Colin Kaepernick still trains like an NFL quarterback. He just refuses to watch the league he once starred in.
Ten years after his national anthem protest became one of the defining sports stories of its era, Kaepernick says his relationship with the NFL remains broken.
In a new interview tied to the upcoming release of his memoir, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback said he believes the league is still keeping him out and has also targeted other players who protested.
Colin Kaepernick Says He Won’t Support the NFL
“I’m not gonna support an organization that one, is actively blackballing me, but two, has targeted my brothers who have been protesting as part of this as well,” Kaepernick told NBC News. “I watch college football.”
Kaepernick said he has not watched an NFL game since his playing career ended after the 2016 season.
He also rejected the idea that the league meaningfully changed its stance after Commissioner Roger Goodell acknowledged in 2020 that the NFL had been wrong not to listen to players protesting racism and police brutality earlier.
“I don’t think the NFL has materially changed. None of their actions show that,” Kaepernick said in the interview.
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The league disputes Kaepernick’s blackballing claim. Goodell has previously said individual clubs make their own roster decisions and has denied that the NFL coordinated to keep Kaepernick out.
In a statement to NBC News for the new story, the league said the issues raised by Kaepernick and other players remain important and pointed to more than $575 million in contributions through its social justice efforts.
NFL and Kaepernick Have Been at Odds for Years
Kaepernick became a free agent in 2017 after the 49ers informed him they planned to release him. He later filed a grievance accusing NFL owners of colluding to deny him employment because of his protest. The league and Kaepernick, along with former teammate Eric Reid, resolved their grievances in a confidential 2019 settlement.
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The NFL later arranged a league workout for Kaepernick in November 2019, but the event collapsed over disagreements about the waiver and media access. Kaepernick held a separate workout instead. He also worked out for the Las Vegas Raiders in 2022 but was not signed.
Even now, NBC News reported that Kaepernick still begins many days with a 4:30 a.m. workout and trains as though he remains an NFL player. His comeback preparation has remained public, with his longtime partner, Nessa Diab, saying in 2025 that his preparation for a possible return had not stopped.
Kaepernick’s new memoir, “The Perilous Fight,” is scheduled for release Sept. 15. The book revisits the protest, its fallout, and his view of what happened to his career afterward.
A decade later, Kaepernick is no longer asking football fans to interpret silence. He is saying plainly that he believes the NFL never stopped punishing him for taking a knee, and that he has no interest in supporting the league while he believes that remains true.
