KAEPERNICK MAY FIND MATCH WITH JAGUARS
Regardless of how Chad Henne and Blake Bortles performed in Thursday night’s pre-season game against Carolina, Colin Kaepernick has emerged as a potential quarterbacking option for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Unless, that is, head of football operations Tom Coughlin or head coach Doug Marrone objects.
Jags owner Shad Khan said Thursday night on the Jaguars Radio Network that if his football people were to recommend signing Kaepernick to help lift the club out of its decade of quarterbacking misery, he’d be “absolutely” OK with it.
The radio network’s game day co-host, Mike Dempsey, tweeted Thursday night that although Khan said he “would not have done what” Kaepernick did to protest how Americans of colour are generally mistreated — that is, by refusing to stand during the national anthem of a preseason game last season — Khan “respected his right as an American to express himself.”
Then the owner “reiterated that he was open to anything his football people suggested to make the Jaguars better,” Dempsey tweeted. Interesting. Kaepernick has been a free agent since opting out of his contract in March, after playing his first six NFL seasons with the San Francisco 49ers.
The NFL world remains fractured over the perceived chief reason for Kaepernick’s continuing unemployment. Some insist his eroding effectiveness since leading the Niners to within five yards of a Super Bowl championship in 2012 is primarily to blame.
Others insist it’s an orchestrated railroading — a deliberate, shared intention by NFL owners and top football people to keep the PR-toxic player out of the league, even as a backup.
We learned Thursday that at least one outspoken NFL player of colour does not subscribe to the railroading theory.
Buffalo running back LeSean (Shady) McCoy told Bills beat writers that the 29-year-old Kaepernick simply is not a good enough player anymore to be worth such a roster “distraction.”
“It’s a lot more than just, ‘He’s not on the team because he doesn’t want to stand for the national anthem,’” McCoy said, per ESPN.com’s Mike Rodak. “That may have something to do with it, but I think also it has a lot to do with his play. I’m sure a lot of teams wouldn’t want him as their starting quarterback. The chaos that comes along with it, it’s a lot.”
NEWTON PLAYS: Cam Newton played in his first pre-season game of 2017 against the Jags, capping the Panthers’ opening possession with a nine-yard touchdown throw to receiver Kelvin Benjamin on a slant. Newton was 2-for-2 on the run-centric drive. The other completion was a 12-yarder to rookie running back Christian McCaffrey.
Chad Henne started in place of demoted Blake Bortles at QB for the Jaguars. His first two dropbacks went like this: completion for one yard, then a sack.
ABOUT TIME!: Former Green Bay Packers great Jerry Kramer might finally get into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
On Thursday he and ex-Houston Oilers linebacker Robert Brazile were named as two senior finalists for the 2018 Hall of Fame class.
Kramer or Brazile must receive 80 per cent affirmation from the 48-member Hall of Fame selection committee when it sits down to vote the day before this season’s Super Bowl.
Kramer is remembered as one of the most effective interior offensive linemen in the NFL’s 98-season history. He starred for the Packers from 1958-68.
A reason for Kramer’s exclusion is that those Vince Lombardi-era Green Bay juggernauts were loaded with superstars. Kramer kept getting bypassed for teammates at more glamorous positions.
He was told time and again his time eventually would come. It didn’t. Voters apparently felt 11 Hall of Famers from that Packers era were enough.
Hopefully that decades-long wrong will be righted come the first Saturday in February.