Speaker 1Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin Unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. There should not be a single law enforcement agency that does not have body cameras. It's real. Black farmers have been under attack. This is just the latest example of them just slapping DEI on anything. It's raw. And I'm sitting here going, they are playing y'all for fools. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin Unfiltered on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2Wave. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. This month is 10 years since Colin Kaepernick decided to set things on fire by literally sitting next to the water cooler. That's all it took for him to set the world on fire. So we got a whole series of episodes that we want to do talking about that, looking back on it. But I think the biggest thing we talk about, and I think it's very important, is that the reason that Colin Kaepernick was a big enough deal to generate all this interest in the first place is because Colin Kaepernick, was a really good football player. The part that gets forgotten. So talk about that part. We got my man in here now, Charles McDonald, here to join us. I can't quite think of what the best way is to introduce you other than Tortured Falcons fan.
Speaker 3Yeah, that's definitely relevant to this discussion. Very relevant to the discussion. This is actually really funny. And I don't really have a way to introduce myself yet. Maybe by the time this comes out, people will know. But not homeless anymore. Not homeless anymore. Yes. Yeah, after a very, very strange summer. But yeah, the Falcons are very relevant to this story because I think they're part of the Kaepernick story in terms of just his play on the field and how he really just kind of put belt to ass in a way that felt very familiar to Falcons fans over the second half of that game. But man, it really just feels strange that we've already hit the 10-year mark since that season and the last time he played because I remember, that was more when I was an online person on Twitter and I was getting into arguments. I look back, I'm like, man, why did I waste time? All the time, yeah. Yeah, look at Bay Carter. It's like, yo, man.
Speaker 2I thought I was helping make change. And maybe I was, right? Like, I think I can point to some things. But let me tell you this, that motherfucker can take a knee right now. Somebody else is going to have to get out there and engage in the fight, at least on that front. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm up here operating more like a general. Maybe I'm deploying people.
Speaker 3Yeah, yeah. Because it was the Kaepernick. Kaepernick season and then the Lamar Jackson draft, like, back-to-back years, basically. And I was like, oh, man, I've made my stances clear about getting a little burnout on this, you know?
Speaker 2No, no, no, no. So here's what it was. It was Kaepernick season one. Then it was the year Kaepernick didn't play, which was year one of the Trump term. That's right. And then the next year was the Lamar Jackson, which is also the Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen, Josh Rose, the Sam Donald draft. Like, it was a lot going on. But I want to hit rewind. Before we get to there, and I want to ask you this, if you can remember it. I probably should have asked you this before we started the show, but whatever. We're here now. Do you remember the first time that you became aware of Kaepernick as a player?
Speaker 3Oh, it was probably, it was definitely like his last year at Nevada. The Boise State game that year was when I was like, oh, I don't really know what this is. This, like, this player is fascinating just when you look at the size of him. The speed, just kind of like the raw power that made him a fascinating NFL player, too. But also, like, the pistol offense that Nevada was, like, using that year. That really had kind of got them kind of to, like, the heights of what Nevada football possibly could be and has been since then. They went, like, 13-1. They finished in the top 10 or right outside the top 10. They had the Boise State game that year where it felt like they absolutely couldn't stop him in an overtime victory late in that game. And it's funny. It's funny because I was talking to, you know, our buddy Nate Tice a couple days ago, and he was doing, you know, he was doing his Wisconsin Badgers propaganda, mid-2010s Wisconsin Badgers propaganda. But he was showing the top offenses in the country from the 2010 season by advanced statistics. And there was Nevada number two, you know, on the EPA per play. And that was, like, all Kaepernick. When you go back and you go and watch some of those games and see how just dominant he was within that offense, it really did kind of change the sport. And obviously, you put him on the radar where he, damn, he ended up a first-round pick. So I remember for me,
Speaker 2in 2008, I was emailing with my old buddy, the OG, Bruce Feldman. And 08 was a year of a lot of really good young quarterbacks being out late. That was Terrell Pryor's freshman year at Ohio State. That was Russell Wilson's red shirt freshman year at NC State. That was Robert Griffin's freshman year at Baylor. Like, it was a lot of guys that was out there doing it. And I remember he asked me to put my quarterbacks in a list that he had. I can't remember everybody. Like, I think Blaine Gabbert, like, is kind of on that list, too. But, like, I can't remember everybody that I had. But I remember that my top two guys in some order, I think my number one was Griffin and my number two was Wilson. I remember that I think Bruce also had Griffin at number one because it made me feel, like, very good about my abilities to, like, evaluate stuff. But his number two was Wilson. And my number two was Kaepernick, of whom I had never heard. I was totally unaware of who this person was. I was just like, huh, ain't that something? And I didn't bother to go find out more. And if I'm being honest, it's probably because I might have thought that he was a Caucasian, so I didn't really – I was going to find out soon enough. I was like, huh, Kaepernick, eh? We all had the moment, though.
Speaker 3Yeah, like, I remember it feels like there's this quarterback named Colin Kaepernick, and he's a Kappa. I'm like, what are you guys talking about?
Speaker 2If somebody had given me the Kappa part, I'd have been extra confused because I thought he would have been, like, a white people Kappa. And for those who do not know, the white people Kappas, they are Confederate. But anyway, so he tells me this about Kaepernick. I don't really, like, get into figuring out who he is, but I do remember – and I didn't watch that Boise State-Nevada game. And for people who don't remember this or were not of age to know what happened in this game, Boise State had – I forget who they beat in the bowl game in 09, but 2010, Boise State was a legitimate national championship contender. And it was, you know, for many reasons, like, a provocative question as to whether or not a team that played in the Mountain West could be that good. But they had been good now for a very long time. I want to say that's the year that they played Virginia Tech early in the year, in D.C., and they went and won that game. Like, they had one of those we can beat the teams that you think we need to beat. And they get all the way to the end of the year, and they play against – they play against Nevada. And I will always remember that after Kaepernick had set the world on fire, there was some woman at a game at Boise State that had a sign that said, we hated Kaepernick before it was cool. And the reason that they hated Kaepernick before it was cool is because he ate they asses up out there, right? Yeah. This big, tall, strong, ridiculously fast dude running an offense, that if you were really, like, deep in the woods of college football, I think you understood what was going on with the pistol. But the truth was, unless you were really – what Chris Ault was doing there, unless he was out here watching Nevada football, it had really started working its way into other offenses, right? So I've heard about this kind of – for me, it was almost like some old school stuff where you just hear whispers about guys. Like, I hear there's this dude that played at Eisenhower High School. They say he a beast, right? And then maybe somebody goes across town. And checks him out, right? We didn't – like, the internet was not deployed in a way for us to become as aware of all these people as we might have. But he becomes that dude. The 49ers drafted him in the second round in 2011. And for those of you who don't remember, Cam Newton was the number one pick in 2011. And then some terrible whites went after him in the first round. And you're like, why am I referring to them as terrible whites? Because being white is how Blaine Gabbert – Athlete playing quarterback, Jake Locker. Those are the – I don't think I'm missing anybody in the first round.
Speaker 3Those were the two – Christian Ponder was in that first round too. Christian Ponder was on that. They had the famous – like, the Sports Illustrated cover. And they were like, which one do you take? I'll take the one that basically took a team that had one NFL player that made it off that offense in the late Philip Kirkston-Mimer. I forget. The fullback, tight end guy. And then Nick Fairley on defense. And they went to Alabama. To Alabama against a defense that ended up having, like, eight or nine first-round picks on it, like, all the way through. Because C.J. Mosley was a freshman on that team, even though he still played. And they won. Dude, like, why would you not take that guy?
Speaker 2Well, I want to be fair to Sports Illustrated on that one. Knowing a little bit about how things work, I know what happened. And I really – submitted for me when Pete Thamel went down there and tried to get Honey Badger for that interview that time and couldn't get him. And then they just had a stock photo of Honey Badger on the cover. with a model. chrome background clearly the interview they tried to get with cam newton they could not get and i'm pretty sure it was because it was after that icon entertainer quote right peter king got from him so they couldn't get a feature with cam and so they're like now well damn now what do we do and so they had stock photos of all the guys and they throw them out there and sports illustrated is good for a yellow ass um inflammatory headline right they love those and so they put that out there yeah we've been talking crazy about that shit forever um but i bring all that up because the second round i want to say that the pick before kaepernick was cincinnati i think was
Speaker 3yeah i would say
Speaker 2andy dalton and they took andy dalton right which i think looking back on it was an interesting choice because andy dalton even if as game manager i think was ready to start in the nfl and did and they immediately became like a division champion level program they drafted aj green in the first round i mean for a second round pick they did all right with andy dalton the next pick yeah yeah the next pick was colin kaepernick and um it was hardball's first year with the 49ers and it manifests itself when you get into 2012 but the thing that i didn't quite realize was that the first year is that any player that a team takes in the second round is a player that a team expects to become a starter yes maybe they are not a starter tomorrow but second round is for starters right 36 overall yeah yeah like like that's a starter but i mean they drafted alex smith and smith turned who had been roundly considered one of the biggest busts at quarterback that there had been though he got five years to be there harbaugh the quarterback whispered gets there there is an improvement from alex smith and alex smith has that great game in the 2011 nfc championship game right like it was a great game and then had a bad game in the nfc excuse me nfc division round was the great game the nfc championship was the bad game where he couldn't convert a first down like i think i forget how many first downs they did not convert on passing and that gave us this eli manning shit that we still got to deal with because then he got two
Speaker 3super bowls yeah yeah the the i think the alex the alex smith part of this is so important because look i i get like when alex smith goes on on his uh sometimes on social media you'll see him talking about man we got to give these quarterbacks more time to figure things out but there's the we can find a happy meeting between like what he got and what you know what what some of these other guys get maybe where they're booted after a year because man yes he was bad for five years and ultimately five years like really bad and then ultimately i think the captain pick it it it's very illuminating even when you have that season with jim harbaugh because okay well we waited six years and this is it like it was fine it was better than what you were but ultimately like you knew it wasn't going to be like some gunslinging stuff that could win you a championship or have like the upside it was it had been six seven years at that point and you really hit the ceiling so i think the pick like it makes sense and for him to get that runway in the first place i i think when when harbaugh gets there you're like okay nope this is not enough for me a little bit more and then they go get like the powerhouse out in nevada of cavern to come out for the season he had that year i think that's
Speaker 2correct but i also 2012 the 49ers were really good yeah like they were marching through that schedule and then and alex smith was averaging like not averaging a completion percent is like in the 70 percent rank he was on super game man he was on super game man he was on super game man manager status as we'd all tried to figure out like you know can you game manage your way to a super bowl um by this point they look good but by this point joe flacco has not won a super bowl but joe flacco is not a game manager right when it comes down to it if you need to make a big play down the field joe flacco's got that for you one thing i remember from that 2011 season with smith was remember that was the randy moss comeback season and randy moss was still getting open deep and alex smith was not looking at him and we had never seen a guy not look at randy moss right he was like hey man i can't i personally can't really do that so anyway we're about halfway through this season alex smith is concussed in a gang kyle and kaepernick comes in and starts i want to say it was a monday night game um against the bears and little buddy things look different like things looked very very different when he was in the game and they won but look end of the day man goddamn alex smith was the dude that was making all the money um he had been good that year that team was good you don't disrupt all of harbaugh made that boy starter he had that one start it went well and he was like yep this is what we're going to do now yeah they won that game 32 to 7 the game before the it was a tie oddly enough but they won that game 32 to 7 and it was a whole new day every everything changed right then and it was basically harbaugh looked at the team and said we got a ceiling with this guy we have no ceiling with that guy and it then took me back to the original point which was he did not take him in the second round to not start him we didn't see it coming it seemed like a gigantic shock clearly jim harbaugh was waiting just waiting for the chance to make that move yeah
Speaker 3and it's kind of funny looking back like when you see i guess like it's more like when you think about resumes being built in real time like for jim harbaugh because uh you can look back now and say man like all these quarterbacks going back like josh johnson's at san diego like andrew luck and alex smith at the time like colin capric that was still a little bit new ish you know so okay you figured out alex smith we already thought andrew luck was cold maybe kind of no matter what so i'm not really sure how much credit like he was getting for that but for them for him to come back and say well he was this guy that was a pretty raw player at colorado or excuse me at nevada uh because even when you go back and look at like that boy the state game they were up at halftime uh and they needed to come back and there were some times where he didn't look great but then you just see like well at some point he's just the best athlete on the field and he's got the ball in his hand every single play we can we can work with that uh and they come out and they're like oh jim harbaugh and uh he has the game against the bears where you start to see they can really raise the roof on the offense they can get more explosive plays in the past game while also still doing the hard ball thing of keeping the the past volume low you know we were getting more explosives while still not actually throwing that many times so that's really attractive to that and then obviously i think that the pinnacle is the the green bay game in the playoffs you know where oh yeah we'll get there we'll get there we'll get there we'll get there but yeah yeah because the thing to me was
Speaker 2when you look at that roster the the big play threat was that was the year randy boss was on that team that alex smith was not throwing the ball to but the real big play threat on that team was vernon davis davis and while vernon davis is a very good tight end vernon davis is not rob gronkowski like he's not supposed to be the number one threat in your offense they had frank gore um who i think the underrated thing about frank gore was his capability of putting up big plays he has played the same way alex smith played for bad teams frank gore played for bad teams and so the only only year frank gore had 300 carries he had 1700 yards like we think of him as being a compiler when in reality a little too long yeah he was just playing for bad teams but like the the numbers are like four and a half 4.7 4.8 yards per carry like he's getting that so now kaepernick is there and it's also cam newton gets into the nfl and now we see the widespread proliferation of the zone read option right we start seeing those collegiate elements coming in made it such that a lot of these young guys coming in at quarterback you ain't you ain't had that much time to install but so much stuff so now we're looking up 49ers have been bringing pat kaepernick in these packages but now they're running the pistol they're running all of those things in the nfl robert griffin is running a legitimate high school offense in washington and setting the league on fire but with kaepernick the 49ers now look like they might have a chance and that gets us to that game against the packers in the division round at home where that dude right dude the packers there may be a lot of people after it all went down trying to tell you that kaepernick couldn't play what none of the motherfuckers in no green bay kaepernick had a game with 180 yards i want to say before contact
Speaker 3see that that that game like i like i love the like defensive football and i think that is one of the most embarrassing games that like any team has ever played and and it's not even taking anything away for like from kaepernick because it's just funny to think about you have these schemes in college or these schemes in high school that people say oh man and that shit will never work in the nfl like come on man like this is too sophisticated this is uh you know it's too fast it happens to you know to all the you know the defensive players are too fast or too smart too physical it won't work and then you see in the divisional round against the packers they just ran like zone read like the most basic form of it right like we're just not going to block the defensive end if he crashes colin kaepernick you pull and you can pull to the tune of 181 yards on 16 carries two touchdowns and then when you get to see him in the open field then it's like wow okay this is actually like tough to stop like once he gets going too so it's not just the speed it's also like the size and then uh like i don't think that that was his best game throwing the ball but it didn't matter because like like i said he almost had 200 rushing yards and they were all they were just reading the claim matthews off the edge and when he crashed hard on frank gore just pull it and then he's going to have a wide open rushing lane and these were plays that you know people said these were knocks that guys could do that stuff in the past and then here on the biggest stage the punching tickets the mc championships game they exclusively did that to win and i think that that was kind of an eye-opener from an nfl defensive standpoint we're like okay well now these plays are coming to the nfl right if you can see that you can win playoff games with them they're going to become more popular we've also we've seen you know all these quarterbacks that have to run uh over the past like 15 years of football entering the league it was kind of like a defining point for the league on like a national stage even though that had kind of been coming a little bit as we saw cam dutton have that ridiculous for the year
Speaker 2too yeah but it's another example of how the past becomes the future really quickly yeah right yeah like for example gus malzahn and what he was running in college when he started breaking that out it's the single wing from back in the day you know like every now and then something happens and you look up or like the idea of the live podcast huh you mean like tv yeah like like the radio like it's these these are things that have been done um and that's very similar to what we have here there is an unblocked man that you read and you force that guy to make a decision and guys at this level haven't had to do these things in so long and now they're having to do them against much bigger much faster dudes than they ever had to consider this around a bunch of coaches if you've ever taken a college math class that can't none of them teachers add three plus eight they don't do that no more they do all their math with letters that was kind of what happened to defensive coordinators in the nfl they they don't that part of their brain they don't even use that no more right and so you take a guy that has actual nfl skills and then you add those elements even if only as a change of pace of something to do and you get to the place where hey man they're in the nfc championship game 49ers ain't been this far i want to say since 1994 um lucky for them they was playing the falcons what was it did they go to a did they go to a 21-3 lead or was it
Speaker 3something like that but roddy was held at the end of the game so whatever yeah yeah yeah yeah hey ain't nobody got
Speaker 2time for your grapes right now i
Speaker 3don't have any crap about this game i don't i don't that whatever that's just what they do okay uh but but that game was kind of interesting because they they kind of i don't if i remember correctly like they held kaepernick and check on the ground but the problem was like they went into the game saying we just saw last week 17 to nothing 17 or nothing same yeah tomato tomato 21-3 23 17 nothing 24-2 it's all the same after a while oh god but in that game like i i don't i don't have like the the numbers in front of me right now but i remember that game was more they kind of watched the green the green bag in the last week and said well i can't let that happen to us you know so they had dedicated more to stopping kaepernick on the ground but then that's where i think the rest of like the story of this offense is man they had some good players like all over the place like that offensive line was very good and they were very good at specifically how jim bar hardball wanted to play and then you have frank gore who like it got lost to time but when he was younger he was a really explosive like athletic back and they just pounded them they gave it to him and then obviously you know falcon stuff happened the 49ers defense which was like all-time good during the stretch to walk in and you know they they backed it up uh but i really thought that game was interesting because it wasn't a lot of kaepernick it was a lot of we're here to stop kaepernick and that makes everybody else better and it kind of felt like man like this could be something you can really build like a franchise
Speaker 2on hey man 16 for 21 for 233 yards that was the passing situation he only had two carries yeah in that game and they were down 17 nothing and walked them down like like this this happened like once it once you saw that he could run for 200 yards in the playoffs and then you saw that he could run an efficient passing game in the playoffs and then get you to the super bowl where they lose they're four yards away but like big the question that you ask about any quarterback really is can we get to a super bowl with him like where jalen hurts becomes defiant of all the things that i've seen is that he's gotten to two super bowls right and so whatever we say at the end of the day that's a quarterback you could get to two super bowls with colin kaepernick was a quarterback that you could get to a super bowl with who didn't even get to start at the beginning of the year like it was literally just the beginning like the only quarterback that i could think of coming in in the middle of the year and really performing at the level he did was dan marino in 84 i mean 83 i'm not even including tom brady because tom brady was hey man just don't fuck this up man that's all like like kaepernick was being actively asked to raise the ceiling as opposed to just minimize risk yeah
Speaker 3and he made everybody else better um and and it works so well with that offense because that's when you get to see like like the gravitational force like if the person who touches the ball on every play is like the most explosive player then like we have a serious problem like it it's kind of like when you laugh you go back and you see like lamar jackson being the 32nd pick you're like man what the what the fuck happened there like well we know what happened there but you know like you watch him play you're like obviously yeah like he's still able to do these things and when your quarterback is that athletic and that explosive you don't need them to necessarily be perfect you just kind of need them to scare the hell out of people and that's what had happened because it happened so fast like all of a sudden maybe like when you start the year or you start looking at this team you're thinking about alex smith and all of a sudden whoa like here's a flamethrower and he's good enough to uh maybe not like be pinpoint accurate but when he is like it's going to be for big games and when he takes off it's a real threat and when he's not taking off we're still worried about him and now now there's frank gore and he's got like four 330 pound guys just blowing holes in front of him it's it was really really fun to watch because i was you re-watched some of it uh before and i was like man like they really just beat the shit out of all these defenses that they played it and it still kind of is even though harbour had that success at michigan uh it still kind of is like central like harbaugh team when i think about it because every single piece of it was built to punch you in the mouth at like the most physical level and
Speaker 2look they didn't win that super bowl but the next year they went 12 before again including another destruction of the packers in the first game of the year including another win against the packers at lambeau field in the cold which i actually think as a quarterback is a really underrated victory to put up like these are aaron rogers green bay packers right like this is aaron rogers around peak of powers rogers and the winning team is not his right this other guy is the one who's doing that and they got him late because kaepernick was decent that year though not as shocking which is reasonable to expect like we you and i talk about this over quarterbacks that year two to league you know they see things right like they're not gonna let you
Speaker 3do the green bay thing again you know right
Speaker 2they're not gonna let you do that and this is a greg roman offense and as we've learned with the greg roman offenses in other places they just get worse and worse every year it just takes a lot of time to fix down but the truth is after being one play away from winning the super bowl they were one play away again from going to the super bowl playing against a team that ultimately won the super bowl by a gazillion points in the toughest environment in the world which is to say if they had if richard sherman doesn't make that great play on that pass to crabtree and then he kirked out on television but if sherman doesn't make that play and they score the 49ers probably win that super bowl i think i think that they would have i think they would have had a they would have done similarly as well against that broncos team regardless of how good peyton manning had been that season
Speaker 3yeah because they presented the same problems you know like like it maybe you didn't have like the uh the ultimately what the star power of like that legion boom defense became but you know still had like the you know late alden smith justin smith on the inside the patrick willis navarro bowman uh and then on the on the corner it's like golden dante whitner yeah dante dante hitner as he changes his name yeah yeah but like yeah golson he was uh deshaun goldson he was a good player uh man like like they really kind of had an underrated defense on the back end that you know they would have beat the crap out of that broncos team because that was the problem like just a little bit too finesse it was cold outside and and uh that's the only super bowl i ever fall asleep during that i was
Speaker 2watching let me tell you something about that defense i always tell people that 2011 49ers team that i i don't feel bad saying about this what none of us watching them as that year was going all they had alex smith as the quarterback that had no reason to think like and look they got a first round bye right like they were they were a really good team but i know nobody why i'll do i
Speaker 3i'm okay so i was i was in college i was playing uh defensive line at this point so i was like i was kind of in the trenches like i was the guy who was like anyone who doesn't draft aaron donald first first overall like you're smoking crack i don't care but i know jadavia cliley this guy's like 280 pounds he ran a four six like no it's it's gonna work and i felt like the same way about justin smith man i thought that like if you if you could find like any player that could raise the floor of your defensive line like that guy because because he could do anything like he was 285 he could play nose tackle and like eat triple teams he could play off the edge he was picking off stuff for alden smith then they had you know all these guys in the middle like it was it was so good and it is kind of funny because i feel like that group has gotten undersold over time when you go back and look at the numbers like no they were incredible i will
Speaker 2just never forget the moment i realized that i had out was when the Saints gave that ball to Pierre Thomas and Dante Wittner hit him so So that's been 15 years since then. And I'm trying to think if I can remember like a clean legal hit in the way where it was just like, oh my God, like he was out cold well before he hit the ground. It was immediate. And I was like, oh, I just misunderstood what kind of team this was. And so they were this close to winning the Superbowl. They were this close to going back to the Superbowl and it was never that good again. So coming up next, we're going to talk about the next part of Kaepernick's career, which leads us into the protest, which leads us obviously into him never playing again. Look, if your supplement shelf needs a reset, now's the time GNC semi-annual live well sale is happening August 13th through August 26th with BOGO 50% off almost everything. Whether you're restocking your protein and creatine, grabbing your everyday essentials, or finally trying something, this is the moment to build a routine that works for you for protein and creatine to hydration and energy essentials. You can find the pieces to keep your routine moving. It only happens twice a year. So don't miss the chance to stock up, save and get ready for what's next. Don't wait. The sale won't last long shop at GNC.com slash sale. All right. We are back with the newly employed Charles McDonald, but we can't tell you exactly where, and I just noticed that. That's the Houston Oilers hat on your head. Joel from Missouri city. You'll be the first person that he don't hate on. That is on this show, but we get to the 2014 season with the 49ers. And so there are a couple of things that play right again. It's year four of Greg of Greg Roman. So this is going to whittle down. It's also year four of horrible, a man who burns people out. And so now he's in the fights with the front office, you know, and everything that's going and they had a Rudy Poo eight and eight, just a middling eight, an eight season. I can't think of anything noteworthy about the season, except for the fact that it felt coming into that year. Like there was a wide open window. And then our recollection that that's actually not how football works.
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean, right. Precise. Like these windows can, can slam shot at any point. And I think that the 2014 season, it just kind of became like, it just, it just kind of felt like one of those things, right, man, we got to, we got to close shop on this. For whatever reason, and it's not working, whether it's hardball, whether it's management, whether it's all of us, just, we don't fit anymore, which is crazy to think about how fast this happened, man. Like, like the, when you go back and you look at like, uh, the GoPro, go to pro football reference or ESPN and look at Kyle Capric's career. Like, man, this is only a very short amount of time that all of this, all of this happened. Like before you even get to, uh, you know, ultimately what happened in 2016, but 2014, it was just like, it got so, so unstable so fast. And I think one thing that is funny, you know, looking back, uh, which maybe should have been a little bit clear at the time too, was Trent bulky versus Jim Harbaugh. Yes. And how those careers have, have turned out. You know, when, when Trent goes to Jackson, it's clear that they picked the wrong horse. They picked the wrong guy there. Absolutely. Especially considering, because as soon as Harbaugh left, I think you kind of saw, man, maybe we just deal with the crazy stuff and we just, we just win these football games or at least have someone that can get us to functional. Uh, cause you know, they had some offensive line injuries that year. Like the run game wasn't great. Like even the defense was not as good as they used to be. And then I think you saw, and maybe Kaepernick's not quite ready to actually be like the hard, like the hard franchise quarterback and, and the whole up the team, but they just didn't even give themselves a chance by, by ultimately letting like, like choosing to let Jim Harbaugh go at like the first sign of tension, really, you know, like, like, cause think about where, where, like where you were before Jim Harbaugh, got there even before Colin Kaepernick. And we just talked about, you had all those years of Alex Smith being bad. Like, it's not like you, you just falling right back into that. It's out of the question. You, you weren't good for a very long time. Uh, and before that, like, man, we're talking about, you need Steve Young or Joe Montana, like for you to have that relevance as a franchise, that you can very easily be a bad team. And after, after they fired Harbaugh, it was bad. Cause like Jim, Tom Sula ended up being the head coach. The only thing I remember about him is then they had the graphic where he like won his first game or something, or, or won like a preseason game. And they had like him with a hundred percent win total over like Bill Walsh. I'm like, aha, good one. But yeah, that's where it really started to fall apart.
Speaker 2That's right. Cause I remember the thing was they won the first game of the year, but it was back when they used to do the Monday night double header to start the year. And they were the late game and the home team would win every one of those. Cause it would be a seven, a, eight o'clock local kick is like a 10 30 Eastern kick. And a big part of it was, this is the year of like the year that Colin Kaepernick becomes a drop back passer. Right? Like that's where, that's where this was going. That was what the plan was. He had worked all off season with Trent Dilfer, put a pin in that. And then I think it was Jeep.
Speaker 3Another thing looking back.
Speaker 2Yes. Yeah. Like Jeep. Chris was the offensive coordinator. And I remember watching him and them trying to do this. And he looked so he looked important. And I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, I was like, it looked like a constraint where the pocket is supposed to be a protection. It looked much more like a constraint for him. And he just bounced on his feet. And he was just always boom, boom, boom, looking around like the rhythm of it. Wasn't there. Then he wound up getting hurt that year. I mean, there's no way around it. He was awful. He was not good. There are explanations perhaps that one could offer as to why he was awful, but for those eight games that he played, I mean, it's six touchdowns, five interceptions. And honestly, those numbers felt better than the execution was. That was a dreadful football team.
Speaker 3No, they, they, they were, they were terrible. And they, they really just had no chance. And I thought, cause I remember I was watching, I was like, man, like it's funny looking back at all this stuff. So I remember watching, I was like, man, like it's his career about to be over. And the answer was yes. But, you know, not, not quite for, for the reasons of, of that season. Cause I was, yeah, that was the season when Blaine Gabbert came in. Yeah. They sucked. And, and that was the year that the defense was, I mean, like that was, that was the year where the defense like really started to fall off. And then in 2016, like they had one of the, just the most abominable defenses that I think maybe doesn't really get talked about, but since I've looked at that year so much as some of the burden, my brain, but the going,
Speaker 2they gave up 480, 80 points in a 16 game season. Yeah. Yeah. They did.
Speaker 3They sure did. I've been like the 2015 season is, is it, it really kind of hurt as someone who enjoyed watching Kaepernick. Cause I was like, man, like you can't go get Harbaugh back. Right. Like, obviously that was the mistake that you had made. You're you're in it. Like you had gone from Jim Harbaugh and, you know, even Greg Roman, that doesn't suck, but you went from Jim Harbaugh to, and Dick Fangio is your defensive coordinator to, to Jim Tomsula and Eric Mangini in 2015. Like that's, that that's a clear staff downgrade. The players were getting worse. So clearly you saw you, we have made a mistake. And then it, it just, it took even another step back in 2016 when Chip Kelly was the head coach. And unfortunately, like this is where I feel like my Stan hat come on with Kaepernick. Cause like that was the year where like it kind of. So, so, so it's a turn back in his favor. So this is the thing
Speaker 2for me on that is this is where Colin really goes. He gets into what I call it a black quarterback zone, right? Yes. And what I mean by that is once the black quarterback has a bad season, it is not a bad season. He has been exposed. Yeah. Right. Exposed. Right. The progression of a quarterback is not like the progression of a running back or basically anybody else. Just about every other position in the NFL. You have a, a growth, a peak, and then a fall. The fall, falls happen at different rates, right? But it's a, it's a pretty standard function that goes up until it reaches its maximum. And then it comes back down. Quarterback isn't like that. Quarterback is to me much more like being a baseball player in general, a pitcher in specific where you may have these great, great year, these great numbers early. And then Peyton Manning had two bad years thrown in there as a starting quarterback. Tom Brady's second year as a starter was not quite in line with the others. Like you're, you're going to be hard pressed to find the quarterback that did not have a hiccup in his career. And the hiccup many times can be a hiccup of multiple seasons, right? Kaepernick had one bad season on a bad team where we acknowledge also that he was seriously injured. So injured. In fact, it's the only thing that saved his job because he signed a bad contract that didn't really guarantee the money down the line, but he was too hurt to pass a physical. Yeah. So they could not cut him in place. You know, to, to give the job of all people to blame Gabbert, like to look around and be like, nah, let's try this out. Nothing that he had done previously, all that potential that you saw before. It should tell you,
Speaker 3you just saw it,
Speaker 2you know, just like two years before he was pretty good, right? One bad year when everything else was bad and the world was ready to shut it down. But give this to chip Kelly, who you have to remember at this point, had the reputation of not liking black people. He did. He had that. Now look, Chip Kelly's a man that once had John Carlos come talk to his team and people thought he did not like black people. It wasn't that he didn't like black people is that you young hippity hoppity black people made them nervous. like that chip kelly was a coach at the university of new hampshire yeah right he was not prepared for the world that he got to with big time college football and with the nfl right but he was the one that every time they talk about college like yeah college just hurt yeah when collin gets back we'll see it and then when collin got back chip wasn't no fool he was like blaine gabbert what are you high put this boy back in and and
Speaker 3like this is the this is the one the season where i was like you you can't tell me that this guy like when it's all said and done you objectively look at the season like this is easily like one of the 32 best quarterbacks in the league when because when he came back without question like 32 without question yeah 32 is trying to be really safe right yeah really safe right and that was in and i feel like sometimes i look back at things i said like man i was being a little bit too nice to y'all goddamn racist but uh yeah i've grown in those mistakes won't be made again i just it's just like it was it was frustrating watching that that season because it that team was bad bad like capital b like some of the worst stuff that i've ever seen like in professional football so because we because we were talking about briefly like the run defense that they had that year uh man they gave up 200 at least 248 russian yards four times that season what four times they gave up 248 to the falcons the saints 249 to to the bucks and then 313 to the buffalo bills whose offensive coordinator was greg roman tyra taylor and leshawn mccoy here and then not only that they also had 194 188 176 like this was one of the worst defenses in like the past 25 years of football right they get 30 points a game you know and hold on 30.0 30.0 30 on the nose yes yes okay dude i'm looking at some of their stats now 41 percent of the or of their opposing drives ended in a score on offense like on defense it's like you you get it you get it the ball it's a coin flip unless you're getting like at least a field goal that's embarrassing and and it kind of became like this team is bad so colin's bad when you kind of look at how that what how that season went you know chip kelly like you said chip kelly had he had the the background of like maybe he doesn't like black people but with colin he was okay they kind of wore it on him as the season went kind of playing a little bit of defense for colin and you could see in the play zone colin save us and he kind of did every once in a
Speaker 2while hey man let me let me run this by you about the offense their leading receiver by far was jeremy curly yeah with 64 catches the number two receiver was quentin patton who could be one of 500 former nfl players i was about to say right like that's that is the quentin patton is the official name of a number three to five receiver right a guy who runs back kicks and also plays special teams like that is what that name sounds like but the number two receiver had 37 catches the number one had 64 the number three receiver was sean drone who amazingly lasted to age 29 as a running back um garrett selick was number four
Speaker 3fake brett selick we got his brother you know not even the real
Speaker 2one oh i forgot that yeah you're right like this this was a really really really bad team there there there was just no way around it it was an awful team but all the controversy swirled that year but it truly felt like if you played paid any attention where we had settled at a point now where kaepernick is oh i want to say he's 29 yeah i think
Speaker 3he just turned 29 during
Speaker 2the season he's not a franchise quarterback probably not but he was a starting quarterback and you those don't grow on trees right like he was a decent football player but it is crazy to think what the margins are like how all of this plays out if they go to the second superbowl or if they win the first superbowl harbaugh doesn't burn those people out right he doesn't tear his labrum like the margins on this and the whole football story itself being different are so thin and it matters because as we'll talk about in later episodes it was the football that was used to justify keeping him out but it was this close to being people were really gonna have to tell on themselves in order to do it yeah yeah
Speaker 3and that that's what was so frustrating because they did tell themselves and they were fine doing it and it just didn't matter you know like because because when you go back and the game that always comes back to my mind for that season is they go to miami and you know he had you know 300 rushing or 300 passing yards three touchdowns ran for over 100 yards you saw it was like okay like even on a team as bad as this in the right circumstances he can still be someone that goes out and produces at a high level and he can still be someone that goes out and produces at a high level you know it's not like like you say he was 28 29 years old it's not like he was physically washed you know maybe he wasn't running a 4-4 anymore but it was good enough where that was still something that you have to account for in the open field and i i just think like as the season went on man they had a game uh then they had a game against chicago where it the weather was just so bad i think he like went one for five like four yards something like that and that's the one that people point to and they lose all context and like what actually happened in that game but when you made the the surroundings like more equitable and more standardized like he was obviously like a starting caliber quarterback that year in whatever diminished version of chip kelly's offense that that had existed there it was uh it was really frustrating like watching people pretend like he was just like still having the same exact you know statistical output that he was having the year before when you can see it like it wasn't good because the were still functional enough at times with him on the field that you could make a case like if you were another team next year it was like hey maybe maybe we give this a chance like i like i'm actually kind of sympathetic to the idea that the 49ers might just want to move on clean after all of this and start over like they hired kyle shanahan but what happened after to colin is like just objectively nonsense you
Speaker 2know right but he was and i think this is important and part of why i he is legitimately a historically significant figure just as a football player you're going to be watching football games for a long time and somebody's going to put up some crazy dual thread quarterback line in the playoffs and they're going to say um and the only quarterbacks to do this and colin kaepernick and we saw that come up as the controversy swirled in years where you'd have these lines and they all didn't really want to bring that part up right like we given that the 49ers haven't won a super bowl in you know 30 something years they need to start treating that 2012 team you know with some yeah with some serious respect but also that means some bringing you back like you bring colin back to the stadium at some point right like he matters to the history of that franchise as we saw the way the league progressed he matters to the history of the league because what we'll talk about as it line tried to make the argument that the reason that colin um wasn't getting a job was you know teams don't really run the read option and do those things anymore and 10 years later they do them so much that you have to be able
Speaker 3to do it almost you have to be able to do it almost you
Speaker 2know you have to be able to do it like i always said when josh allen really struggled his first couple of years i was like if they treat him like he's black it'll be okay and that's exactly what they did get his big ass out there running the ball get it outside right like relieve some pressure in those ways and they'll figure it out because that's what the game became the defense got to be fast to the point where they had slowed those defensive ends down with the rules as much as they could but no that wasn't gonna cut it right and part of why we saw that change in the paradigm of how football was played is that the 49ers got to the super bowl and almost got to another one with colin kaepernick and they didn't have to hide them in
Speaker 3order to win yeah yeah he he was he was the driving force like their offensive improved improvement uh we talked about it before where where he he ultimately ended up making the entire offense better because everything gets easier when you get to play 11 on 11 football um and that was quite frankly the only thing when you jump back forward to 2016 that terrible offense it was the only thing that made the offense viable at times the fact the fact that you had a quarterback that could basically get you to play 11 on 11 and was kind of figuring his way back into the passing game uh and you know it i know it was said a lot at the time but he he's he's like even if you're not a quarterback you're not a quarterback you're not a quarterback even if you if you can somehow take away everything that happened during the season with a million all that even if you just take like the the raw statistical output of colin kaepernick's career and treat it just as like a squad of numbers there's never been a quarterback that's just disappeared after his five-year output that he had where you get into two conference championship games you're getting to a super bowl even in the season where you come back you're 29 years old you're 16 and four and he never threw another pass like that that has never happened in the history of the league it's not like he's someone that well we saw him start two seasons and god damn it he was the worst thing we've ever seen you know that doesn't happen uh so for him to not even find a backup role or anything beyond that, like, even that would, just off the numbers, just off, like, the on-field performance, that alone makes him, like, a somewhat mysterious-ish figure until you throw in everything else, you know?
Speaker 2Deshaun Kizer, Trevor Simeon, wow, Blake Bortles, and these are guys who were the primary starter for NFL teams that season. The ghost of Jay Cutler.
Speaker 3Oh, man. And I'm saying for the 2017 season, just to be clear. In Miami, that was embarrassing.
Speaker 2Yeah, Case Keenum, what was left of Eli Manning, Josh McCown.
Speaker 3Case Keenum had that 2017 season with the Vikings. He did, but they could have
Speaker 2done that with Kyler Kaepernick. Probably. That's all I'm saying. Like, this is a different story on the same kick. We'll see how it goes. But when people keep talking about, could Kyler Murray be the next Sam Darnold, I'm like, he better than him. Super Bowl or not. Like. Like, what are we talking about, Brian?
Speaker 3Yeah, I was like, man, I was here in New York. I like Sam. He's a good guy, but y'all not going to trick me. Yeah. When I watch my own eyes, man.
Speaker 2No, no, come on. Look, the 49ers went out there with Brian Hoyer. That was the guy that, I mean, I was with you. Hey, I understand if y'all need to, like, start over. Right. It makes sense.
Speaker 3But not to go get Brian Hoyer. Right, like, I thought, oh, like, are y'all about to take, like, Patrick Mahomes? Or Deshaun Watson? Right. Okay, you know, then I kind of get it. But to take, like, Solomon Thomas, like, man, you don't even want to try it?
Speaker 2Don't get me started.
Speaker 3This is your guy. That could have worked. It could have worked.
Speaker 2I mean, don't get me started. But, like, no, but with all of that as it went, you could have easily had Colin as your backup, because when nobody going to ask him to start. Right. Like, this wasn't like Tim Tebow. We're like, oh, man, shit, Jesus freaks. They might start a rebellion outside. No, man. Unless it was going to be the black Israelites out there, like when Kyrie was out, you know, was wilding. You would never go have that. But I think in all this time, you tell me if I'm wrong, I really think a lot of people, I mean, it happened in real time, had just forgotten. No, we had a beast on our hands here. Right. And even if he just proved to be a comet in terms of his performance, there aren't that many comets.
Speaker 3And he was truly one of them. Yeah, I mean, it's kind of tough. Like, when we were talking about the 2014 season, what I was thinking, I was like, man, I don't want to sound like, you know, the stereotype scouting report, you know, but that's what it looked like at times, you know? Man, I don't know if he feels comfortable with what he's looking at right now. But then, like, look at what was going on around him, man. Dude, Jim Tomsula, we were laughing at that guy the second they made him the head coach. Yes. Just, like, looking at him. And then he ended up being just as bad as we thought he was going to be. And then by the end of it, like, Trent Baalke had just done such a terrible job managing that team post-Harbaugh. There was nothing left. But even in, like, the garbage heap that was the 2016 49ers, you still had enough to say, shit, maybe if I'm Washington or something like that and we're looking at, like, whatever's going on with Kirk Cousins or even if you're the 49ers and you're saying Kyle Shan's coming over and saying, man, like, for a year just to try this out, it could have worked. And I remember, like, thinking that I think that's kind of what they were afraid of, too. Like, it could have worked. And that is also, like, not an acceptable outcome for what the powers that be want. I don't want to say wanted, but want, like, in general. And it's just really unfortunate that, like, you see, like, a shining star like that. Someone that you know, like, to a degree has kind of built the groundwork for guys to come after him and have success in the league and at least for teams to take that skill set a little bit more seriously just to vanish like that. It's just horrible. It's horrible. But, yeah, there's really no – you can't talk about this reasonably and say that skill-wise he had no business being in the league without just telling on yourself, which was fine for a lot of people as we saw over the years. They didn't care about telling on themselves and ended up being pretty profitable for them.
Speaker 2Hey, man, that's Charles McDonald, newly employed. Congratulations, brother. Thank you.
Speaker 3Thank you. Yeah, definitely excited to tell the people what's going on and get back. Get back to it. It's been a weird summer, but this is the conversation I need to start thinking about the NFL again because I haven't thought about this shit in two months, but it was good.
Speaker 2Welcome back, brother. And, ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us here on The Right Time. We do this every few days during the summer. Mike McQuaid telling everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line, 323-596-7767. Remember, follow The Right Time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy. ♪♪ Someone once said
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