Colin Kaepernick's Contested Workout and the Power Plays of the NFL

By Louisa Thomas, The New Yorker

19 November 19

or the past three years, Colin Kaepernick’s absence from the N.F.L. has made him a nearly constant presence in the broader culture. Kaepernick, who, six years ago, led the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl, began kneeling during pregame performances of the national anthem in 2016, in protest of racial injustice. He became a free agent after that season, and no team would touch him. But no one could ignore him, either. Other players were protesting during the anthem, citing his example. Donald Trump dangled the bogeyman of Kaepernick at his rallies, whipping up racist resentment. Many blamed the movement that Kaepernick started for driving down the league’s ratings. Kaepernick, through all of this, mostly stayed silent and out of view. When he was named GQ’s Man of the Year, in November, 2017, he showed up for the photoshoot but declined to be interviewed. He attracted more than two million followers on Twitter but primarily used the platform to retweet others. He rarely appeared in public, and, when he did, it was usually in a controlled setting: he gave a few speeches, and, in 2018, starred in a popular Nike commercial.

By then, Kaepernick and his former teammate Eric Reid, who had joined Kaepernick’s protest early on, had filed a grievance with the N.F.L., alleging that teams had colluded to keep them out of the league. The N.F.L. settled the complaint in February, reportedly paying between one and ten million dollars. In the years since they first knelt, Reid has played for the Carolina Panthers. Kaepernick still hasn’t played for anyone. He said that he wanted to play, and, in theory, teams were free to sign him. Other quarterbacks got injured, and some healthy quarterbacks played terribly. Kaepernick remained out of sight—in some ways, arguably, more powerful for it.

Then, on Tuesday, word broke that the N.F.L. had invited Kaepernick to work out for league teams on Saturday, in Atlanta. He was reportedly given two hours to accept the invitation. Kaepernick’s camp wanted to know the names of who would be there; the N.F.L. declined to give him a list. He wanted to know the receivers the N.F.L. planned to provide; the league refused to tell him. (He decided to fly in his own.) In addition to these initial points of conflict, there were unanswered questions surrounding the whole event. Why was Kaepernick given so little time to prepare? Why was the invitation sent now, when ratings were up and the anthem controversy had died down? Why was it sent in the middle of the season, when teams would generally be less interested in signing a new quarterback—especially one who would invite as much scrutiny from the press and from fans as Kaepernick would? Why was the workout happening on a Saturday, when most head coaches and general managers would be busy preparing for their Sunday games, unable to make the trip, rather than on a Tuesday, when most free-agent workouts are held? Why was the league setting it up at all, given that individual teams were free to invite him to work out on their own?

Various answers to these questions were floated online and in the media, some of them based on reporting and others anchored only in speculation. Perhaps the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, had sprouted a conscience. Perhaps Jay-Z had put him up to it. Perhaps it was just an ill-conceived publicity stunt. Perhaps some teams were legitimately interested in signing Kaepernick but didn’t want to deal with the sure-to-ensue Fox News segments that would accuse, say, the Detroit Lions of being insufficiently patriotic. Perhaps the league’s lawyers were trying to get Kaepernick to sign a waiver that would entail forfeiting his labor rights. (Reid focussed on the waiver, which was obtained by multiple media outlets, in an interview over the weekend.)

Regardless of whether the N.F.L. was up to something with that waiver—the league insists it was a “standard liability waiver,” and that the rewritten one offered by Kaepernick’s camp was “insufficient”—the document seems to have contributed to the last-minute breakdown in negotiations, on Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t the only issue. Another was the question of who would get to see Kaepernick throw, and how. Kaepernick wanted the media to be allowed in; the league did not. Kaepernick wanted to bring his own video crew to film the workout, possibly out of concern that the one provided by the Atlanta Falcons would not portray him fairly in the tape that the league would subsequently send to all thirty-two teams. (The league agreed to let the quarterback’s representatives watch the filming but would not let him bring his own cameras.) Hours before Kaepernick was set to take the field, his people announced that the previously announced workout was off, and that he would be holding his own workout at Charles R. Drew High School, south of Atlanta. Of more than twenty teams that had planned to have representatives at the workout, only eight ultimately sent scouts. Jay-Z was reportedly disappointed.

But this new setup turned the event from a private tryout into something else: now the rest of the world could be there, too. Hundreds of people watched through a chain-link fence behind one of the field’s end zones. Hundreds of thousands watched footage of the workout on YouTube. A band held Kaepernick’s Afro back from his face. He moved lightly on his feet. He wore black shorts and a black tank top, showing off shoulders that appeared more muscular than they were when he last played in an N.F.L. game. The ball came out of his hand fast and easily; long bombs landed accurately. He threw for about forty minutes and completed fifty-three of sixty throws. His arm strength, one N.F.L. executive present told ESPN, was “élite.”

But we knew that already. Even after three years out of the league, there is little question that Colin Kaepernick is better than a number of quarterbacks who have seen playing time this season. There may be team owners who remain put off by the political stands that Kaepernick has taken—there are surely owners who fear that signing Kaepernick would alienate some significant portion of their fans. In this view, whether Kaepernick is a force for good in the world for the United States is beside the point if he is bad for the bottom line. They are quite possibly wrong about this: despite a lot of noise about boycotts in the wake of Nike’s Kaepernick commercial, the company has done just fine in the year since the ad was released. And there is an obvious and easy argument to make for an owner who steps up to do the right thing—which could very well help his team. But the N.F.L., first and foremost, is a business. Winning isn’t the only thing. It’s not even the main thing.

Kaepernick’s decision not to accept the N.F.L.’s conditions, and to host his own workout instead, has prompted some prominent commentators to declare that he never wanted to come back in the first place. But one could as easily look at all the peculiarities of the setup and conclude that the N.F.L. was determined to discourage him from returning. Or perhaps the N.F.L. just wanted Kaepernick to demonstrate that, should he return, he would be willing to submit to the league’s authority. If that’s the case, then what went down on Saturday would surely be seen as his refusal to do so. Maybe Kaepernick sees himself as representing something bigger than the game of football now—if he does, he’d be right. Still, he clearly wanted people to see him play. And, on his own terms, he insured that they did, even if it meant that, on any given Sunday, he may not be seen again.