I left out Florio's political remarks for the most part. If you want to read them click the link below.
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2017/03/19/why-wont-browns-take-a-chance-on-colin-kaepernick/
Why won’t Browns take a chance on Colin Kaepernick?
Posted by Mike Florio on March 19, 201
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Six years ago, then-Raiders coach Hue Jackson wanted
Colin Kaepernick. One year ago, now-Browns coach Hue Jackson was
willing to give up a third-round pick to get Kaepernick, and to pay him $7 million or more per year.
This year, the Browns could get Kaepernick for no trade compensation and a bargain-basement contract.
But they don’t want him.
Doug Lesmerises of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer argues that
they should. The football reasons are undeniable; at the quarterback position, the supply doesn’t meet demand — especially given the trade demands of teams that have quarterbacks they’d be willing to move.
From a football standpoint, if the Browns wanted Kaepernick a year ago there’s no reason to not want him now. They opted to focus on
Robert Griffin III, and that experiment didn’t go well. They seem to be interested
in getting Jimmy Garoppolo (
and maybe Kirk Cousins as the fallback), which suggests they aren’t sold on any of the incoming rookies.
So why aren’t they willing to give Hue Jackson a chance to do what Jim Harbaugh did little more than four years ago with Kaepernick, making him into a Super Bowl starter? The most likely explanation is the political firestorm Kaepernick started by refusing to stand for the National Anthem and the reasons he supplied for his decision.
Apart from concerns about a percentage of the Browns fan base objecting loudly to Kaepernick’s presence (if they’re still hanging around after years of ineptitude, it’s not like signing Kaepernick would get them to check out), owner Jimmy Haslam’s personal political beliefs quite possibly resulted in Kaepernick becoming disqualified from consideration.
Haslam could truthfully say he hasn’t instructed his football employees to not sign Kaepernick, in the same way Haslam truthfully can say he never instructed his football employees to pick Manziel.
Being the boss means not having to ask for something so expressly. Haslam, through stray comments or random questions, can make his views easily known. With the Kaepernick situation emerging last August, Haslam’s private reaction (whatever it may have been) to the situation would also say plenty about his potential reaction to the football people making Kaepernick one of the football players on the team Haslam owns.
This same mindset possibly accounts for the failure of other quarterback-needy teams to give Kaepernick a call.
Other teams should at least be kicking Kaepernick’s tires as a potential starter, from the Texans to the Jaguars (if they’re not sold on
Blake Bortles) to the Broncos (who would have traded for him a year ago if he’d taken a pay cut). The fact that no one has even brought him in for a visit suggests that something more than football is influencing the process.
Hopefully, he’ll get a fair chance to compete for a roster spot and for playing time. Although Ron Jaworski’s assessment that Kaepernick could become one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time may be badly off the mark, Kaepernick isn’t so bad that he shouldn’t at least be getting a chance to show what he can still do.
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Because he sucks and, on top of that, they don’t need the baggage that comes with him.
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This is only marginally about politics if at all. The simple fact is that Kap can’t play at an NFL level anymore. The fact that he chose to kneel down for the national anthem didn’t help, but if he could play it wouldn’t matter.
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Just like it was his “right” to express his opinion. It is the team owners right to hire whomever they want. No story here, he chose to take that path, he should have known there may be consequences.
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Because a blue collar city like Cleveland has fans that want no part of an entitled jerkoff like crapernick.
Yeah he’ll stand now that he wants paid – so transparent.
Ownership knows his average talent is not worth the fan base backlash!
I sincerely hope no one signs him.
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Nobody wants Kaepernick because he’s terrible. He’s lost back there behind the Offensive Line. He’s a one read quarterback that waits for his receiver to get open and then throws it. If that guy doesn’t get open, he starts running around like a chicken with it’s head cut off.
The whole kneel-down thing isn’t the reason. It certainly cemented his situation now, but if he was any good, do you not think someone, SOMEONE, would take a chance on him? We’re talking about a league who gives convicted criminals a second chance. Winning would cure everything and make everybody forget about the kneel-down.
And stop with the whole “he took them to the Superbowl” bs. Geez, they would have won that Superbowl with Alex Smith. And maybe the following year too. Joe Flacco has won a Superbowl, Eli Manning has won two, Peyton Manning won a Superbowl when he was less than average compared to when he was great. Trent Dilfer, Phil Simms, Brad Johnson. On and on and on.
You guys give too much credit to the QB when the team wins. And too much blame when the team loses.
32 teams out there, and not one is willing to take a flier on a supposedly great QB.
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Simple. They just got done with the RGIII experience.
QBs who can run really have little incentive to develop pocket skills in JV, HS & College because they can just out-run trouble. So they pretty-much don’t.
Yet in every decade a few teams decide they can build the rare running quarterback. And since it’s rare, teams aren’t used to it, so those QBs succeed for a bit. However, the NFL catches up and the cycle repeats: peak early, fail, and learn the hard way that the NFL is the wrong place to learn pocket skills.
What kills me in all this is how the press, fans, and to some extent, NFL GMs keep failing to learn this lesson.
Running QBs who succeed are super rare. And most that do tend to have played in an offense where running was more the exception than the rule and they were trained as pocket passer. And that’s very uncommon in HS and College ball.
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Hey Florio, maybe it’s simply because he sucks? So what if he threw 16 TD’s and 4 INT last year? He was playing in Chip Kelly’s super-conservative, 2-yards-per-play offense that didn’t involve taking shots downfield. He was still 1-11 as a starter last year.
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You can’t be a distraction when you’re a bad player, his NFL days are probably over.
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As a 9ER fan. I can telll you I’ve seen enough passes at wide open WR’s ankles and overthrown passes from Kaep.
I’ll take my chances with Hoyer