Colin Kaepernick legal team to depose Jerry Jones, Robert Kraft, Bob McNair, get access to emails, texts

Free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL, claiming collusion to keep him out of the league, and things are about to get interesting. ESPN’s Adam Schefter is reporting that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and Houston Texans owner Bob McNair are among the people who will be called in for depositions. More importantly, they are being asked to turn over all cell phone records and emails in relation to the case.

Jason La Canfora followed up with his own report about other teams involved. He said a source confirmed the Baltimore Ravens, Seattle Seahawks, and Tennessee Titans are among the teams identified for emails and texts. According to La Canfora, “a search would be made for pertinent terms (for example: ‘Kaepernick,’ ‘workout,’ ‘Trump,’ ‘Jeff Nalley (Kaepernick's agent)’ and all relevant strings of information would become part of the evidence in the case.”

The NFL generally likes to avoid depositions and information requests because it opens the door for their business to end up in the public eye. The information requests are all specific to the collusion case, but there is a broad range of searching that can happen with this kind of situation.

It remains to be seen if any sort of smoking gun will emerge from this. There is a lot of talk about how all these bad quarterbacks getting signed is evidence of collusion. While it could be argued it points to a potential conspiracy against Kaepernick, it is circumstantial evidence at best. However, getting access to electronic and cell phone evidence could result in significant evidence. Kaepernick only needs to prove collusion between two teams, or between one team and the NFL. It does not require proof that every team joined in a conspiracy. They still require some kind of smoking gun, but this discovery opens the door to finding one.