Denver Broncos: Why the team should sign Colin Kaepernick

The Denver Broncos should sign Colin Kaepernick for the 2020 season.

Drew Lock is the present and hopefully the future of the Denver Broncos at the quarterback position. That doesn’t mean the team should avoid having a deep quarterback room, including the option of signing free agent Colin Kaepernick.

The Broncos have been connected to Kaepernick for quite some time.

After Super Bowl 50, the Broncos’ top option to replace Peyton Manning was to trade for Kaepernick, who had helped take the 49ers to the Super Bowl just a couple of years prior.

The Broncos and 49ers had agreed to the compensation details of the trade involving Kaepernick, and at the time, the Broncos were the only team legitimately vying for him. Kaepernick had multiple meetings with John Elway in person to try and hash out a new contract, but the two sides could not come to an agreement.

The Broncos were essentially trying to get Kaepernick to take a significant pay cut because of their own cap situation, but coming off of a Super Bowl victory and with such a solid core roster around him, it made sense that Kaepernick might eventually get his pay increase back if he were to successfully rehab his career with the reigning champion Broncos.

At least, it made sense to many in Broncos Country (myself included) who desperately wanted to see it happen.

After all of the cool photoshopped images of Kaepernick in a Broncos uniform, nothing happened. The Broncos drafted Paxton Lynch in the first round of the 2016 NFL Draft and Kaepernick stayed with the 49ers, agreeing to a restructured deal while starting 11 of 12 games played.

That was also Kaepernick’s last season in the NFL in which he started to kneel during the National Anthem, protesting against police brutality and advocating for social justice.

Since that season, Kaepernick has been essentially blackballed by the entire NFL. Some will say that Kaepernick was not employed by the NFL due to his regression in play, but there are hundreds of other quarterbacks who are way worse than what Kaepernick showed his last time on an NFL field who have still been employed by the league since 2016.

The events that have unfolded in 2020 have resulted in many drastic changes around the country and around the world, but something not many saw coming was the NFL advocating for Kaepernick to be signed, specifically league commissioner Roger Goodell.

With everything that has gone on so far in 2020, it is expected that thousands of NFL employees  (meaning players and coaches) are going to use their platform to kneel and peacefully protest. The even playing field across the league has really paved the way for teams to sign Kaepernick even though that day is past due. At the very least, he is good enough and has a good enough resumé to be a team’s backup or third option, which leads us to the Denver Broncos again.

Should the Broncos sign Kaepernick? Considering the fact that he’s not going to be the ‘distraction’ he was once thought to be with the majority of the NFL joining alongside him this season, there are fewer reasons for the Broncos or any team to leave him sitting in free agency.

The Broncos are out on the forefront of change in the NFL these days. They reached a groundbreaking deal with FanDuel and Betfred as the first NFL team to officially partner with a sports gambling company.

https://twitter.com/Broncos/status/1272582312237191170

The Broncos were the first NFL team to organize a city-wide peaceful protest this offseason.

The team was also recognized by ESPN for its off-field efforts as a finalist for the ESPN Sports Humanitarian Team of the Year.

https://twitter.com/Broncos/status/1263138037581713408

The Broncos have also done things like using virtual reality to help rookie Drew Lock rehab from his thumb injury last year and get him ready for regular-season action.

There is no doubt the Broncos are out on the forefront of a number of things compared to other NFL teams, and being the team to sign Kaepernick would sort of fit in with a lot of that.

I want to take a look at some football reasons the Broncos should consider signing Kaepernick as well, and reasons why it might not be so surprising if they’re the team he ends up on in 2020.

For the record, I do think he’s going to be on some NFL club by the time the 2020 season begins.

Here’s why it should be the Denver Broncos.

Familiarity with the coaching staff

Last offseason, the obscure connection between Broncos head coach Vic Fangio and newly acquired quarterback Joe Flacco was cited as one of the reasons the team felt comfortable trading for the veteran signal-caller.

Fangio was a defensive assistant with Baltimore for a few seasons including two seasons of overlap with Flacco, and that was a connection that was cited as one of the number of reasons the team felt good about making the trade they wound up making.

If that connection was meaningful enough, then certainly Fangio’s connection to Kaepernick from their time together in San Francisco (2011-14) is notable.

Fangio was the defensive coordinator so he wasn’t working directly with Kaepernick, but he certainly knows him well and was around him for his best years.

Defensive coordinator Ed Donatell was also on the 49ers staff with Fangio during that time, and Denver Broncos running backs coach Curtis Modkins was Kaepernick’s offensive coordinator during the 2016 season.

The Broncos have coaches on their staff who can speak directly to what kind of person and player Kaepernick is and how he would fit in with the current group of guys in Denver’s locker room.

The offense can work for Kaepernick

There is a common misconception out there that the team that signs Kaepernick would have to implement an offense that is basically what the Baltimore Ravens run.

That makes some sense because Greg Roman, the offensive coordinator in Baltimore, was the offensive coordinator in San Francisco during Kaepernick’s best years as a pro.

With that said, Pat Shurmur has utilized all different types of athletes at the quarterback position from guys like Case Keenum, Nick Foles, and Sam Bradford to Daniel Jones and Donovan McNabb.

The main common denominator between Shurmur’s quarterbacks is that all of them have typically found success in his system.

It just so happens that Kaepernick’s physical profile has two notable comps on it (click the link to see both, one is not included in the embed code). See if you can point them out:

The point of showing that is this — if the Broncos can construct an offense for both Drew Lock and Jeff Driskel to succeed, there is no reason Kaepernick can’t also fit in it.

Having three quarterbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic

I’m not sure if the NFL is going to implement special roster exemptions for the 2020 season, but it should be discussed and ultimately they need to add special permissions for this season with the COVID-19 pandemic and the implications of players being forced to miss time with positive tests.

Nothing has been officially stated by the NFL at this point, but it is not unreasonable to assume that if a player contracts the coronavirus, he will be forced to sit out for two weeks.

Let’s just play out a scenario with that.

Let’s say the Broncos are 8-4 going into the final quarter of the 2020 season and they have a real shot at winning the AFC West against the Chiefs who are 9-3. Let’s say sometime after the 12th game of the season, Drew Lock happens to test positive and is forced to sit two weeks. The next week, Jeff Driskel plays and gets hurt or even tests positive himself.

That would leave you with at least one week where you have to use a third-string quarterback in the midst of a playoff hunt.

Of course, if the league is experiencing positive tests at that rapid of a rate, who knows if they will cease play or what they would do?

The point is, it might be more important this year than in any other season to have three quarterbacks on your roster who can play.

The Broncos found out the hard way in 2019 what a couple of injuries at the quarterback position can do to your team.

Having a player like Kaepernick, even not having played since 2016, gives you a better option than other end-of-the-roster alternatives.

It’s never unwise to plan for injury in the NFL, but in a year where quarterbacks could not even be injured or experiencing symptoms and be forced to sit out games makes it all the more necessary to prepare for the best alternatives.

The Broncos were interested in Kaepernick less than a year ago

In 2018, Denver Broncos general manager John Elway was bullish about the fact that Colin Kaepernick had passed on his chance to be in Denver.

"“You know what, and I said this a while ago: Colin had his chance to be here. We offered him a contract. He didn’t take it. As I said in my deposition … he’s had his chance to be here. He passed it.” John Elway via ESPN"

Many people have been referencing this quote from Elway in regards to the team’s current position when it comes to potentially signing him, but is that really the case?

The Broncos were one of a short list of teams who were on the field for Kaepernick’s strange workout session organized by the NFL last season, a workout that was ultimately relocated which forced top pro scout Jordan Dizon to miss it entirely.

With that said, the Broncos RSVP’d and were in attendance before the scheduling conflict.

Their attendance there didn’t necessarily mean they would have signed him on the spot, but the fact that the Broncos were one of the teams interested in watching him work out — even if it was just a convenient stop for Dizon on the way to Miami — is significant.

Vic Fangio does not have final say in personnel moves, but John Elway and Matt Russell definitely seem to trust him when it comes to roster decisions. Fangio isn’t scouring the free agent market, necessarily, but he will give his opinions on guys and one example of that was the Broncos signing Mike Purcell last offseason because of his familiarity with Fangio.

The fact of the matter is, the Broncos have shown interest in Kaepernick more recently than John Elway has shut the idea down, and you had better believe Dizon wasn’t going to that workout by his own volition.

Something shifted for the Broncos and Kaepernick between 2018 and 2019, and Fangio’s presence is hard to ignore in that regard.

Whether it’s as the backup to Drew Lock or the third-string quarterback, the Broncos should be the team that signs Colin Kaepernick and brings him back into the NFL.