‘Football reasons’ don’t hold water
NFL loves ‘system’ quarterbacks, where ‘system’ means ‘not speaking out about issues’
The following column will be mostly about Colin Kaepernick, so a word of warning. If it will cause you great consternation to read about him, if you sat in a darkened room last fall instead of watching NFL football because some players had the utter gall to draw attention to a serious social issue, if merely seeing the name makes you ball up your fists and mutter about patriotism and 9/11 and respecting the flag, I urge you to move along. There are other stories nearby. Several of them will stick to sports.
Now, for the rest of us: Once more into the breach.
With September here, there have been few developments on the Kaepernick from other than that, as the weeks have passed, the needle on whether the former San Francisco 49er would get a job in the NFL this offseason has moved from “maybe” to “unlikely” to “hard no.”
But, on Thursday, published online a piece in which four NFL executives were anonymously quoted explaining that there was no collusion to prevent Kaepernick from being hired. Writer Albert Breer, one of the more consistent voices insisting all summer that Kaepernick was not hired for football reasons, found a few people to tell him just that. Anonymously.
They said he was a “system” quarterback, that he wouldn’t make sense as a backup because he would require too many adjustments to come in seamlessly as a replacement, that he was successful with the Niners only because they modelled the offence around him.
“I don’t like the guy as a player,” Breer quoted one executive as saying. “I don’t think he can play.” Well, then. This line of argument comes up a lot when dipping one’s toe into the murky Kaepernick waters: That he’s a poor quarterback, or at least poor enough that teams aren’t willing to take a chance on him given how mad he makes the Make America Great Again crowd.
And this is where we have to note that there are 32 teams in the NFL, and at any given time half of them are getting questionable quarterback play from their starters, never mind the accomplishments of the guys two and three deep on their rosters at that position. The NFL being the meat grinder it is, it will take a month, tops, for several teams to have lost a quarterback to injury, or to generally awful play, and they will switch instead to someone who is raw and unproven, or old and proven to be mediocre at best. It’s this standard to which Kaepernick should be compared, not Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady.
Conveniently, there are ways to objectively measure such things. In a league that stresses taking care of the ball, Kaepernick threw four interceptions last season in 12 games (against 16 touchdowns.) He was intercepted on 1.2 per cent of his pass attempts, sixth-best in the NFL, just ahead of Matt Ryan. His passer rating of 90.7 was in the midrange of NFL starters, although even that was impressive on an awful 49ers team that was largely bereft of offensive weapons. It’s also a solid 20 points higher than the ratings of the quarterbacks presently started to play for teams like the Jets, Browns and Jaguars. The idea that all the NFL rosters are filled out with quarterbacks who are better at the skills required than Kaepernick is simply nonsense. Over his five seasons of mostly full-time work, the 29-year-old has a career rating of 88.9. That is 17th ALL TIME. Sorry for yelling. Kaepernick’s career rating is better than those of Dan Marino, Brett Favre, and Troy Aikman. Also, John Elway and Warren Moon. And Dan Fouts. Phil Simms, Joe Theismann. I’ll stop now. Jim Kelly and Johnny Unitas. OK, now.
Passing offences have changed, of course, and a rating isn’t everything, but it certainly shows that Kaepernick is not, as his detractors often claim, all kinds of incompetent. There will soon be plenty of that on display at the quarterback position, once this NFL season gets rolling. What Kaepernick is, is controversial. The Baltimore Ravens at least admitted as much when they canvassed fans and sponsors while considering signing Kaepernick, before settling on Ryan Mallett (career rating 64.9) and Thaddeus Lewis (hasn’t played since 2013) to back up Joe Flacco and his wonky back. NFL teams and owners, for all their wealth and power, are weirdly conformist. They would rather just sign a random nobody than someone like Kaepernick, whose upside is demonstrably better than anyone else on their roster, because he might draw undue attention. This is now the Buffalo Bills end up with T.J. Yates (six career touchdown passes) backing up Tyrod Taylor, plus rookie Nathan Peterman (Note: An actual person.) Just this week they signed Keith Wenning, now on his fourth NFL team. He has never attempted a pass.
No doubt he was hired for football reasons, though.