Colin Kaepernick turned heads on Thursday, when he posted a video to social media in which he was seen working on his quarterback rollout on a practice field.
Kaepernick captioned the post, "still working."
ESPN's Adam Schefter later reported that the former 49ers star is "in the best shape of his life," and "still wants to play," citing an unnamed source.
Now 34, Kaepernick has been out of the league for five seasons, and has yet to latch on with a new team despite publicly maintaining his interest and even partaking in a league-arranged workout for at least a few teams.
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With each passing year, there is growing skepticism Kaepernick will return to gridiron, and Thursday's post prompted at least one prominent NFL writer, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, to declare that "the door is closed" on the football star turned civil rights activist.
It’s over for Colin Kaepernick. There’s no way that any team will sign him at this point, not after he has gone half of a decade without playing football of any kind.
Florio continued:
Is it wrong that he was frozen out for so many years? Yes. Were some in the media complicit in spreading bullshit narratives that allowed teams to justify ignoring him? Absolutely. Regardless, five years removed from his decision to opt out of the last year of his 49ers contract — at a time when the 49ers otherwise would have cut him — it’s over. It’s done. The door has been closed in his face for five years. It’s not opening now.
Florio is probably right, as a half-decade out of professional football is literally longer than the average NFL player's career.
Still, the quarterback pool seems to be as shallow as it's ever been, and with the league's recent emphasis on protecting players at the game's most important position, several ageless wonders have extended their careers well into their late 30s and even into their 40s.
Meanwhile the Pittsburgh Steelers recently struck a decisive blow against the league's apparent tendency to blackball those who dare to publicly challenge its unfair practices, when they hired Brian Flores as a defensive assistant despite his ongoing racial discrimination lawsuit.
So, perhaps the Steelers or another team will feel emboldened to act accordingly on Kaepernick.
Recent history suggests it's unlikely, for several reasons, but the Flores hire, albeit at a position for which he was grossly overqualified, might indicate the tide is turning.
Florio has been wrong on more than one occasion. Let's hope he's wrong on this one as well.
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