San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch made a KNBR appearance on Tuesday, and he had plenty to discuss. We’ll have a full time stamp of the interview, but in the meantime I’m going to pull out a few interesting topics.
Lynch chatted with Gary Radnich and Larry Krueger, and Radnich asked him a question about Colin Kaepernick. There is a running narrative about whether or not Kaepernick wants to play football as much as he wants to work for social change. Radnich asked Lynch about that, offering up this question:
Now, as an outsider since we’re talking quarterbacks. You look at Kaepernick. If he really was committed to getting back into the league, both his agent and Kaepernick, would he be back in the league by now? If he was fully committed, if that was the number one thing on his mind.
Lynch offered up an interesting response, based on his own conversation(s) with Kaepernick. The two spoke at least once this offseason, and regardless of how many times they spoke, Lynch was able to form impressions about the quarterback. Lynch had this to say:
I don’t know the answer to that, Gary. And I would tell you with my conversations with Colin, he is fully committed to wanting to be in this league. I also, in my private conversations, and I won’t communicate too much of what we’ve talked about, but I will communicate that I gave that opinion to Colin myself. I think, you are having a little bit of an image crisis in terms of not so much what you did last year, but people are wondering, is this most important to you, at a position where the guys that succeed at that position are the guys that live it, breathe it, the CEOs that play that position. And I think there is a perception that football’s not on the top of his list. And so, my communication with Colin was that your best effort, I think the way you could best help yourself is to not have someone talk for you, not have statements, but go sit down and do an interview, and let people know exactly where you stand. Because he makes a compelling case as to how bad he wants to be in the league when you talk to him. And so, I’ll leave it at that, but we did have those discussions and I think that would help him.
I would love to see Kaepernick sit down for an interview and talk about this whole process (I’ll happily volunteer!), but I also don’t think it’s something he has to do. If teams want to know whether or not he wants to play football, it’s a simple process to pick up the phone and ask him. But at this point, I’ll just offer up the cliche of, it is what it is.