When the NFL, via commissioner Roger Goodell, issued a statement acknowledging that it was wrong not to listen to player protest around racism and police brutality, the thoughts of the world turned to one man. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been an NFL outcast since the end of the 2016 season, one that he spent kneeling in protest.
There is no doubt that his return would provide a powerful statement, but what does his final season in San Francisco tell us about his ability to contribute to a team after four years away from the field?
Thursday, September 1st, 2016. It was the final game of the pre-season, and the 49ers were the visitors in Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego. As the “Star-Spangled Banner” rang out across the summer night sky, Kaepernick took a knee on the 49ers sideline in silent protest against police brutality towards black people in the United States.
It wasn’t the first time that Kaepernick had protested. In the previous pre-season games, he’d remained seated while all around him rose for the anthem. The taking of the knee, however, became the hallmark of his career as he continued to protest throughout the 2016 season.
It became a symbol of controversy, of misunderstanding, and eventually, it led to his downfall in the NFL.
Although teams expressed interest in Kaepernick’s services, notably the Baltimore Ravens and Seattle Seahawks in 2017, his protest and public opinion that surrounded it appeared to be a hindrance to a return to the NFL. There has long been held a belief that he was being “blackballed” by the league, and the primary factor in his unemployment was his reputation off the field, not his play on the field.
The NFL’s statement seemingly opens the way for a return to the league, and Seahawks’ head coach Pete Carroll said this week that he regrets not signing Kaepernick in 2017. The only question that remains is to whether his play can justify a spot on a 53 man roster for the 2020 season.
The 49ers found a special talent in Colin Kaepernick
There can be no denying that Kaepernick was once a special talent.
He set the college football world alight at Nevada, throwing for over 10,000 yards and rushing for over 4,000 yards, showcasing athletic ability as a dual-threat quarterback that would revolutionize the position in the NFL. He combined elite size and speed with great explosion and agility to score a 9.85 Relative Athletic Score (RAS), as demonstrated in the image below.
RAS isn’t usually an indicator of quarterback success. For Kaepernick and the 49ers, however, his rare athletic ability allowed them to utilize designed quarterback runs or purely evade pressure and scramble for yardage to devastating effect.
Kaepernick’s ability as a dual-threat quarterback allowed him to win the 49ers starting job over Alex Smith during the 2012 season. He led them to the Super Bowl that year, narrowly losing to the Ravens, and then to an NFC Championship game in 2013, this time coming up short against the Seahawks.
Related | The bottom five teams with the lowest RAS grades since 2001
Over his career, he racked up 2300 rushing yards on 375 carries. It gives him an impressive 6.1 yards per carry, a figure that would be incredible even for the NFL’s top running backs. Add in 12,271 passing yards, with a 72 touchdown to 30 interceptions ratio, and it begs the question of how he could remain unsigned for so long.
It’s easy to forget that Kaepernick and the 49ers were already falling out of love with each other before his anthem protests. Kaepernick had lost the starting job to Blaine Gabbert during the 2015 season before being placed on injured reserve.
Kaepernick started his final season in the NFL as the backup to Gabbert. Although he finished the year as the starter, his play and production hardly produced a clear answer to who was the better option at quarterback for the 49ers in 2016.
OSM analysis of Kaepernick’s final season for the 49ers
Pro Football Network’s Offensive Share Metric (OSM) shows that Gabbert contributed more to the 49ers offense than Kaepernick in 2016. OSM uses several factors to show how an individual player contributes to the team’s offense, removing factors that they have no influence over.
It is worth noting that OSM grades quarterbacks only on their primary function of passing the ball. As such, once you take away Kaepernick’s athletic ability as a quarterback who can run the ball, you’re left with what he can do throwing the football.
Those figures are pretty damning for 2016.
Kaepernick was the lowest graded quarterback of 39 qualifying players with an overall OSM grade of 17.54. It would be easy to point to the 49ers dumpster fire of an offense as to why Kaepernick wasn’t successful in 2016, with the unit ranked 27th out of 32 for points and 31st out of 32 in yardage.
Related | OSM Back to the Future: A.J. Brown’s top-ranked performance from 2019
Unfortunately for Kaepernick, Gabbert played in that same offense and received an overall OSM grade of 22.81.
In 11 games for the 49ers, Kaepernick qualified for an OSM grade in 10 games and received a grade depicting average or poor play in seven of them. He didn’t qualify for a grade from the Week 13 game against the Chicago Bears, as he was benched after completing just one of five passes in a 26-6 loss.
Kaepernick’s completion percentage
Kaepernick’s completion percentage is one of the contributory factors to his low OSM grade.
Although he didn’t throw a large number of interceptions (4), he struggled to complete passes in 2016. In his first two starts, at the Buffalo Bills and against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he had completion percentages of 44.83% and 47.06% and received OSM grades of 12.2 and 7.88. As per NFL Next Gen Stats, his completion percentage versus expectation differential was -5.8%, ranking him 38th out of 39 quarterbacks.
His low completion percentages were despite him being the least aggressive passer in the NFL in 2016. Aggressiveness is determined by the percentage of passes thrown into tight windows, and Kaepernick’s 13.3% was the lowest in the league. By comparison, teammate Gabbert threw into tight windows on 21.9% of his throws, and Jared Goff was the most aggressive quarterback in the league, with 25.9% of his throws going into tight windows.
Air yards to the sticks
Another measure we can use to define quarterback play is air yards to the sticks. This is used to show whether a quarterback is throwing past the first down marker, therefore actively driving his team down the field. Or if he is using short throws and relying on his surrounding cast to pick up the first down.
Kaepernick ranked 31st out of 39 for the 49ers in 2016, throwing 0.9 yards behind the sticks and relying on other skill players to make up the yardage after the catch. By contrast, Gabbert was ranked 14th out of 39, throwing 0.5 yards in front of the first down marker.
I’m not saying Gabbert is a better quarterback than Kaepernick. That would be ludicrous.
However, it would be equally ludicrous to assume that four years after a season where Kaepernick struggled to maintain the starting job for the 49ers that he could come straight back in and compete for a job tomorrow.
Kaepernick’s future
Kaepernick’s struggles for the 49ers in 2016 do not mean he shouldn’t be afforded an opportunity.
While Kaepernick’s 2016 season for the 49ers was awful from an OSM perspective, there have been worse. In fact, there have been 12 worse overall OSM grades received by 10 different quarterbacks.
Of those 10 quarterbacks, four (Joe Flacco, Jacoby Brissett, C.J. Beathard, and Brett Hundley) will be backups in the NFL for the 2020 season. Another four will be starters, including the 2019 NFL Most Valuable Player, Lamar Jackson.
In the same press conference that Seahawks head coach Carroll told reporters he regrets not signing Kaepernick in 2017, he also said that a team had called asking him about the former 49ers quarterback. Carroll believes that at least one team is interested in bringing Kaepernick back to the NFL.
If the NFL is serious about proving it agrees with a right to protest, then that team will give Kaepernick the opportunity that he has long been looking for. It will then be up to him to prove he still has the talent to contribute at the highest level.