Colin Kaepernick Says He’s Still Better Than a ‘Good Amount’ of Current NFL Quarterbacks
After 10 years away from the NFL, Colin Kaepernick still believes that he has a lot left in the tank. While promoting his new book, The Perilous Fight, which dropped on Tuesday (Sept. 15), Kaepernick was asked how many of the current crop of NFL quarterbacks he thinks he could outrun.
“It’s tough to say because I haven’t been watching the games, but I will check the stat lines to see where quarterbacks are at,” Kaepernick told Us Weekly. “Based upon that, I think there’s a good amount.”
He went on to say that although he has no plans to give up his dedication to activism, if asked to hit the field again, he’d be ready to answer the call.
“We got the cleats by the door,” he added. “We’ll be out the door.”
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Kaepernick spent his entire career in San Francisco, culminating in an appearance in Super Bowl XLVII—and has not been signed to an active NFL roster since entering free agency that offseason.
His last NFL game was on January 1, 2017, during the final game of the 2016 regular season as the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. It was in that season that Kaepernick began protesting to raise awareness about police brutality and systemic racial injustice against Black people and communities of color in the United States.
Initially, he began his protest by remaining seated on the bench during the national anthem at the 49ers’ first three preseason games. His actions went largely unnoticed by the public until the third game on August 26, 2016.
In October 2017, Colin Kaepernick filed a grievance against the NFL, alleging owners colluded to blacklist him over his anthem protests. After an arbitrator cleared the case for trial, Kaepernick and teammate Eric Reid reached a confidential settlement with the league in February 2019, officially closing the high-stakes legal showdown.
Nearly a decade after his last snap and dedicating his life to social activism, Kaepernick’s sudden exit from the NFL left an unwritten final chapter—one marked by silent exile rather than clear closure.
“I think closure would be being back on the field and given the opportunity to continue my career unimpeded by their efforts,” he said. “I mean, outside of that, I don’t think there’s ever really closure there when your career is taken away. But what I will also say is, my mentality around it is, ‘I can’t control their actions, but I can control mine.’ I can control waking up and training every day. I can control the impact and approach that I have with the work that I’m doing outside of the NFL and from 2016 moving forward.”
“So while there may not be closure in that way, I also look at it from a perspective of, ‘I’m still going to keep moving forward and keep building and keep looking at ways that I can help advance society as we’re going,” Kaepernick added. “And I think for me, having that focus allows me to continue to move forward in ways that I think may be more difficult if I didn’t have that focus.”
Without question, Kaepernick’s off-field legacy has far eclipsed his athletic achievements, solidifying him as a defining civil rights figure of his generation. By sacrificing his prime athletic years to protest police brutality and systemic racism, Kaepernick transformed a silent pre-game gesture into a global blueprint for modern athlete-activism.
Through initiatives like the Know Your Rights Camp and millions in philanthropic giving, Kaepernick shifted his fight from symbolic protest to tangible, grassroots empowerment for Black and Brown youth. Ultimately, his willingness to risk his livelihood for social change transformed how sports, corporate America, and culture intersect around racial justice.
