Colin Kaepernick is back in football, but only in the video game form.
Madden 21 has added Kaepernick to the player pool for the first time since 2016, it announced via Twitter on Wednesday, one day before the 2020 season is set to kick off between the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans.
Madden 21 tweeted a statement on his addition, with a tweet: "Welcome Back, Kap!"
"Knowing that our EA Sports experiences are platforms for players to create, we want to make Madden NFL a place that reflects Colin's position and talent, rates him as a starting QB, and empowers our fans to express their hopes for the future of football," the statement read. "We've worked with Colin to make this possible, and we're excited to bring it to all of you today."
The video game might have rates Kaepernick as an NFL starter, but the fact remains he was a backup when he left the league in 2016 and the quarterback who replaced him Blaine Gabbert is not even a starter in the league either. He is a backup for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and did not appear in a game in 2019.
Teams were not serious about considering Kaepernick back to the NFL, according to a report Monday.
Citing a source, Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio called that interest "fake" and said it resulted "seemingly out of guilt" during the aftermath of the Memorial Day weekend death of George Floyd in Minnesota.
"There has been zero interest expressed as to Kaepernick 'in months,'" Florio wrote in a piece published Monday.
Kaepernick, 32, last played in the NFL in 2016, the year in which he took a knee during the national anthem as a protest against racism and police brutality.
Floyd, an unarmed Black man, died May 25 when a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled on his neck for more than eight minutes while making an arrest.
Floyd's death sparked worldwide protests and appeared to rekindle interest in Kaepernick, who started 58 games for the San Francisco 49ers – including Super Bowl XLVII.
"At one point along the way, NFL Media reported that teams had contacted 'friends and associates' of Kaepernick, and that they would be contacting his agent when they 'get to the point where they're confident enough that they think they can work out a contract,'" Florio wrote. "So either they never got to the point of confidence that they can work out a contract, or it was all just more bullsh**."
"For more than three years, teams have hidden behind 'he wouldn't want anything other than a starting job' to excuse not offering him anything other than a starting job," Florio continued. "Meanwhile, for more than three years, no one has bothered to even ask."
Information from Field League Media through Reuters was used in this report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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