Colin Kaepernick Marks 10 Years Since Kneeling Protest, Says He Still Hasn't Watched an NFL Game

Ten years ago today, Sept. 1, 2016, Colin Kaepernick knelt beside teammate Eric Reid during the national anthem before a San Francisco 49ers preseason game against the San Diego Chargers.

According to the Times of India, Kaepernick had sat quietly on the bench during the anthem twice before, on Aug. 14 against the Houston Texans and Aug. 20 against the Denver Broncos. Almost nobody noticed because he didn't play in either game. That changed after San Francisco's third preseason game, when he told NFL reporter Steve Wyche, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color."

His words came weeks after the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two Black men whose deaths in July 2016 drew national attention, the Times of India reported. After talking with former NFL player and retired Green Beret Nate Boyer, Kaepernick switched from sitting to kneeling, a gesture Boyer suggested would be more respectful to the military, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Harry Edwards, the sociologist who advised the 49ers at the time, told the Associated Press he warned Kaepernick immediately what was coming. "You are a Black male and seen as a greater threat because of the centrality of male activities and male sports," Edwards said. "And so there's no way that there's not going to be a price to pay for this."

Kaepernick became a free agent in March 2017 and never signed with another team. That August, the Miami Dolphins signed quarterback Jay Cutler out of retirement after an injury to starter Ryan Tannehill, rather than bring in Kaepernick, according to Jingle Tree.

Kaepernick writes in his memoir that some coaches wanted him. He says then-Baltimore Ravens head coach John Harbaugh was "pushing" to sign him during the summer of 2017 but was "shut down from above." That account is Kaepernick's alone in the book; Harbaugh has not publicly confirmed it in the material reviewed here.

In October 2017, Kaepernick filed a grievance under the NFL's collective bargaining agreement, alleging owners colluded to keep him out of the league because of his protest. The NFL settled the case, reportedly before a scheduled midseason workout in November 2019, with terms that were never made public. A settlement is not a legal finding of collusion, and no arbitrator or court ever ruled on the merits of the claim.

Commissioner Roger Goodell has repeatedly rejected the idea that Kaepernick was blackballed. "Those are decisions that each individual owner has to make and their clubs, coaches, GMs," Goodell told NBC in 2020. "I've talked to a lot of our clubs about it and I've encouraged them. I'd love to see him play again."

That November 2019 workout collapsed the same day it was scheduled, when Kaepernick refused to sign a waiver he believed would sign away his employment rights and any future claims. He organized his own workout instead. Critics at the time, cited by Jingle Tree, called it a media stunt and said it proved he wasn't serious about returning.

The NFL's defenders have a real argument: 32 teams make independent personnel decisions, and no single owner or executive controls the whole league. Jingle Tree notes the NFL was also managing a ratings slide during those years that some fans and executives blamed on the anthem protests themselves, not on any coordinated blacklist. A team passing on an aging, once-injured quarterback with a specific throwing style isn't automatically evidence of a conspiracy, even if the timing looks bad.

But the private settlement, the coaches who told Kaepernick they were personally overruled, and Goodell's own admission that he lobbied clubs on Kaepernick's behalf all point to something more than 32 unrelated football decisions. Whether that something was formal collusion or informal groupthink among owners is a question the settlement's sealed terms never answered.

The league did put money behind the cause. It partnered with the Players Coalition in 2017 and has since committed more than $500 million to social justice initiatives, according to Jingle Tree. Kaepernick was never part of that group; Reid said in 2017 that Kaepernick felt sidelined by it.

Kaepernick is 38 now, a father to a 4-year-old daughter, and he tells NBC News that becoming a parent raised the stakes on his advocacy rather than lowering them. "I don't want my community to watch me and have the takeaway be that if you fight for Black folks, it's over for you," he writes in the new memoir.

He still hasn't watched an NFL game since he left the league. "I'm not gonna support an organization that one, is actively blackballing me, but two, has targeted my brothers who have been protesting as part of this as well," he told NBC News. He watches college football instead.

"The Perilous Fight" is scheduled for release Sept. 15. It will land in a league that has moved on financially and competitively, but never fully settled the argument over what actually happened to the man who started it.