This whole Kaep thing is weird. He didn’t set it up, the NFL did, and basically gave him and the teams no notice. And set it for the worst day of the week possible. He doesn’t even know who the receivers would be.
It feels like they basically set him up to fail so they can go, “See, we gave him a chance.”
I read this too, if it’s true, something is very fishy. There’s an ulterior motive and it isn’t about helping Kaep or the teams.
It’s about improving the image of the NFL. It’s the same reason why they started to come down hard on domestic abusers and tried to make the rules protect the head in the wake of all the CTE reports. They have the top rung in sports right now and want to duct tape their hands to that rung.
People griped about protesting the anthem, they changed rules about that.
People griped about Colin getting blacklisted, they’re going to at least pretend to give him a chance, even if they’re stacking the deck against him actually making it in.
Just wait until the next complaint about the NFL pops up. Something about jerseys or the environmental impact of artificial turf or people griping about the font they use on the virtual scoreboard. They’ll do something showy and ineffectual just so people see that they’re “doin’ somethin’ ‘bout it”.
I just read this article about teams sending representatives to the workout:
14 teams, almost half the league, reportedly will have people there. The NFL initially only listed 11.
Here are the teams so far that should be there:
Arizona
Atlanta
Cleveland
Dallas
Denver
Detroit
Miami
New England
New York Giants
New York Jets
San Francisco
Seattle
Tampa Bay
Washington
The fact that San Francisco will be there amuses me somewhat. Imagine that he gets hired to back up Garoppolo?
You’ve gotta wonder how much pressure the league office put on the owners to send token personnel. Every person watching this one session is one less person evaluating college players on gameday. That’s plain absurd but it’s happening anyway.
No, this feels like something more specific than just image rehab. People had basically forgotten about Kaep and it had blown over. It feels like some event prompted this hastily thrown together farce.
Hmm like a legal maneuver? Maybe this lets the NFL claim plausible deniability about blacklisting or discrimination? Maybe ahead of a motion of some kind? I’d buy that.