NFL teams "genuinely hate" former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick – one executive calling him "an embarrassment to football" – a GM told Bleacher Report's Mike Freeman.
"He can still play at a high level – the problem is three things are happening with him," the source reportedly said. "First, some teams genuinely believe that he can't play. They think he's shot. I'd put that number around 20 percent.
"Second, some teams fear the backlash from fans after getting him. They think there might be protests or [President Donald] Trump will tweet about the team. I'd say that number is around 10 percent. Then there's another 10 percent that has a mix of those feelings.
"Third, the rest genuinely hate him and can't stand what he did [kneeling for the national anthem]."
Kaepernick whipped up a firestorm for his protest against police treatment of minorities this past fall, which might have attributed to current lack of interest on the free-agent market in a league with a dearth of quarterbacks. From all the noise of the past fall, the "silence is deafening" now, Freeman wrote.
"They want nothing to do with him," the source told Freeman. "They won't move on. They think showing no interest is a form of punishment. I think some teams also want to use Kaepernick as a cautionary tale to stop other players in the future from doing what he did."
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