The Seattle Seahawks spent part of May looking at backup quarterback options, and that included free agents Colin Kaepernick and Austin Davis. Kaepernick visited a few weeks ago, but nothing came of it. Head coach Pete Carroll said late last week that Kaepernick is a starting-caliber QB, but the Seahawks were holding off on anything for now. Carroll looked at it as an opportunity to keep abreast of what’s available to the team.
We have not known what kind of money Kaepernick is looking for right now, but one report suggests that is not an issue. Pro Football Talk is reporting that the question of salary is not what is keeping the two sides apart. The Seahawks are near the bottom of the league in cap space, and some have suggested that Kaepernick would want too much for the Seahawks to want to move on from Trevone Boykin and Jake Heaps.
PFT offered this about the decision:
Instead, the Seahawks have made the strategic decision not to add a player they regard as starting-caliber because they have a starter. While that could change if their starter suffers a serious injury, the reluctance of a team driven by competition to embrace a competitive option seems odd — unless the Seahawks don’t want to have an in-house option to which the Russell Wilson Resenters can point if/when he struggles during the regular season.
Wilson has his share of detractors, and when he struggles, we hear from them. However, it seems odd that the Seahawks would lack the confidence and thus make this kind of decision.
There will be plenty of chatter about conspiracies and the NFL master-minding all this. I’ve seen people suggest the NFL had the Seahawks bring him in for show in order to “prove” he has not been blackballed. While I do think there is something to be said about the reasons he has not signed, I also don’t think the NFL really needs to do something like that. Proving an organized conspiracy is not a simple task, and I doubt we hear of any smoking gun anytime soon.
Eric Davis was recently on one of the many hot take shows (I think it was on FOX Sports 1), and he suggested the comments by John Mara and comments by Jerry Jones are meant to serve as influence from the league by way of two of the most powerful owners. Even if that is true, it is going to be plenty difficult to prove without a whistle-blower or some kind of smoking gun. And I just don’t see that happening.
From a football perspective, if the Seahawks were going to sign Kaepernick before an injury forces their hand, it would have made sense to happen before the end of the offseason workout program. There are still a couple weeks left for most programs, so a signing could happen, but I suspect injury in training camp is the next best option at this point for getting Kaepernick signed somewhere.