Colin Kaepernick says he is still training for an NFL comeback, even though he also says he is not watching the league’s games — and even though he once compared the league’s pre-draft process to slavery.
The 38-year-old former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, who has not appeared in an NFL game since the 2016 season, told Us Weekly that he remains ready for an opportunity. “We got the cleats by the door,” Kaepernick said. “We’ll be out the door.”
According to Breitbart News, which first reported the remarks, Kaepernick also claims he stacks up well against a significant share of the league’s current quarterbacks.
“It’s tough to say because I haven’t been watching the games, but I will check the stat lines to see where quarterbacks are at,” Kaepernick said. “Based on that, I think there’s a good amount.”
The admission that he is not watching games sits awkwardly alongside his stated goal of returning to the field. It is also, as Breitbart noted, a curious position for someone who has argued that the NFL operates like a form of modern slavery.
The Netflix monologue that still follows him
Kaepernick’s most pointed critique of the league came during the 2021 debut of his Netflix series, Colin in Black & White. In a monologue, he described the NFL Combine’s height-and-weight measurement process while the program displayed images of 19th-century slave auctions.
“Coaches will tell you they’re looking for warriors, killers, beasts,” Kaepernick said in that segment. “They say they want you to be an animal out there. And you wanna give them that. … What they don’t want you to understand is that what’s being established is a power dynamic.”
He continued: “Before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod, and examine you, searching for any defect that might affect your performance. No boundary respected, no dignity left intact.”
That direct linkage between professional football and the darkest chapter of American history is the backdrop against which his continued interest in playing is now being measured. Critics have long pointed to the apparent contradiction: a player who describes the league as an exploitative power structure while simultaneously campaigning for a roster spot inside it.
A career frozen since 2016
Kaepernick, who began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to protest racial injustice and police brutality, has not played since that season. He opted out of his contract with San Francisco in early 2017 and has not been signed by another team since.
He and his supporters have argued that his absence from the league amounts to a coordinated blackballing tied to his protests. Teams have generally declined to discuss him publicly, and no club has signed him despite periodic workouts and public statements of interest over the years.
Over that stretch, Kaepernick has become a cultural and commercial figure as much as a football one, with endorsement deals, a publishing imprint and the Netflix series. Breitbart’s account characterized that enterprise bluntly, describing what it called a thriving effort built on the assertion that he is being blocked from playing — a framing his defenders would reject as a cynical read of a genuine grievance.
The age and the roster math
At 38, Kaepernick would be among the oldest quarterbacks in the league if he were signed. Only a handful of passers have taken meaningful snaps at that age in recent seasons, and teams typically reserve those roster spots for entrenched starters or veteran backups already familiar with a system.
His assertion that he is better than “a good amount” of current NFL quarterbacks rests, by his own description, on box-score review rather than game film or live observation. That is a thin basis for evaluation by the standards teams use, though his supporters would note that he has never been given a genuine opportunity to demonstrate otherwise in a camp or preseason setting.
Whether any team entertains the idea remains speculative. What is not in dispute is that Kaepernick continues to say he wants the chance — and that the league he wants back into is one he has publicly described in terms of ownership and coercion.
That tension, more than any stat line, is the story that keeps following him.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2026/09/18/video-colin-kaepernick-who-believes-the-nfl-is-akin-to-slavery-still-preparing-in-hopes-of-playing/