Stunner on a Friday afternoon!

Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, who had filed a collusion lawsuit against the NFL, reached a settlement out of court.

A joint statement was released today, reading as such:

That’s from Kaepernick’s lawyer. The NFL shared the same statement on the official league website.

Couple of things to consider here:

  1. settling makes Eric Reid look like a hypocrite, considering that he called Malcolm Jenkins a “sellout” for accepting league money a while back, causing a divide in the Players Coalition
  2. Kaepernick also looks like a sellout for not riding this thing out to the end (assuming he just took a huge amount of hush money here).
  3. Reid just signed a 22 million dollar deal with the Panthers, so his case is weakened.
  4. If the NFL was willing to settle out of court, then there was probably enough evidence to hurt their chances in court
  5. Kaepernick said repeatedly that his protest wasn’t an affront to the military or United States veterans. He began taking a knee SPECIFICALLY out of respect to veterans. He was originally sitting on the bench during the anthem.
  6. I’m glad this thing is finally over.

The NFL Players Association also shared a statement, after the jump:

I’m sure the settlement terms will be leaked at some point. I also think many social justice folks and Kap supporters will be disappointed with how this thing ended.