One is a hero, the other a pariah. One will most likely be rewarded with a fat contract, the other will keep looking for a job that probably isn’t going to be offered.
Over their last 5 games, they had similar stats
Hero: completion % 67.4 yards 1,565 TD 7 INT 5 pass rating 96.2
Pariah: completion % 65.1 yards 1,305 TD 9 INT 2 pass rating 96.2
Despite the similarity between these players (in fact the “bad guy” has a far superior TD/INT ratio) only one of them is likely to work in the NFL. Teams needed quarterbacks during the season and free agents came and went; except for one! Who exactly are Nate Peterman and David Fales? This is a league where Joe Callahan gets to start for the Packers but the other player in this comparison cannot even get a tryout, let alone actually get on a roster. This is the same league that denying that any player has been “blackballed”.
Of course one of these people is Colin Kaepernick and the other one is Jimmy Garopollo. The 49’ers looked inept before Garopollo stepped in and became a hero in San Francisco, leading the team on a 5 game winning streak. That winning streak looks to have convinced 49’ers GM John Lynch to lay out a very substantial amount to retain Garopollo’s services.
Whilst it should also be noted in the final 6 games both of these players took snaps in Garopollo went 5-1; whereas Kaepernick went 1-5. For me, the polarization in the record isn’t enough to justify why the former 49’er hasn’t even offered a chance on a team. The Dolphins pretty much damn well dragged Jay Cutler out of retirement rather than try out an active free agent. The Texans went 1-8 after Watson went down; do they seriously expect us to believe that Kaepernick wouldn’t have offered any better than the awful quarterbacking we saw from Houston last year?
I honestly fail to see how teams will be able to justify why they wouldn’t call Kaepernick in a season where plenty of teams could have benefited from his ability. I’m not at all saying Kaepernick should be considered a top 15 Quarterback but the fact that he wasn’t even looked at stinks of a player being blackballed. How does an owner even begin to justify to a fan base that they tanked the season rather than employ Colin Kaepernick?
