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While watching the Bears-Packers game last night, I saw an an ad defending Colin Kaepernick and how he protested against supposed police brutality and racism by kneeling during the national anthem during games. I was surprised to see at the end the commercial was sponsored by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, formerly know as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.
It seems like a very weird choice of issue to not just weigh in on but spend a huge amount of money advertising. My concerns break down to three issues:
The commercial felt more like an attempt to make Kapernick's protest sympathetic and palatable than just a defense of his right to protest regardless. It focused on conveying that Kapernick didn't intend the protest to disrespect the military or the country. But if this is really a freedom of expression issue, it shouldn't matter!
I am skeptical the core issue here is freedom of expression, not due to the content of Kapernick's expression, but due to the time and place. It was done as part of a televised entertainment project. I can't imagine anyone who thinks that an actor has a general right to choose their own lines rather than reading a script. The NFL exercises extremely strict control over on-the-field communications across the board. Athletes get fined for wearing different colored socks to promote uncontroversial social causes if they don't have official league approval. In addition, while it's definitely plausible the protests are why no one gave Kaep another chance, it's not cut and dry either. He was not immediately fired for them and he seemed washed up on the field before he even started protesting.
I can think of other cases even just related to BLM within professional sports that are much less marginal. Cases where an athlete was explicitly fired for opinions expressed off the field. For example, Seattle Mariners catcher Steve Clevenger was suspended without pay and had his career ended explicitly for insulting BLM protesters on a private locked twitter account. Professional soccer player Aleksandr Katai was cut from the LA Galaxy because his wife insulted BLM protesters on social mediea despite the fact that he disagreed with and apologized for her comments. As far as I can tell, FIRE has never even commented on either case.
I would like there to be a non-partisan group devoted to defending freedom of expression. However, I worry there is some truth to Conquest's second law. My best guess is that FIRE chose this cause because they want to appeal to a wider audience including more left-leaning people. Will FIRE will eventually follow the ACLU in drifting so far left it can no longer serve it's mission? I'm a fan of a lot of work they did in the past and even contributed a small amount monetarily, so the possibility is troubling to me.
The idea that Kaepernick was blackballed out of the league seems like pure fanfiction to me. He was coming off his age 29 season and in the prior two years of starts, his teams went 3-16. His surface stats look OK, but he ate an enormous amount of sacks while being a checkdown machine resulting in him finishing just behind Brock Osweiler and Trevor Simian in advanced stats like QBR. His successful years in San Francisco relied heavily on his athleticism and an offense tailored to his strengths by Greg Roman, who specializes in drawing up offenses for limited, but athletic QBs (also the offensive coordinator for the Bills with Tyrod Taylor and Ravens with Lamar Jackson). At 30, his athleticism was fading.
Basically, he was already a huge liability that would be a shot in the dark gamble if someone wanted to try starting him. More realistically, he'd be employed as a backup for someone he's stylistically similar to. That's less appealing than more ordinary backups because you more or less need an offense tailored to deal with his lack of ability to run through progressions and inclination towards taking sacks rather than forcing tight window passes.
Realistically, someone would probably have done it anyway, basically viewing him as an old version of Mitchell Trubisky. Athletic QBs always get another chance, even if they kind of suck. But what was his inclination to play the role of the good veteran mentor, working hard to be ready to fill in if needed, but mostly just waiting on the bench? Would he be willing to do that? I greatly doubt it. Given that, what possible upside could come from selecting Kaepernick instead of just signing Matt Barkley and moving on with your life?
The main issue with an athletic quarterback is how good his arm is. Your QB may be able to do somersaults into the end zone but he's no good if he can't beat you with his arm if he needs to; otherwise, every play is a running play and he's just another running back. Guys like Michael Vick and Russel Wilson were and are athletic as hell, but they can also pass. Kaepernick's problem wasn't so much that he was incapable of passing, but that he didn't have the patience for it. On every pass play he would do his reads real quick and if nothing was there he'd leave the pocket and start running. And to make matters worse, he wasn't scrambling with an eye to pass—when most good athletic QBs leave the pocket, they're still looking downfield hoping something will open up. Kaepernick tucked and started looking for daylight. If he did look up again, he was completely lost and forced to check down or take a sack. As a Steeler fan (and Pitt fan), that's what's so encouraging about Kenny Pickett; he's mobile but he's always looking to pass until the play is completely blown, and even then he's not afraid to throw the ball away if there's no good running lane.
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