Colin Kaepernick contacts Pete Carroll, Coach Second Chance. Will Seahawks give him one?
Pete Carroll wants you to know him as Coach Second Chance.
He wants his Seahawks to be known as Team Second Chance.
Will he give Colin Kaepernick a second NFL chance, to get the former Super Bowl quarterback back into the league that has blackballed him for five years?
Carroll spent nearly 10 minutes Wednesday beginning what was a Seahawks press conference to explain the trade of Russell Wilson to the Denver Broncos talking about second chances.
Now without a proven quarterback, the 70-year-old Carroll is getting a second chance to rebuild the Seahawks through free agency.
The league’s market opened Wednesday.
“Free agency in a sense is about giving guys a second chance,” Carroll said Wednesday at the team’s headquarters, “and I hope that we have been really clear to you that we believe in giving people second chances. We have fought for giving guys second chances. Heck, John and I have both been in enough situations in our personal careers where second chances have been enormous for us.
“There have been some historic second chances. Remember way back when, when we got here, we fought our butt off to get Marshawn Lynch to come here from Buffalo, give him a second opportunity to come back to life in football.”
Lynch, of course, became the soul of the Seahawks’ offense a decade ago. The punishing running back was a national phenomenon while Seattle played in consecutive Super Bowls in the 2013 and ‘14 seasons, winning the first and coming within 1 yard of winning the second won, too.
Carroll mentioned current Seahawks Jamal Adams. He mentioned Quandre Diggs, Al Woods and Darrell Taylor. He mentioned Wilson’s recent backup QB Geno Smith. And he mentioned Drew Lock. Lock is the failed former starting quarterback for Denver whom Seattle acquired last week with two other players and five draft picks from the Broncos for Wilson.
Coach Reclamation Project also could have mentioned Cliff Avril, Michael Bennett, Josh Gordon...
Then he mentioned Kaepernick.
Carroll said the quarterback exiled after kneeling at games to protest police brutality and social justice in 2016 has reached out to the Seahawks, asking for a job back in the league.
“Colin Kaepernick, I know it, so let me just put it out there: He contacted me the other day and said, ‘I would like to get a shot, I’m working out,’” Carroll said.
“He sent me some videos — and next thing I know, he’s working out with Tyler Lockett.”
That was this week. The Seahawks’ leading wide receiver was running routes in the sun on a turf field catching Kaepernick’s passes in a video clip that went viral.
“Yessir!! That man Kap is ready!!” Lockett posted on his Twitter account following their workout in what may have been Arizona. That’s where Kaepernick had been last weekend.
“I don’t know how that happened,” Carroll said of Lockett’s workout with Kaepernick.
“But does he deserve a second shot? I think he does, somewhere.”
Carroll stopped noticeably and firmly short of saying Seattle will give Kaepernick one.
“I don’t know if it’s here. I don’t know where it is,” Carroll said. “I don’t know if it’s even in football.
“I don’t know.”
Kaepernick is specifically targeting the Seahawks because, for the first time in 10 years, Seattle doesn’t have Wilson leading its offense — and because Carroll and the Seahawks were the first and only NFL team to give Kaepernick a free-agent visit in 2017. That was while national controversy continued over the QB’s kneeling during national anthems at games the season before, his final one for the San Francisco 49ers and in the NFL.
At the time Carroll said the Seahawks didn’t sign Kaepernick because he was of NFL starting-quarterback quality and Seattle already had one of those guys entrenched: Wilson.
Carroll talked to Kaepernick again in 2018 about possibly being Wilson’s number two.
But the coach and the Seahawks decided on journeyman Austin Davis to backup Wilson in 2017. Seattle general manager John Schneider, a former Packers executive, then traded with Green Bay for Brett Hundley to back up Wilson in 2018.
Davis and Hundley never did what Kaepernick has, start a Super Bowl. Or kneel during national anthems all season to protest at games.
Davis and Hundley never played for Seattle. Wilson started 165 consecutive games over 9 1/2 seasons to begin his career, and played almost every snap every year.
Yet by choosing them over Kaepernick, Carroll and the Seahawks ultimately were — and are — no different than any other of the NFL’s 32 teams. They kept Kaepernick out of football.
Carroll regretted that. He said so in the summer of 2020, while former New York Jets starter Geno Smith was Wilson’s backup.
Carroll has had his Seahawks players leaning into the nation’s social-justice and Black Lives Matter movements that spiked in 2020. That was after the death of Black man George Floyd on a Minneapolis sidewalk under the knee of a white police officer.
Seattle’s socially conscious coach knows he missed an opportunity to further Kaepernick’s—and thus blacks’ and the country’s—cause by not signing the controversial QB in 2017, and again when the Seahawks considered it before the 2018 season.
“I regret that it didn’t happen, in some fashion,” Carroll said in June 2020. “I wish we would have contributed to it, because the guy deserved to play.
“I thought, at the time, in our situation, as a backup, I just didn’t feel right, at that time. So, I had to make that football decision. It was about our team. We had our starting quarterback, all of that. And it wasn’t going to be the open, competitive situation that I like to think all of our spots are, because Russ is such a dominant figure. ...
“When I look back, I felt like we missed the opportunity.”
Now Wilson is in Denver. Does the opportunity for Kaepernick still exist?
He hasn’t played in five seasons. He’s 34, a year older than Wilson.
Carroll and Schneider professed their belief in the 25-year-old Lock Wednesday. They said the Seahawks loved him in the 2019 draft when the prototypical, 6-foot-4, big-armed passer was coming out of the University of Missourt. Carroll insisted the Seahawks aren’t rebuilding but reforming with Lock currently on the inside track to be Seattle’s quarterback, not Wilson.
Yet a tryout for Kaepernick with the Seahawks wouldn’t exactly crush Lock’s chances of replacing Wilson in Seattle. It would also get Kaepernick back on the NFL’s radar — at that of one team in the upper left of the league, anyway.
Wednesday, Carroll didn’t want to commit to even a tryout.
“People get a second opportunity at their lifetime opportunities, and they can make the most of it if they are ready for it,” Carroll said.
“I don’t mean to send out any mixed messages about that, but I want you to understand how serious this is.
“It’s second-chance time.”
Is it?
This story was originally published March 17, 2022 at 12:57 PM.
