Colin Kaepernick is 37 years old and hasn’t been paid to play a game of organized, competitive football since the end of the 2016 season. However, that doesn’t mean he’s given up.
Nessa Diab, Kaepernick’s longtime girlfriend, says that the NFL’s original anthem protester is training “all day, every day” in hopes of getting a chance to work out for an NFL team.
“Nothing has changed,” Diab told TMZ Sports, “it’s all up to the teams if they’ll let him play.”
Kaepernick has insisted that NFL owners conspired to “blackball” him from the league after he began kneeling in protest during the national anthem beginning in the 2016 season.
Since then, Kaepernick has made his lack of employment in the NFL and his stated desire to play again the subject of annual media celebrations.
Kaepernick last worked out for an NFL squad in 2022, an event that did not lead to a contract. In 2023, after starter Aaron Rodgers went down four plays into his first game with the Jets, Kaepernick wrote a letter to then-Jets General Manager Joe Douglas, asking for an opportunity. However, that attempt also did not amount to anything.
Before the 2024 season, it seemed that Kaepernick’s path back to the league might be as a coach instead of a player. Kaepernick’s former head coach, Jim Harbaugh, said he had spoken with the former 49er about taking a position on his coaching staff with the Chargers.
However, Kaepernick publicly shot this idea down on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, saying that the conversation between him and Harbaugh never happened.
“I found out the same way everyone else did — on social media,” Kaepernick told Fallon. “I was like, ‘Oh, I got a coaching offer.’ No, no coaching offer.”