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The idea that Kaepernick was blackballed out of the league seems like pure fanfiction to me. He was coming off his age 29 season and in the prior two years of starts, his teams went 3-16. His surface stats look OK, but he ate an enormous amount of sacks while being a checkdown machine resulting in him finishing just behind Brock Osweiler and Trevor Simian in advanced stats like QBR. His successful years in San Francisco relied heavily on his athleticism and an offense tailored to his strengths by Greg Roman, who specializes in drawing up offenses for limited, but athletic QBs (also the offensive coordinator for the Bills with Tyrod Taylor and Ravens with Lamar Jackson). At 30, his athleticism was fading.
Basically, he was already a huge liability that would be a shot in the dark gamble if someone wanted to try starting him. More realistically, he'd be employed as a backup for someone he's stylistically similar to. That's less appealing than more ordinary backups because you more or less need an offense tailored to deal with his lack of ability to run through progressions and inclination towards taking sacks rather than forcing tight window passes.
Realistically, someone would probably have done it anyway, basically viewing him as an old version of Mitchell Trubisky. Athletic QBs always get another chance, even if they kind of suck. But what was his inclination to play the role of the good veteran mentor, working hard to be ready to fill in if needed, but mostly just waiting on the bench? Would he be willing to do that? I greatly doubt it. Given that, what possible upside could come from selecting Kaepernick instead of just signing Matt Barkley and moving on with your life?
The main issue with an athletic quarterback is how good his arm is. Your QB may be able to do somersaults into the end zone but he's no good if he can't beat you with his arm if he needs to; otherwise, every play is a running play and he's just another running back. Guys like Michael Vick and Russel Wilson were and are athletic as hell, but they can also pass. Kaepernick's problem wasn't so much that he was incapable of passing, but that he didn't have the patience for it. On every pass play he would do his reads real quick and if nothing was there he'd leave the pocket and start running. And to make matters worse, he wasn't scrambling with an eye to pass—when most good athletic QBs leave the pocket, they're still looking downfield hoping something will open up. Kaepernick tucked and started looking for daylight. If he did look up again, he was completely lost and forced to check down or take a sack. As a Steeler fan (and Pitt fan), that's what's so encouraging about Kenny Pickett; he's mobile but he's always looking to pass until the play is completely blown, and even then he's not afraid to throw the ball away if there's no good running lane.
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I think it really depends on the money he wanted, if you could get him cheap enough to hold down the position through a year or two rebuild, there probably would have been demand for him, but he wasn't going to be getting a franchise QB type of contract based on his age and the style of play he had.
Yeah. I mean worse players have managed to ride the pine for a couple seasons, but a combination of him being super-specialized and outspoken meant that he probably lost out on that kind of role.
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Nah, it wouldn't have. The Colts under Pagano ran a West Coast Offense that revolved around Andrew Luck, who was more of a traditional pocket passer. See what I wrote above, but Brissett is basically the opposite of Kaepernick. He likes to stay in the pocket as long as possible and gun downfield, rarely checking down. He has enough athleticism to get out of a jam, but that's not his specialty. For the Colts to have gone with Kaeprnick it would have required them to retool their entire playbook (and, by extension, their entire offense) for one year only while Luck recuperated. If Kap had lit the league on fire in 2016 then it might have been worth it, but if that were the case then Chip Kelly probably wouldn't have been fired and the 49ers would have exercised their option. The main reason Kap was let go was because Kyle Shanahan wanted to retool the entire offense to a style more similar to the Colts, and Brian Hoyer and Handsome Jimmy were more suited to that style.
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