What do they have to lose except more games?
Our beloved Green Bay Packers have been dismal since losing star quarterback Aaron Rodgers five games ago, including Sunday’s 23-0 shutout to Baltimore. The Packers haven’t been held scoreless in 11 seasons.
Rodgers’ backup, Brett Hundley, just hasn’t performed up to even modest expectations. On Sunday he threw three interceptions and gave away a fumble. His passer rating — one number that combines pass attempts, completions, passing yards, touchdowns and interceptions — is a dismal 63, which is second to last in the NFL. By comparison, Rodgers’ rating was 103 before he was cut down by injury.
Let’s face it. Brett Hundley just isn’t working out. So why not try Colin Kaepernick? In six seasons with San Francisco, Kaepernick had an 88.9 passer rating. That was good enough for 17th among all NFL quarterbacks with 1,500 passing attempts or more since 1973, when the rating started to be used officially. That’s 17th out of 185 quarterbacks on that list, putting him in the top 10 percent of all regular starting quarterbacks in the last 44 years. And Kaepernick is far from over the hill, having just turned 30.
Any other quarterback with a record like that would have been snapped up by the Packers by now — except that anybody but Kaepernick wouldn’t have even been on the market at this point. Kaepernick should have found employment with another NFL team long ago.
There just isn’t much question in my mind, or in the minds of a lot of other desperate Packers fans, that Colin Kaepernick is not playing football this season because of his political views and his decision to air them in the workplace. Kaepernick, of course, is the guy who started the controversy over taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police shootings of African Americans.
Now, look, even I’m not sure I particularly liked the way in which Kaepernick chose to protest. I like to think of sports as entertainment and a distraction. I hate it when Hollywood types go off on some rant while they’re picking up their Oscar and what Kaepernick did was similar.
Moreover, while it’s a good thing to bring attention to a serious issue like this, it’s not as if the issue of police shootings has been swept under a rug. The nation is struggling mightily with this just as it should, but I don’t know that anybody needed a football player to bring it back into a spotlight it has never left.
But who cares? As the sainted Vince Lombardi said, when it comes to professional football, “Winning is the only thing.” Sure some fans would grumble, but if Kaepernick started getting the Pack winning again my guess is that most would conclude that it was more important to see more Packers standing in the end zone than on the sidelines during the Star Spangled Banner.
