Growing more impatient with each passing day of NFL training camp, Colin Kaepernick apologists in the media are now pitching their "entitlement tent" in Baltimore. There, the Ravens are razor thin at the quarterback position, and these media believe the team owes Kaepernick a rich contract.
One of the lib media holding vigil for the unwanted, polarizing Colin Kaepernick is David Steele, writer for The Sporting News. Steele's headline ripped into the critics of Kaepernick's quarterbacking abilities: "Ravens' Colin Kaepernick pursuit proves quest to trash QB's ability belongs in trash".
The Ravens are only the second team to show some interest in Kaepernick -- despite his radical activism. They’re asking their fans, sponsors, current players and former player Ray Lewis what they should do. The team's owner asked people to "pray" for them. But Steele laments that they're not asking anyone if Kaepernick still has game. "Which makes you wonder exactly what all those experts around the league who talked all offseason long about Kaepernick’s ability really were talking about," Steele writes, as his blood begins to boil.
Cutting to the chase, Steele believes criticisms of Kaepernick's abilities are "easily-disproved fables," and "a not-even-subtle way to steer clear of the growing evidence that he was being blackballed for his protests."
Steele fumes that "a week hardly went by without a story or social media post with an unnamed source trashing one aspect or another of Kaepernick's game, from on-field play to desire and effort. Or, with somebody who had 'studied all of the film' detailing all the obvious flaws he’s always had, or recently developed, or never worked on."
Story after story, with thin accountability and shaky credibility, justifying on behalf of anonymous officials on various teams taking a pass on Kaepernick from the moment he made it clear he would be a free agent this offseason.
They all got blown to smithereens by the Ravens on Sunday. Most likely not on purpose, but that argument is dust in the wind now.
Steele believes that though the Ravens desperately need help at quarterback, the team is feeling out season-ticket holders and giving them "all kinds of insight into how the team was searching its soul and reaching out for guidance on whether the franchise could withstand Kaepernick’s presence. A good deal of it was patently ridiculous, borderline panicky and the textbook definition of pandering. ... But not a word of it had anything to do with whether he was good enough to play there."
Steele, the evaluator of lightning rod quarterbacks who veer hard Left, concludes: "He is." The Seattle Seahawks evidently proved that with the mere statement he has starting talent. But even that team of mouthy leftists took a pass on Kaepernick as it bid him a fond farewell and lotsa luck.
"So enough with the intentional deflection of Kaepernick’s qualifications," Steele lectures.
That’s all it ever was, a way to change the subject away from all the real-world issues embedded in Kaepernick’s decision to kneel last season. Every minute spent micro-analyzing every stat in the book and every snap on video looking for something that would pass for an excuse was a minute not spent discussing whether a team or a league could punish a player for expressing himself by way of his constitutional rights.
Or "He’s not being blackballed, he just stinks, so that’s why he's out of work while Dan Orlovsky and Luke McCown aren't."
Steele speculates that if Baltimore does not sign Kaepernick, they'll offer a veiled and complex excuse. "But it won’t be because they think he can’t play. So next time you see that angle planted somewhere, you know what it's about, why anyone tried it and what you can do with it."
Like the New York Daily News writer Shaun King who is boycotting the NFL this year over Kaepernick's ongoing free agency, Steele is just another left-stream media snowflake backing Kaepernick's activism, ignoring the disrespectful impact of his messages and demanding he is entitled to a rich pro football contract.
