Right now, the Las Vegas Raiders have four quarterbacks on their depth chart — Chase Garbers, Jarret Stidham, Nick Mullens, and starter Derek Carr. This may be one reason the team recently worked out Colin Kaepernick, becoming the first NFL team to do so since Kaepernick found himself out of the league after the 2016 season — more than anything, because the NFL found his protests and activism against police brutality to be distasteful enough to give him a “soft” ban from the league.
Carr, the team’s entrenched star at the position, would see no threat from Kaepernick if the Raiders signed him. In fact, Carr is all in on the idea.
“I don’t want to speak for everybody in that kind of sense — I don’t want someone mad at me for saying, ‘I think it would be great,’ — but I know him and I would get along great,” Carr said on Tuesday, following the Raiders’ first mandatory minicamp practice, per ESPN’s Paul Gutierrez. “I know we have in the past, and I think we would again. I think for the most part, I think he’d get along great with our guys.”
Carr and Kaepernick are old rivals from the Western Athletic Conference — Carr played for Fresno State from 2009 through 2013, and Kaepernick played for Nevada from 2007 through 2010.
“I remember our days back then, and just watching him and what he did in college and getting to know him and talking to him on the phone,” Carr said. “I’ve told you guys, I’ve loved my time with him. I think he’s a great guy. He’s been great to be around. I’ve enjoyed being around him, talking with him, competing against him.”
Carr also said that he did not meet with Kaepernick during the May 25 workout — “I think they did it in the afternoon, and I was already on the golf course with my two older boys.” — but he has spoken with his older brother David, who was on the 49ers’roster with Kaepernick in 2011.
“He’s like, ‘I love Colin, he’s awesome,'”
Head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler have the blessing of team owner Mark Davis, should they choose to make the move. And this is exactly the kind of signing Al Davis, Mark’s late father, would have consummated in a hot minute, if only to aggravate the rest of the NFL.
#Raiders owner Mark Davis last month: “I believe in Colin Kaepernick. He deserves every chance in the world to become a quarterback in the National Football League. I still stand by it. If our coaches and general manager want to bring him in, I would welcome him with open arms."
— Ari Meirov (@MySportsUpdate) May 25, 2022
“[We’ve] brought in tons of people for workouts,” McDaniels said on May 26. “And if there’s an opportunity to improve the team, we said it from day one that we would look at every opportunity. He’s not the first player that we looked at, and not the last one. So, there’s going to be a lot of people that are going to come in and out of this building and have an opportunity to make an impression. And like I said, the evaluations we make are kind of private for us. If we make a decision to add somebody to the team, then we’ll do it.”
Kaepernick settled his collusion grievance with the NFL in February, 2019. Outside of a meeting with the Seattle Seahawks years ago, and a sham workout put on by the league as more of a dog-and-pony show than anything else in November, 2019, opportunities have been scarce for the former second-round pick.
Perhaps the Raiders, the NFL’s ultimate renegade franchise, would be willing to change that.
