Colin Kaepernick Twitter

Colin Kaepernick is all over Twitter, and it’s because Tom Brady is in the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Protected tweets, but the List comes for all, @peanutpollino. San Francisco 49ers' Colin Kaepernick, right, and Eric Reid protest during the national anthem before an NFL game against the Carolina Panthers on Sept. 18, 2016, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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Twitter explains why Colin Kaepernick, ‘one of the greatest quarterbacks of our generation,’ is trending Posted at 9:05 pm on January 25, 2021 by Brett T.

Massachusetts congressman Joe Kennedy III made an excellent point Tuesday on Twitter. He asked the NFL to apologize to quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and called for the New England Patriots to sign him.

Kaepernick has been out of the league since 2016. He was the leader of the national anthem protests, which were an effort to start a conversation about racial injustice and police brutality in America. The result seemed to be that NFL owners blackballed him from the league. In response to Kaepernick’s protests, the NFL suggested in the rulebook that players stand during the anthem.

With the death of George Floyd, the conversation about racial injustice has been ubiquitous. It’s time for the NFL to end their holdout with Kaepernick. As Kennedy and The Boston Globe’s Chad Finn pointed out, the Patriots are indeed a good match for the 32-year-old quarterback.

The NFL should apologize to Colin Kaepernick and the Patriots should sign him.

— Rep. Joe Kennedy III (@RepJoeKennedy) June 9, 2020https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Video: Why the Patriots should sign Colin Kaepernick (SMG)

Kaepernick finished the 2016 season with 2,241 passing yards, 16 touchdowns and four interceptions with a 58% completion rate in 12 appearances. The 49ers also went 1-11 in games he started. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t so ugly that the NFL should be ignoring him entirely. Brian Hoyer, who is slated to work as the Patriots’ backup, has lost his last 10 starts. Kaepernick has Super Bowl experience. His ability to protect the football should be a quality that Bill Belichick admires. Kaepernick may not be quite as mobile as he once was, but he’s probably on par with the Patriots’ projected starter, Jarrett Stidham.

And that’s another good reason why New England should check out Kaepernick. There are plenty of parallels between what Kaepernick did in the NFL and what Stidham projects to do. If Stidham’s projection doesn’t meet reality, then the Patriots could turn to Kaepernick as the replacement starter without having to change their offense in a big way.

Yes, Kaepernick’s press conferences will likely stray beyond the topics of football. That’s OK. In fact, judging from the state of our nation, that’s more important than ever. New England operated functionally amid the media mania which came with Tim Tebow, Josh Gordon and Antonio Brown. The Patriots are no strangers to drawing international attention — they’re built to handle the increased coverage which might come with signing Kaepernick.

The only downside for New England is that they may be looking at a shortened training camp and preseason, which will hinder the readiness of whichever quarterback wins the starting job. If they’re splitting starting reps among three quarterbacks, then they may have even more issues with getting the top quarterback up to speed. But Belichick has dealt with much bigger problems than having too many talented arms at quarterback. That seems like a decent problem to have. It worked out just fine in 2016, when the Patriots rostered Tom Brady, Jimmy Garoppolo and Jacoby Brissett.

Belichick has insisted throughout his career that he wants nothing more than to do what’s best for the team. It’s easy to see why adding Kaepernick as a source of competition for Stidham and Hoyer is a decision that falls in line with that best-for-the-team philosophy.

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This item isn’t about the possibility of Colin Kaepernick returning to the NFL. He won’t be. The NFL and its teams successfully have run out the clock in that regard; his shunning has lasted long enough that it now makes no sense at all for anyone to give him a chance to return to the league.

But Kaepernick has relevance the morning after the guilty verdict entered against Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. Kaepernick has relevance because the point he made in August 2016 should be heard and heeded.

“There is police brutality,” Kaepernick said days after he was first spotted sitting during the national anthem. “People of color have been targeted by police. So that’s a large part of it. And they’re government officials. They’re put in place by the government so that’s something that this country has to change. There’s things we can do to hold them more accountable, make those standards higher.

Colin Kaepernick Twitter Comments 4th Of July

“You have people that practice law and our lawyers and go to school for eight years, but you can become a cop in six months and don’t have to have the same amount of training as a cosmetologist. That’s insane. Someone that’s holding a curling iron has more education and more training than people that have a gun and are going out on the street to protect us.”

He was right, at least as it relates to California. Police officers there must attend (either before being hired or upon hire) an 888-hour Basic Police Academy, which requires roughly six months to complete. Cosmetologists in California have a 1,600-hour training requirement before they can even take the test required to secure a license.

Licensed police officers carry a license to kill. And while the Chauvin verdict shows that there can and will be accountability, it can’t undo the damage done when someone accidentally or deliberately misuses his or her tools and takes the life of a citizen who didn’t deserve to die.

Colin Kaepernick Twitter Comments About Police

Apart from the various forms and fashions of systemic racism that still deprive so many of the rights guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the barrier to having a license to kill should be higher. The educational requirements should be more demanding. The policing of the police by the police should be more exacting.

Colin Kaepernick Twitter Comments

Maybe those jobs in law enforcement also should be more financially rewarding. That would attract a broader pool of applicants, making it easier to turn away anyone who at any time shows any reason to not be trusted with a license to kill, reserving those powers only to those who meet standards that should apply to a profession that should be far better suited to weeding out those who would behave unprofessionally, or worse.