Nearly a decade after his final NFL game, the former 49ers quarterback says he continues training, believes he can outperform current starters and remains ready if a team calls.
Nearly 10 years after Colin Kaepernick last took a snap in an NFL game, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback says he still wants another chance.
Kaepernick, now 38, is again talking publicly about an NFL comeback while promoting his new memoir, The Perilous Fight. He says he continues training five days a week, wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to work out and keeps his football equipment ready.
“We got the cleats by the door,” Kaepernick said when asked about the possibility of returning.
It is a striking turn back toward professional football for a player who, five years ago, used his Netflix series to draw an explicit comparison between the NFL Combine and the treatment of enslaved people.
Kaepernick says he could still beat out NFL quarterbacks
Kaepernick has not appeared in an NFL game since Jan. 1, 2017, but says he remains convinced he can play at the professional level.
Asked recently how many of the league’s current starting quarterbacks he believes he could outperform, Kaepernick said he does not regularly watch NFL games anymore but still checks quarterback statistics.
“Based upon that, I think there’s a good amount,” he said.
He also agreed when asked whether some NFL teams could use him at quarterback.
The former second-round draft pick has maintained for years that he is prepared to return if an NFL team gives him an opportunity.
According to recent reporting on Kaepernick’s continued comeback effort, he is still contacting teams and training despite approaching a full decade away from regular-season football.
Netflix series compared NFL Combine to slave auction
Kaepernick’s latest comments renew attention on one of the more controversial statements he made after leaving professional football.
In the 2021 Netflix series Colin in Black & White, which Kaepernick co-created with filmmaker Ava DuVernay, he criticized the way NFL prospects are examined at the league’s scouting combine.
“What they don’t want you to understand is what’s being established is a power dynamic,” Kaepernick said in the program.
He described teams poking, prodding and examining prospective players while searching for physical deficiencies that could affect their performance.
The scene then transitioned from Black football prospects undergoing evaluations into a dramatization showing enslaved Black men standing in shackles at an auction.
CBS News reported at the time that Kaepernick was specifically comparing the treatment of players at the NFL Combine to slavery.
DuVernay later explained that the sequence was intended to address what she called the “social control of a Black body,” rather than comparing NFL salaries to slavery.
The scene nevertheless generated widespread criticism, including from former NFL players who argued there was no reasonable comparison between voluntarily attending the combine in pursuit of a multimillion-dollar professional sports career and slavery.
From Super Bowl quarterback to nearly a decade away
Kaepernick entered the NFL when San Francisco selected him in the second round of the 2011 draft out of Nevada.
He eventually took over as the 49ers’ starting quarterback and led San Francisco to Super Bowl XLVII following the 2012 season. The 49ers lost to the Baltimore Ravens, 34-31.
Across six NFL seasons, Kaepernick completed 59.8% of his passes while throwing for 12,271 yards, 72 touchdowns and 30 interceptions.
His career took a dramatically different turn during the 2016 season when he began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality.
Kaepernick became a free agent following that season and was not signed by another team.
He subsequently accused NFL owners of colluding to keep him out of the league because of his protests. Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL in 2017, and the two sides reached a confidential settlement in 2019.
He has tried before to get back into the league
This is also not Kaepernick’s first attempted comeback.
He held a highly publicized workout in 2019 after the NFL arranged an opportunity for teams to evaluate him, although disagreements over the workout’s structure ultimately led Kaepernick to hold a separate session.
In 2022, he threw passes during the University of Michigan spring game and publicly said he was looking for an opportunity to return to an NFL roster.
No team signed him.
Years later, he is still making essentially the same pitch.
Kaepernick says he is physically prepared, still trains regularly and believes there are quarterbacks currently starting in the league whom he could outperform.
Whether any of the NFL’s 32 teams agrees enough to offer the now-38-year-old quarterback a workout remains another matter.
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