Chargers put Colin Kaepernick on "emergency workout list" Doug Farrar
5 hrs ago
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Kaepernick “fits the style of quarterback for the system we’ll be running,” Lynn said, per Omar Ruiz of the NFL Network.
During his media availability session on Wednesday, Chargers head coach Anthony Lynn made it clear that his team is the first in the 2020 preseason to make inroads to possibly signing free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
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Right now, after letting Philip Rivers walk in free agency, Lynn’s quarterback depth chart starts with Tyrod Taylor, the veteran who went to the Pro Bowl in 2015, when Lynn was the assistant head coach and running backs coach under Rex Ryan. The offensive coordinator that season was Greg Roman, who currently runs Baltimore’s offense and was Kaepernick’s offensive coordinator with the 49ers from 2011 through 2014. Taylor is the prohibitive starter, followed by Oregon’s Justin Herbert, the sixth overall pick in the 2020 draft, who has all the physical
tools you’d want in a quarterback, but who also has a great deal of work to do when it comes to mechanics and reading the field. Third in line is Easton Stick, who the Chargers took in the fifth round of the 2019 draft out of North Dakota State.
Taylor had a good run in Buffalo, but he’s attempted just 91 passes for the Browns and Chargers over the last two seasons. Not that he can’t succeed in Lynn’s offense, but it’s not an automatic proposition. Which makes the possible addition of Kaepernick quite interesting.
To be clear, Lynn had no definite plan for Kaepernick — at this point, he’s on an “emergency workout list,” which means that he would be brought in for a workout if anything happened to one of the team’s three current quarterbacks.
We’re happy with the three quarterbacks that we want but you can’t have enough on the runway,” Lynn concluded.
With a lot of coaches, this could be seen as mere lip service, and the NFL’s desire to appear “woke” in the wake of George Floyd’s death, and the protests and player activism that have happened since. But Lynn, one of three Black head coaches in the NFL today, has been outspoken all along. This would seem to align with an approval of Kaepernick’s own protests and activism, which have cost him three years of his NFL career to dats.
“I want to make this a better world for the next generation and not just for minorities, but for everybody,” Lynn said in early June. “I believe in diversity, I believe in inclusion and if you believe in that, you can’t just stand silent. You can’t just stand on the sidelines and just watch. You got to say something, man. The thing that bothered me the most about [the] George Floyd murder was the three officers that said nothing. The guy who did it, yeah, he’s a [expletive], but the three who stood by and did absolutely nothing … I’m just stunned by that. I see that going on in every organization. I see good people saying nothing and doing nothing, allowing this to happen.”
Due to the ongoing coronavirus, it’s unknown when training camps will start, and it’s also unknown if and when there will be a preseason. That uncertainty could shorten or outright eliminate the ability for Herbert and Stick to get the reps they’d need to show where they are in their own developments. But based on their college resumes, Herbert and Stick would need some serious ramp-up preparation to be anywhere near ready for prime time. So really, what Lynn might be looking at is bringing Kaepernick in if anything happens to Taylor.
It’s a short step for Kaepernick in his journey back to the NFL, but it’s something. We’ll have to see if anything comes of it, or the league’s recent tacit admissions that Kaepernick has been done wrong all along.
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