admit it because they cannot legally collude to keep Kaepernick out of the league.
Your point also establishes a sad reality - sports fans are more prepared to accept drunk drivers and domestic abusers than Kaepernick. Apparently those things don’t hurt business as much…
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@justanotherfan I think a bunch of them might generally feel the same way and shy away from CK as too hot to handle. And they all then just coincidentally choose not to improve their teams. No collusion necessary.
Kind of like how someone working for a candidate for president might hear that someone has dirt on his candidate’s opponent and goes to get it. Merely being pragmatic. No collusion necessary.
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I don’t believe the owners are colluding or that collusion is even necessary, CK has too many cons that negate any pros he might still have, and from a business perspective, is really a no brainer. You keep looking at it as if it is a decision based on discrimination when in reality it is a business decision based on money like most business decisions are.
Now, I agree that the public seems to have some tolerance for players that commit other crimes but we are talking apples and oranges. By and large, one group involves individuals that committed a crime against another individual and happened one time or a few. CK disrespected something that the majority of the population holds dear and he did day after day after day; you can see that there is a big difference in magnitude and scale, right?
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Let’s not forget it hasn’t been that long ago that it was revealed that 14 teams received taxpayer dollars for doing their patriotic tributes to the troops. Then to be embarrassed by the antics of Crappernick.
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Kaepernick= PR nightmare. Ea nfl franchise = $ half a billion dollars. Piss off the power players behind that kind of $, and who here thinks CK isnt expendable? Come on KU fans, you who know and whine about east coast bias, because those are the big mkt tv audiences, who naturally want to see their area teams in the Final Four. Well, the NFL is bigger. Bigger dollars, bigger viewership. Bigger dangers for the idiots of the world like CK to take a fall, once they open their mouth!
Doesnt the cause of social injustice deserve its celebrity proponent to be intelligent & articulate? Wear a t-shirt supportive of Castro, & see how intelligent u look. Doofus. Good riddance. Take a cue from Rodgers, Brady, Brees, Elway, Montana, Moon, R.Cunningham, A.Smith, P.Manning? NFL QB, aka “Face of your franchise”…
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The QB isn’t necessarily the face of the franchise.
Here’s a quick list of some non “face of the franchise” starters in the NFL right now:
Tyrod Taylor, Mike Glennon, Deshone Kizer, Trevor Siemien, Tom Savage, Scott Tolzien, Blake Bortles, Josh McCown, Brian Hoyer.
CK is not in the NFL because of his stances. We agree on that. But the NFL claims he’s not being blacklisted because of those things. That’s an outright lie. I just listed 9 QBs that CK could easily be starting in front of. I didn’t list Matt Moore, Carson Palmer, or Sam Bradford, all of whom are very iffy as starters. That’s 12 of the 32 starters.
I would respect the NFL more if they just came out and said that CK was not in the league because they didn’t agree with his protest. It wouldn’t change his situation, but it would at least show they were willing to be honest about something. Of course, this is the same league that was claiming until about 5 years ago that head trauma was not a serious issue, so the league’s record on honesty isn’t exactly stellar.
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You keep thinking it is about race and politics. It is not; it is about the color green, as in money.
While we might agonize over our favorite team winning, the owners, the ones with the investment, think about making money first and winning second; for us is is entertainment and for them it is a business.
Regardless of what you and I think, CK is a QB with diminishing skills and on the down side of his career. At this point he is at best a backup QB but he still wants to be paid starter money. Also, and as a former QB recently stated, CK needs a unique system for his skill set and teams are not willing to revamp their offense for a backup QB, they prefer to have a less talented backup that fits their system.
Let’s face it, a team that signs CK is bound to have huge issues with its fans and it will cost them a lot of money like it did the 49ers. Why would you want to take on some one that brings considerably more negative than positives from the business perspective? Again, to the men doing the hiring, football is a business not a hobby, why would you make a business decision that will surely lose you money?
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@justanotherfan Two questions.
Do you think CK’s protests were sincere?
Do you think Tim Tebow is a good enough football player that he should have a job in the NFL? At any position.
Because those are the two things preventing CK from getting signed. Everyone sees through the bullshit. He wasn’t protesting. He was a little kid throwing a fit on the sideline because he wasn’t starting. All of a sudden, this season, he is ok with the strides toward equality that were made in 365 days so he will NOW stand for the National Anthem? Nope. Nobody is buying it. It was a load of shit.
Second, if Tim Tebow can’t get a job because of the media circus he brings with him, why in the world would anyone think CK can get a job with that same media circus? Tim Tebow is a living saint. He is talented enough to play in the NFL as SOME position. He is a great teammate. But, he is still a major distraction because of the media circus that he brings with him. CK is in that same boat. And he did it to himself.
CK has nobody to blame but himself. Of course he doesn’t have a job because of his protesting. And an NFL owner is not going to alienate the white, redneck, patriotic fan base that actually buys $1,000 season tickets, $30 parking passes and buys $125 jerseys. And why would you? Business 101. It is 10x cheaper to keep an existing customer than to find a new one. In this case, if 2,000 season tickets less were bought (only about 5% of season ticket holders), at an average price of $500, that alone is $1M. That doesn’t include jerseys not being bought, beer sales, food sales, parking sales, etc. We are talking about $2M a season CK is on your team at least in lost revenue. If CK doesn’t pan out, we are talking about that only getting exponentially worse. If you only lose 500 of those season ticket holders for life by signing CK, we are talking about $8M-10M in lost revenue AT LEAST. Not including the money spent on acquiring new season ticket holders to fill their place. Simply put, CK MIGHT be worth $5M a season purely based on business. And he isn’t willing to accept that. That is why he isn’t signed.
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@Kcmatt7 You didn’t ask me, but there is no reason to think the protest was not sincere. CK was aware it would make him a target for hste and denunciation. Look at what he has lost. You can say that everyone agrees with you, but that is a belief induced solely by the intensity of your emotional reaction. Look how many others have started doing similar things, and his support by many non players, too.
You might not like what he did, but there is no more reason to think he is not sincere than there is to believe the Nazis marching in Charlottesville probably included lots of wonderful people. Both extremes of the political spectrum have genuine adherents.
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@mayjay And there is a reason why other players on other teams don’t get the same reaction from fans that CK gets.
Why is he willing to stand this season? Why didn’t he vote? These are signs of insincerity. As was the fact he didn’t make it known why he was pouting on the bench until I believe the 3rd week of the Preseason? Nor had the man EVER said anything previously about this cause. More signs that this was a spin job by him and his agent after he was in trouble for throwing a fit on the bench.
And, for the record, you are assuming I disagree with the protesting. I don’t disagree with protesting whatsoever. I’m simply pointing out how insincere I felt when it comes from CK. I think Marcus Peters has done a decent job of protesting without saying anything. I loved his Black Panther’s hockey jersey he wore last season. Thought it was so cool. I enjoyed watching the players who stood, put a hand over their heart, and raised their left hand in solidarity. There were several powerful pictures of that.
Anyone who stands up for what they truly believe, and sticks to their guns, I can support. But if you don’t have the balls to continue your fight when the going gets tough, I won’t ever believe that you were sincere in the first place.
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It is absolutely about the color green. I never said it was about race. I said it was about his position, and the owners/ league believe it will cost them money. But they also know being honest about refusing to give him a fair shake will cost them money. So they posit a fake position (that he isn’t good enough to start) when its clear from the QBs currently starting in the NFL that CK could very well start in the NFL.
Two answers, but in reverse order.
Do I believe that Tim Tebow is a good enough “player”? Yes. Is he a good enough QB? No. He’s just not accurate enough. In his best NFL season, Tebow completed 50% of his passes. He doesn’t throw a ton of picks, but that’s mostly because he’s so inaccurate that he throws more incompletions than anyone else. If Tebow had said he was willing to move off QB and be an RB or a TE, he would be in the NFL right now. But he has expressly said that he has no interest in playing in the NFL as anything other than a QB. Tim Tebow is not a good enough QB to play in the NFL. Even when other teams brought him in, they quickly realized how bad his passing was and moved on.
I do believe that CK’s protests were sincere. I think he knew that he stood to lose quite a bit for his position. You don’t make that kind of leap unless you are sincere. Race in this country, particularly how different people are treated by police, is tricky because how police will treat me as a black man when I am with white friends differs from how they may treat me if I am alone. Because of that, no one that isn’t a minority can truly see how a minority is being treated. Race is complicated. How people feel differs widely. Perhaps he’s willing to stand now because he’s frustrated that his original point has been lost because the only thing people want to talk about is whether he should kneel or stand.
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What did he have to lose at the time? He was benched for Blaine Gabbert. At that time, he was at an all-time low. He only had something to gain. Surely nothing to lose the way things were going. He was a backup to one of the biggest QB busts of all-time and on a downward trajectory. Not only was he benched for Gabbert, he was benched for Gabbert in a Chip Kelly Zone Read spread offense. His sweet spot. If he couldn’t succeed there, he wasn’t going to succeed anywhere.
CK had nothing to lose at the time. Absolutely nothing. The moment the man was trying to get another job, he gave up on the fight while other players aren’t. Nothing about that says sincere to me. If you want to take him at face-value that is your call. I personally see an immature player who’s agent helped him with an amazing spin job. Kaepernick has been an issue off the field and on the field in the past and there is no reason to think he matured enough to start a movement like this with any kind of sincerity. To believe his protests were calculated and then basically ignore just how ignorant he was by not voting in the election is delusional.
I’m being accused of not understanding because of my emotions towards CK and the fact I’m not a minority. The truth, the protests have no effect on me one way or the other. I’m just turning on TV to watch football. Whether a player sits, stands, or takes a piss while the National Anthem is playing really has no effect on me. I have taken the emotion out of it completely. Can you say the same? And if you can, how can you defend CK after he has just given up on what he was once so passionate about 365 days ago? It just amazes me.
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I believe he was sincere because of everything else he’s done since that time.
Take a second and Google Colin Kaepernick donations.
You will see that he pledged to donate $1M. Through August, he had donated $800k of that money. He appeared at a rally in New York protesting police brutality. These actions say to me that he is sincere. They haven’t gotten as much press as the initial protest, but when someone puts their money where their mouth is, that’s sincere enough for me.
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@justanotherfan I’ve seen. And a million dollars is a bargain for the type/amount of PR he needs. No reason to publicize it unless you need PR…
It’s ok though, we can agree to disagree. You see him at face value and I see him/his agent pulling strings and spinning stories for his benefit.
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@Kcmatt7 A lot of people said his protest and method were stupid because “Look at what this will cost him!” You seem to think it was all a ploy for publicity, ignoring the possible millions he has forfeited.
A lot of people said, “Okay, now shut up and stand up, CK. Shut up, your point has been made. Stand up, stop being a fool.” You question his sincerity because he isn’t sitting any more (although without a team that would be hard).
I just find it easier to believe he was angry, he genuinely wished to make a point, he succeeded in initiating a much-needed conversation, and he is now facing the consequences of making himself controversial by not being able to land a job in his profession. I don’t see it as concerted action by the league (a la @justanotherfan’s suggestion), but I don’t see this as being reduceable as just brat-like PR-seeking behavior, either (a la your suggestion).
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I disagree with you. As @Kcmatt7 pointed out, Kaepernick conveniently started his protest after he lost his starting spot and I have looked but not found any reference to him speaking on the subject before.
To me he is the worst kind of hypocrite. One one hand he protest against oppression by police against black people in our country and on the other hand he praises Castro who is one of the biggest oppressors in history with 100,000 people having been killed by his totalitarian regime and he led one of the most racist systems ever where black people are at the lowest rung economically and socially and jails in Cuba are full of mostly black people. Look at pictures of the Cuban ruling group, do you see a single black person? In Cuba jobs government jobs are meted out according to the color of your skin…if you don’t believe me, ask any Cuban exile and they will tell you the truth about Castro. It always amazes me how the left has romantized Castro and even more Che Guevara who was nothing more than a blood thirsty sociopath with no redeeming values and whose favorite thing was to torture and kill people; I know, I have seen the results of his work first hand.
If he really believes his own narrative, I would suggest he goes to Cuba and protest the real oppression of black people there…of course he is not going to do this because it is easy to do it in a country like ours where he has the freedom to do it but not in Cuba where people do not have the freedom to protest or even express an opinion that does not conform to the official line…that would be real courage.
