With the NFL's quarterback injury toll mounting, the volume on media calls for Colin Kaepernick's return to the NFL has risen to a deafening roar this week. His apologists always call for NFL teams to sign him when a quarterback goes down with an injury, but they've really ratcheted up the anger and intensity in the past couple days.
USA Today's Nancy Armour and ESPN First Take's Max Kellerman top the list of shrill media bludgeoning the NFL for declining to restore the anti-American Kaepernick's pro football career.
"Spiteful and stupid is no way to go through an NFL season, especially when fans are told time and again that teams/owners/general managers will do whatever it takes to win," Armour writes. History will have the final word on "that small-minded and hateful way of thinking" that's keeping Kaepernick out of the league.
"Losing a quarterback to injury is a bad break. Ignoring Kaepernick is bad management, and you deserve every loss that's coming your way," the seething Armour writes.
On First Take, ESPN's Kellerman picks up where Armour leaves off:
"The best way for Colin Kaepernick to get back in the league is if the media and Nancy Armour and people in her position, and you and me and others in our position to constantly keep the pressure on the league, to keep this in front of the news as long as — any time a quarterback goes down, any time this issue is raised — if even tangentially. To bring up the point 'why isn't Colin Kaepernick in the league?'
"... He was called, by 'Jaws' [former Eagles' QB Ron Jaworski] potentially the best (quarterback) who ever lived! ... by people who really knew what they were looking at. ... I've been told by his camp that he has reached out to every team that needs a quarterback. That he is willing to come in and work, that he's open to all options and roles on ... any ... team! ... You know what the irony is, Stephen A. [Smith, of First Take]? Metaphorically, they want him to kneel. They want him to stand, but only because, metaphorically, he'd actually be kneeling, and that's what they really want!"
First Take's Stephen A. Smith followed, saying, "The president of the United States ... has turned around and even he said publicly, 'I wouldn't mind seeing Colin Kaepernick back into the league' ... To me, the NFL has no excuse, more than at any other time since this whole ordeal went down, to not insist publicly that Colin Kaepernick should be given a chance. The league should be able to stand up and say that ..."
There's plenty of heat about Kaepernick spewing over at The Nation magazine, too. Sports Editor Dave Zirin says Kaepernick is in "political exile."
"By signing Kaepernick, the NFL could close the book on a true instance of 'cancel culture,' of denying Kaepernick his livelihood, because he dared stand up to racist police violence," Zirin rails. "The nature of Kaepernick’s exile is so egregious that Martin Luther King III called for a boycott this week against the NFL until Kaepernick is signed."
As The Hill and TMZ Sports reported, MLK III said, “What would change it overnight is if the public decided, ‘Okay, we’re not going to watch.’ The industry did blackball him, which is not good. He certainly is one of the most talented quarterbacks even today, probably.”
Zirin accuses the "deeply right-wing NFL ownership" of sacrificing winning in order to punish Kaepernick for using the league's platform to protest racism and police violence.
Finally, the Los Angeles Times' Chuck Schilken ran through the growing list of injured NFL quarterbacks and sarcastically said: "Colin Kaepernick is ‘actively interested’ in playing. Too bad no one needs a QB ..."
