Seahawks personnel man didn’t follow Colin Kaepernick to his changed NFL workout
The one team to have Colin Kaepernick in for a visit since he became a free agent almost four years ago did not follow him to his latest workout.
That is, the tryout that turned into a fiasco.
The Seahawks and about 16 other teams did not follow Kaepernick across the Atlanta area when he changed the time and place of his NFL-arranged workout Saturday.
Seattle coach Pete Carroll, who had Kaepernick in for a visit in 2017, said he was “disappointed” at what became of the tryout that really wasn’t—and perhaps never was truly going to be.
The Seahawks sent a member of their player-personnel department to Atlanta for what the league advertised as a one-of-its-kind tryout for Kaepernick open to all teams Saturday. The NFL set it up to take place at the Falcons’ team facility in suburban Flowery Branch.
Then Kaepernick and his representatives did not get the league to agree to having media members admitted to watch, film and report on the workout. Kaepernick also balked at the waiver the NFL wanted the former San Francisco 49ers Super Bowl quarterback to sign before performing. They felt it was all a set-up, a league-orchestrated PR show that did not benefit Kaepernick.
So, an hour before it was supposed to begin at Falcons headquarters, Kaepernick moved the tryout onto his terms. He and his camp went 60 miles away, to a high school field in the Atlanta area. They had his workout there instead, and allowed anyone to watch.
Fewer did.
The change and the hours delay into Saturday afternoon led to the Seahawks and many of the 25 teams originally planning to attend Kaepernick’s workout to miss it.
At least they say that’s why they missed it.
“Yeah. The time frame, when we got the heads up, we couldn’t get it pulled together,” Carroll said. “We wanted to.”
Only seven or eight teams showed up, depending upon whether you believe the NFL’s reported word or other reports from Saturday. Those teams that did watch the tryout included the Lions, Chiefs, Jets, Eagles, 49ers, Titans and Redskins.
Apparently those teams have more flexible travel agencies that all the others.
The whole event, from creation out of nowhere to changed out of nowhere, on both dies, was a debacle from start through finish. To be fair, it’s easy to see why the Seahawks’ man who had flown to Atlanta or anyone else would throw up his hands and walk away from it all on Saturday.
Nevertheless, Carroll said he and his Seahawks are still looking at Kaepernick, as they do all available free agents.
“I’m disappointed. We had planned to be at that workout,” Carroll said. “It got changed around and we couldn’t work with it. Unfortunately, we sent somebody but couldn’t stay with the changes that happened. We missed it.
“We were real curious. I was real curious to see how the workout went.
“Just competing as always.”
By Monday, his first work day back from the Seahawks’ bye week, Carroll had seen the video of Kaepernick’s workout sent to all NFL teams.
“We’re looking at everything, always. I’ve seen some of it so far,” Carroll said.
When Kaepernick’s kneeling during national anthems at games in 2016 was peaking in national controversy, before the 2017 season, Carroll and the Seahawks had the quarterback in for a free-agent visit. Yet they never worked him out on a field.
No one else has, either, in the last three years and 11 months since he became a free agent.
And the league’s blackballing of the now-32-year-old Kaepernick continues past its third year.
Carroll said at the time the Seahawks didn’t sign Kaepernick in 2017 it was because he would not be the starter for the Seahawks that they—and assuredly he—think he should be in the NFL. The Seahawks already had a starting quarterback: Super Bowl-winning Russell Wilson.
Of course, the Seahawks also had Wilson before they invited Kaepernick for that 2017 visit.
“Colin’s been a fantastic football player. And he’s going to continue to be,” Carroll said June 2, 2017, a week after Kaepernick visited with the Seahawks. “This time, we didn’t do anything with it. But we know where he is and who he is, and we had a chance to understand him much more so.
“He’s a starter in this league, you know. And we have a starter.
“But he’s a starter in this league, and I can’t imagine somebody won’t give him a chance to play.”
Two and a half years and a kneeling controversy that involved President Donald Trump later, still no NFL team has given Kaepernick that chance to play.
“If teams want to see him, they will ask to work him out,” Kapernick’s agent, Jeff Nalley, said Saturday after Saturday’s tryout that really wasn’t in the Atlanta area.
“No team asked for this workout.”
Nalley told reporters in Atlanta he feared “an ulterior motive” behind the NFL’s offer to stage an unprecedented, combine-style workout for one player. The league gave Kaepernick two hours last week to accept or reject the offer. The NFL turned down Kaepernick’s request to have the workout on a Tuesday. That’s the normal day off the field for teams between Sunday games.
Had it been on a Tuesday, true team decision-makers—coaches and general managers, not “personnel men”—would have been far more likely to attend rather than on a Saturday, a day before NFL games.
Many believe the NFL staged the workout to protect itself against any possible legal claim Kaepernick may make: that the league did not give him a true chance for employment after his protesting for social equality and police reform ended when he and the 49ers mutally agreed to part after the 2016 season.
This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 7:23 AM.
