Colin Kaepernick and Football: From Super Bowl QB to the Most Debated Figure in NFL History
A Kid from Turlock Who Shouldn’t Have Been Here
Colin Kaepernick was born in Milwaukee in November 1987 and placed for adoption at five weeks old. The couple who raised him, Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, were white. They’d already lost two biological sons to heart defects and had two surviving children. They moved the family from Wisconsin to Turlock, California, when Colin was four.
By eight, he was playing youth football as a defensive end and punter. By nine, he was the starting quarterback. At Pitman High School he was a legitimate three-sport star — football, basketball, baseball — and a 4.0 student. MLB scouts noticed him as a pitcher. The Chicago Cubs actually drafted him in the 43rd round of the 2009 draft. He turned it down. He wanted to play college football, and only one school offered him that chance: the University of Nevada, Reno, under coach Chris Ault.
That’s worth sitting with. One football scholarship offer. And he turned down professional baseball for it.
The Records He Set at Nevada That Still Haven’t Been Broken
Kaepernick spent four years at Nevada and rewrote the record books in ways that genuinely haven’t been replicated. He finished his college career with 10,098 passing yards and 4,112 rushing yards — the first quarterback in Division I FBS history to exceed 10,000 passing yards and 4,000 rushing yards in a single career. Nobody has done it since.
His senior season ended with a game that Nevada fans still talk about. On November 26, 2010 — senior night, the final home game — Nevada faced Boise State, which came in undefeated with a 24-game win streak dating back to the 2008 Poinsettia Bowl. Nevada won 34-31 in overtime. Head coach Chris Ault later called it the most important win in program history.
The full college career numbers: 82 passing touchdowns, 24 interceptions, 59 rushing touchdowns, 53.8% completion percentage in his freshman year rising steadily from there. He also tied Nebraska’s Eric Crouch for most career rushing touchdowns by a quarterback in FBS history. He was a 4.0 student throughout. He graduated in 2011 with a degree in business management.
The San Francisco 49ers saw enough. On April 29, 2011, they traded up with the Denver Broncos to take Kaepernick with the 36th overall pick — fourth pick of the second round.
How Kaepernick Took Alex Smith’s Job and Almost Won a Super Bowl
His first NFL season was quiet. Five pass attempts, mostly watching Alex Smith run Jim Harbaugh’s offense. Then came Week 10 of 2012. Smith took a hit against the St. Louis Rams, suffered a concussion, and Kaepernick came in. He went 11 for 17, added 66 rushing yards, and the game ended in a 24-24 tie. The next week, Kaepernick got his first NFL start against the Chicago Bears on Monday Night Football. He completed 16 of 23 passes for 246 yards and two touchdowns in a 32-7 win over a Bears defense ranked among the best in the league.
The quarterback controversy that followed was legitimate. Smith was 19-5-1 as a starter under Harbaugh, completing 70% of his passes. He hadn’t lost his job to injury in the traditional sense — he’d lost it to a player who was simply more dangerous. Kaepernick kept the starting job.
What happened next in the playoffs that January is still remarkable by any objective measure. In the divisional round against Green Bay, Kaepernick rushed for 181 yards. That is still the NFL record for most rushing yards by a quarterback in any game — regular season or playoffs — in league history. He also threw two touchdowns. The 49ers won 45-31.
The Super Bowl, played February 3, 2013, ended in a 34-31 loss to the Baltimore Ravens. Kaepernick threw for 302 yards. In the final minutes, San Francisco had first-and-goal from the seven-yard line. They didn’t score. The Ravens held.
The 2013 season brought a 12-4 record and another NFC Championship game appearance, this time a loss to the Seattle Seahawks. Kaepernick set career highs that year: 3,369 passing yards, 639 rushing yards. The 49ers fell to 8-8 the following year. When Harbaugh left after 2014, so did Kaepernick’s production — he was benched midway through 2015 in favor of Blaine Gabbert and then suffered a season-ending shoulder injury.
By 2016, he was a starter again, but the team was bad. San Francisco finished 2-14.
Career Statistics
Across 69 games from 2011 to 2016, Kaepernick finished with 12,271 passing yards, 72 passing touchdowns, 30 interceptions, and a career passer rating of 88.9. He added 2,300 rushing yards on the ground. His total of 85 touchdowns — passing and rushing combined — across six seasons includes some of the most athletically singular plays the league had seen from the quarterback position at that time.
The numbers don’t scream Hall of Fame. But the per-game production, the playoff performance, and the specific skill set — a quarterback who could throw from the pocket and outrun linebackers — put him in conversations that have outlasted his career.
Why He Knelt — What Actually Happened in August 2016
The protest didn’t begin with a knee. It began with Kaepernick sitting on the bench during the national anthem at the 49ers’ first three preseason games in August 2016. Nobody noticed for three weeks. Then, on August 26, at a home preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, a beat reporter photographed him sitting while his teammates stood. The photo circulated.
After the game, Kaepernick explained it directly: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
That summer had seen the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile — two Black men killed by police within two days of each other in July 2016 — and the subsequent killing of five Dallas police officers. The country was already raw.
The switch from sitting to kneeling came from Nate Boyer, a former Green Beret and NFL long snapper who reached out to Kaepernick after reading about the protest. Boyer suggested that kneeling — rather than sitting — was a more respectful gesture toward military veterans. Kaepernick agreed. On September 1, 2016, before a road game against the San Diego Chargers, he knelt for the first time. His 49ers teammate, safety Eric Reid, knelt beside him.
Kaepernick also announced that day he would donate $1 million to community organizations addressing social justice issues. He fulfilled that pledge.
The reaction was immediate and divided. President Barack Obama defended his constitutional right to protest. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called it a lack of respect and suggested Kaepernick leave the country. By September 11, players across the league were kneeling or raising fists. Megan Rapinoe knelt at an international soccer match. High school teams across the country followed. On October 3, Time magazine put a kneeling Kaepernick on its cover for a story on patriotism, privilege, and protest.
Free Agency, Blackballing, and the Collusion Lawsuit
In March 2017, Kaepernick opted out of his 49ers contract. He was 29 years old, had started in a Super Bowl, and by most statistical measures was better than roughly 20 quarterbacks then on NFL rosters. No team signed him.
The Baltimore Ravens came closest. According to Ray Lewis, who was involved in discussions, the signing collapsed after Kaepernick’s girlfriend posted a tweet comparing Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to a slave owner and Lewis to his slave. The Ravens denied that framing. Either way, no offer came.
By August 2017, the data site FiveThirtyEight ran the numbers and concluded plainly that no above-average quarterback had been unemployed for as long as Kaepernick that offseason. They called it extraordinary.
In October 2017, Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL, formally alleging that team owners had colluded to keep him unsigned. An arbitrator denied the NFL’s motion to dismiss in August 2018. The case moved forward.
November 2019 produced the strangest episode of the whole saga. The NFL set up a private workout for Kaepernick and invited representatives from all 32 teams. Hours before it was scheduled to begin, Kaepernick objected to a liability waiver the league asked him to sign and moved the workout from the Atlanta Falcons’ facility in Flowery Branch to a local high school. Only eight teams sent anyone to the new location. No offers followed.
In February 2019 — before the workout fiasco — Kaepernick and Eric Reid had already settled their collusion grievances with the NFL. Terms were confidential. Both sides said there would be no further comment. The NFL has never publicly acknowledged wrongdoing.
Nike, George Floyd, and the NFL’s Reversal
In September 2018, Nike made Kaepernick the face of its “Just Do It” 30th anniversary campaign. The slogan on the ad read: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The backlash was fast — videos of people burning Nike shoes spread across social media. So did Nike’s online sales, which jumped 31% in the week following the campaign launch, according to Edison Trends. The stock recovered quickly. The shoe Nike released in December 2019, the Colin Kaepernick x Nike Air Force 1, sold out.
Then George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. The nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds of video footage reached every corner of American life within days. Protests erupted in hundreds of cities. The specific injustice Kaepernick had named four years earlier — police violence against Black Americans — was now impossible to dismiss or reframe.
On June 5, 2020, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell released a video statement apologizing to players for not listening to them earlier when they tried to raise concerns about racial injustice. He did not say Kaepernick’s name in the initial statement. He later said he would welcome Kaepernick’s return to the NFL and encouraged teams to sign him. No team did.
What He Built Outside Football
Kaepernick hasn’t spent the past nine years waiting. Know Your Rights Camp, which he founded, runs free youth programs teaching young people their legal rights when interacting with law enforcement. The program has operated in cities across the United States and internationally. He started Kaepernick Publishing in 2020, specifically to amplify stories from Black and minority authors that traditional publishers have historically overlooked. He launched Ra Vision Media, a production company. He has backed several bail funds and criminal justice organizations with direct financial contributions.
In April 2026, he announced the release of his new book, “The Perilous Fight,” continuing what has become a parallel career as a writer and publisher. He also considered returning to football through flag football, with the sport set to make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
None of this was the path he planned. But it wasn’t nothing, either.
Where Things Stand in 2026
Kaepernick is 38. He hasn’t taken an NFL snap since December 2016 — nearly a decade. His partner, radio personality Nessa Diab, told TMZ in 2025 that he trains daily and still wants to play. In December 2025, when the Indianapolis Colts lost their starting quarterback Daniel Jones to a torn Achilles, Kaepernick’s name surfaced briefly in media discussions. The Colts went with rookie Riley Leonard instead.
He has declined opportunities to play in the UFL and other professional leagues. An NFL analyst predicted in early 2025 that he might join the Los Angeles Chargers’ coaching staff under Jim Harbaugh, who has spoken warmly about Kaepernick for years and even offered him a position. It hasn’t happened.
The realistic window to play NFL football has almost certainly closed. What remains open is harder to define. He still hasn’t officially retired.
What His Career Actually Means
The Washington Post noted in February 2026, when Super Bowl LX was played at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara — the same field where Kaepernick played his home games — that the most culturally significant figure connected to that stadium was entirely absent from the conversation around the game. The social issues driving American life at that moment bore a direct resemblance to what he raised in 2016. He remained unsigned. He remained invisible within the NFL’s own promotional machinery.
The Muhammad Ali comparison gets made often, and it’s not wrong. Both men were at or near their athletic peak when their careers were interrupted by a political stance. Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title and banned from boxing for three and a half years for refusing induction into the Vietnam War draft. He came back and won the title twice more. Kaepernick has not come back. Whether that’s because the NFL’s appetite for controversy is different from boxing’s, or because the political environment around his specific protest made teams unwilling to absorb the backlash, or some combination of both, is something reasonable people still argue about.
What’s harder to argue with: the protest he started in 2016 changed how American professional sports handle social issues, permanently. Athletes who spoke publicly about race and policing before 2016 did so carefully, occasionally, and usually after retirement. After Kaepernick, that calculus shifted. The league itself, through the Inspire Change initiative and various social justice commitments made after George Floyd’s death, acknowledged that players had been right to raise these issues — even while declining to bring back the player who raised them first.
Roger Goodell said in 2020 that the NFL was wrong not to listen. He said he’d welcome Kaepernick back. Teams have not called.
That’s the story. Both sides of it.
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