Was there a quid pro quo offered to Colin Kaepernick or was it just an unspoken ultimatum?
I don’t know exactly how the discussions between 49ers officials and Kaepernick went down before Thursday’s loss to Arizona, but we do know that:
1) As first reported by the NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport, a few days ago the 49ers and Kaepernick held some productive talks about restructuring his contract to lessen or eliminate the injury guarantee for his $14.5M salary in 2017 and add in some other adjustments;
In fact, I’m told those discussions occurred Thursday–hours before the Arizona game;
2) The talks were paired, an NFL source says, with the understanding that agreeing to an adjusted deal would increase the likelihood that Kaepernick got into the game that night; and that not signing the new deal would make it unlikelier that he would play that night, even if Blaine Gabbert struggled again;
I’m not saying that there was a 49ers ultimatum–sign the new deal or you stay on the sideline–but given the timing involved, it’s hard to imagine that wasn’t at least silently implied or assumed;
3) Kaepernick may have generally seemed open to most of the ideas, but told the 49ers he couldn’t sign it until his agents and lawyers looked at it.
That is where this stopped.
Yes, my understanding is that these initial talks went on largely without Kaepernick’s agents involved. Read into that what you will.
we took Redmond AND Robinson back to back in 3rd/4th and passed up on Dak.
