Doug Pederson Didn't Spend Too Much Time Answering the Colin Kaepernick Question
Doug Pederson spoke to reporters this weekend in a session where the questions were predominantly about new signing Josh McCown and the status of both Cody Kessler and Nate Sudfeld.
He was, however, asked about Colin Kaepernick and whether or not the Eagles showed any interest in bringing in the 31-year-old former San Francisco quarterback. I didn’t expect much of an answer from him, but this is the full verbatim, when asked by Allentown Morning Call reporter Nick Fierro:
Was Colin Kaepernick ever considered?
Doug: We consider everybody, honestly. We consider everybody and do what’s best for the Eagles.
That’s it. That’s the entire thing, all 14 words, and I’m not sure if there’s any reading between the lines to be done here. The Birds had already added McCown when the question was asked, so it really doesn’t benefit Pederson to spend too much time talking about the guy they didn’t sign. It seemed like a pretty safe and straightforward answer at the time.
The “should the Eagles have signed Kaepernick?” thing came up again this weekend when the McCown addition was announced, with some people wondering why the Birds would go for a 40-year-old veteran over a guy who is nine years younger and has played in a Super Bowl.
That resulted in a few points being reiterated throughout the social media-sphere, among them:
- McCown played 17 games for the Jets over the last two seasons while Kaepernick has been out of the league entirely.
- McCown comes in on a one year, two million dollar contract. Would Kap sign on for something like that? He was allegedly offered a deal by Denver a while back that John Elway says he turned down.
- With McCown you know what you’re getting, which is a stable backup. He’s not going to blow the doors off of anybody, but you know what he is. Kaepernick is a total wild card who hasn’t played since 2016.
Those were some of the points I saw. They aren’t necessarily my points, but those are the “narratives” or explanations that have popped up most frequently in reading various tweets/threads/posts about the Kap/McCown thing.
I do think that if the Eagles were truly interested, that the political and/or distraction thing would not be that big of a deal. Jeffrey Lurie is one of the more progressive NFL owners and Malcolm Jenkins and Chris Long have spoken out on social justice issues in the past, so I don’t think the Eagles culture would have really been affected by Kaepernick’s addition. You’d get the incredible media shit storm for a week or two, and then it would have eventually subsided with Carson Wentz taking the reins for the September 8th season opener. That’s what happened with the Michael Vick signing about 10 years ago – insanity to begin, then the calm after the storm.
Of course people will say, “but he’s being blackballed by the NFL!,” which doesn’t interface with that Elway said in 2018. But if the blackballing thing is true, and Elway is full of crap, then I don’t blame the NFL for icing Kaepernick.
Do you?
If you sued the owner of your company and undertook actions that caused controversy and negatively affected the business, would you maybe understand why you no longer have a place in that company? That always seemed very obvious to me.
But I digress. I think we’ve probably seen the end of the Colin Kaepernick-to-Philly storyline, unless Clayton Thorson and McCown both go down injured in the next two weeks.
Here’s what Doug said about the latter this weekend:
Obviously, you know our situation at quarterback right now. We have a couple guys right now that are banged up. It kind of falls in line with not only the injury situation, but also the fact that when we have an opportunity to add a little value, depth and competition to that spot, a veteran guy who has been around the league – and I have said this all along, the quarterback position is not immune to any of this. That’s why we did it. We’re excited to get him in here, get him caught up, and see what he can do.
A couple of other bullets from the availability:
- I imagine Sudfeld will probably be the third quarterback, but Pederson says they’re “not there yet” in making that determination.
- Nothing changed with Sudfeld’s recovery from the broken wrist.
- Can McCown play Thursday? – “We’ll see where he is. Obviously, he has a lot to learn and to catch up on. So we’ll see. We’ll see on that.”
- Nothing has changed with Kessler’s status. He’s still in concussion protocol.
- They will wear pads during both of the scrimmages with the Ravens this week.
- Brandon Brooks has not yet been cleared to work in team exercises
That’s about it. It does kind of suck that Cody Kessler is going to lose his job because of a blindside hit in a preseason game. With McCown in the fold and draft pick Clayton Thorson looking better in Jacksonville, Kessler is going to be the odd man out when the roster is trimmed.