OutKick’s Armando Salguero argues the league has finally moved on from the years-long ritual of scolding any team that didn’t sign Colin Kaepernick. His hook: the Colts reached out to multiple quarterbacks, including retired Philip Rivers, and no one of note complained that Kaepernick wasn’t called. The customary outrage never showed up.
Salguero frames the non-reaction as the end of an era. Media figures who once led the charge stayed quiet, fans shrugged, and teams kept making football decisions without the culture-war lecture. The piece lists a string of practice-squad QB signings this season and notes the obvious: Kaepernick’s NFL career effectively ended in 2016, and it took nearly a decade for the conversation to catch up.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colts tapped Philip Rivers and others in a QB search. The usual Kaepernick backlash never materialized. That silence matters.
- No “blackballed” headlines, no racism charges, not even from high-profile advocates who once drove the discourse.
- Around the league, a parade of practice-squad quarterbacks got deals while the Kaepernick ritual faded into the background.
- The thesis: teams care about performance and complications, not appeasing media narratives. Era over, finally.
- Bottom line of the column: everyone has accepted what was true since 2016 — his NFL run is done and the league has moved on.
My Bottom Line
This surprised me… and I’m here for it. I bailed on the NFL when every broadcast turned into a grad seminar on grievance. I came back this year for Bo Nix and the Broncos and noticed something: the DEI lectures disappeared. Games looked like games again.
Credit to OutKick for saying the quiet part plainly: the lack of outrage is the story. Maybe the league finally realized most fans want football on Sunday, not lectures. That doesn’t erase the past or forbid personal causes; it simply restores the bargain between the league and the people who pay the bills – play great, entertain us, and keep politics on the sideline.
If this really is the end of the Kaepernick era, good. Let the best players play, let front offices make decisions without media hostage notes, and let fans enjoy the escape hatch that sports used to be. When football is about football, everybody wins, including the NFL’s bottom line. Keep it that way.
Source: OutKick
