Las Vegas Raiders Owner Mark Davis recently said that national anthem protester Colin Kaepernick “deserves” another chance at playing pro ball and would be open to signing the former quarterback.
Davis appeared on the NBC Sports Bay Area series, Race in America: A Candid Conversation, with host Monte Poole and insisted that Kaepernick should be “welcome with open arms.”
“I believe in Colin Kaepernick. He deserves every chance in the world to become a quarterback in the National Football League. I still stand by it. If our coaches and general manager want to bring him in or want him to be the quarterback on this team, I would welcome him with open arms,” Davis exclaimed.
Raiders Owner Mark Davis (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
Davis’ comments come on the heels of Kaepernick’s admission that he’d accept a backup quarterback job to get his foot back in the door of the NFL.
The Raiders owner also praised Kaepernick for his constant attacks on the police and his proclamations that America is irredeemably racist.
“In the same vein, Colin Kaepernick has sacrificed a lot of the things that he could have been doing in his life to get a message across about police violence and equity and inclusion in America,” Davis told Poole. “I stand by that.”
Colin Kaepernick kneeling in protest (Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
Davis also insisted that over time he “learned” more about what Kaepernick’s protests were about.
“I think Colin is a very misunderstood human being,” Davis explained. “I’ve gotten a chance to talk to him. I never really knew Colin, and I didn’t understand him. I didn’t understand the kneeling, what that meant initially. Over time, I have learned a little bit more about it. ”
“I understand where he was coming from. He’s got a message for society as a whole,” Davis bloviated.
Of course, it is historical revisionism to say that Kaepernick was only talking about inequality.
In 2016, for instance, Kaepernick said quite directly that he could not stand for the American flag. His protest was a direct attack on the flag and the country, and he said so in his own words in August of 2016.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” Kaepernick said.
Kaepernick gave other clues about the nature of his protests in 2016. For instance, he wore a shirt praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, a mass murderer and self-professed enemy of America. Kaepernick also showed that he was not just protesting the few police that misbehaved when he wore socks that portrayed all police officers as pigs.
Also, in 2016, Kaepernick said that the U.S. was never great, noting that he was standing up against the whole country in general, not just in support of “social justice,” with his anthem protests.
The former NFL player also made his protest about the flag when he forced Nike to ditch its Betsy Ross flag shoes in 2019. Nike announced that it intended to release a patriotic gym shoe with a Betsy Ross Flag theme until Kaepernick ginned up the anti-American left to attack Nike for the proposal. In one of his broadsides against Nike, Kaepernick even claimed that the U.S. Betsy Ross flag was a “symbol of slavery.”
Since then, he has also accused the NFL itself of treating players like “slaves.” He made the accusation as part of his Colin in Black and White series, in which he accused the NFL of treating black players as if they were on slave auction blocks.
Colin Kaepernick compares the NFL combine, which allows all players of all races a voluntary chance to become multi-millionaires, to slavery. Anyone still defending this imbecile lacks a functional brain. pic.twitter.com/rMaKi7c6xh
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 30, 2021
Finally, Kaepernick would be playing pro football right now if he hadn’t turned down every opportunity he was offered.
Kaepernick turned down an offer from the San Francisco 49ers to stay on the team in 2017 because he wanted more money. He turned down several opportunities after that, too, not to mention his act of making a circus out of the NFL’s workout offer in 2019.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Facebook at: facebook.com/Warner.Todd.Huston, or Truth Social @WarnerToddHuston
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