In October, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL. He and his lawyer argue that team owners are colluding to keep Kaepernick out of the league. It’s a coordinated effort, the grievance alleges, to punish a player who protested performances of the national anthem throughout the 2016 season.
In a statement, Mark Geragos, Kaepernick’s lawyer, said, “Protecting all athletes from such collusive conduct is what compelled Mr. Kaepernick to file his grievance…Colin Kaepernick’s goal has always been, and remains, to simply be treated fairly by the league he performed at the highest level for and to return to the football playing field.”
In order to win the case, NFL team owners will have to convincingly prove that Kaepernick simply doesn’t belong on an NFL roster due to his abilities (or, more appropriately, lack thereof). Their argument will be: we don’t need Colin Kaepernick.
In somewhat related news, here are a few quarterback stat lines from Sunday’s early slate of games. Evidence, if you will, of the fact that these players are on NFL rosters.
Jay Cutler: 6-12, 83 yards. 1 touchdown, 3 interceptions.
Brett Hundley: 21-36, 239 yards. 0 touchdowns, 3 interceptions, 1 fumble, 0 points scored.
DeShone Kizer: 16-32, 179 yards. 1 touchdown, 2 interceptions, 3 fumbles.
Eli Manning: 19-35, 205 yards. 0 touchdowns. (Including overtime.)
Alex Smith: 27-40, 230 yards. 0 touchdowns, 2 interceptions. (Including overtime.)
Surely going unmentioned by the aggrieved party will be the quarterback statistics from Sunday’s inexplicable Blaine Gabbert-Tom Savage shootout in Houston. Theoretical physicists, however, will spend decades studying the game tape, struggling to explain what exactly happened there.
