The Right Time with Bomani Jones - Before Colin Kaepernick was Blackballed...He was DOMINANT | Bomani Jones & Charles McDonald

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Bomani Jones is joined by Charles McDonald to kick off a historical retrospective series looking back at Colin Kaepernick, a decade after his initial protest. In this episode, Bo and Charles refocus the conversation on a frequently forgotten element: just how good of a football player Kaepernick truly was. They trace his trajectory from his breakout college days at Nevada running the pistol offense to being drafted by the San Francisco 49ers.123The duo breaks down Jim Harbaugh’s high-stakes mid-season decision to replace Alex Smith with Kaepernick, a move that instantly raised the team's ceiling and altered the strategic landscape of the NFL. They relive the historic, record-setting playoff game against the Green Bay Packers and explore the widespread proliferation of the zone read option across the league. Bo and Charles also analyze the subsequent challenges, front-office tension, coaching changes, and roster downgrades that defined the later years of his career. Ultimately, they evaluate his final seasons under Chip Kelly, his standing as a clear starting-caliber signal-caller, and his lasting legacy as a historically significant figure in modern football history . . . Subscribe to Supercast for Ad-Free Episodes: https://righttime.supercast.com/ Buy 'The Right Time' merch: http://therighttimebomani.com/ Subscribe to The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok for all the best moments from the show. Download Full Podcast Here: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6N7fDvgNz2EPDIOm49aj7M?si=FCb5EzTyTYuIy9-fWs4rQA&nd=1&utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-right-time-with-bomani-jones/id982639043?utm_source=hoobe&utm_medium=social Follow The Right Time with Bomani Jones on Social Media: http://lnk.to/therighttime Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Thanks for listening wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We are doing a bit of a historical series right now as we looked up and realized that this month is 10 years since Colin Kaepernick decided to set things on fire

by literally sitting next to the water. a cool. That's all it took from the set the world on fire. So we got a whole series episodes that we want to do talking about that looking back on it. But I think the biggest thing we talk about, and I think it's very important, is that the reason that Colin Kaepernick was a big enough

deal to generate all this interest in the first place is because Colin Kaepernick was a really good football player, the part that gets forgotten. So talk about that part. We got my man in here now. Charles McDonald here to join us. I can't quite think of what the best way is to introduce you other than tortured Falcons fan.

Yeah, that's definitely relevant to this discussion. Very relevant to discussion. This is actually really funny. And I don't really have a way to introduce myself yet. Maybe by the time this comes out, people will know. But not homeless anymore. Not homeless anymore.

Yes. Yeah, after a very, very strange summer. But, yeah, the Falcons are very relevant to this story because I think they're part of the Kaepernick story in terms of just his play on the field. and how he really just kind of put belt to ass in a way that it felt very familiar to Falcons fans over the second half of that game. But man, like, just, it really just feels strange that we've already hit the 10-year mark since that season. And the last time you played because I remember that was more when I was an online person on Twitter.

And I was getting into arguments. I look back. I'm like, man, why did I waste time? All the time. Yeah. Yeah, look at baseball. It's like, yo, man. I thought I was.

I thought I was helping make change. And maybe I was, right? Like I think I could put some things. But let me tell you this, that motherfucker can take a knee right now. Somebody else's going to have to get out there and engage in the fight. It's on that front.

You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm up here operating more like a general. Maybe I'm deploying people. Yeah, yeah. Because it was the Kaepernick season and then the Lamar Jackson drafts like back to back years, basically. And I was like, oh, man, I've made my stance as clear as, but we had a little burnout on this, you know?

No, no, no. So here's what it was. it was Kaepernick season one. Then it was the year Kaepernick didn't play, which was year one of the Trump term. That's right. Then the next year was the Lamar Jackson,

which is also the Baker Mayfield, Josh Allen, Josh Rose, and Sam Donald Draft. Like, it was a lot going on. But I want to hit Rewind before we get to there, and I want to ask you this if you can remember it. I probably should have asked you this before we started the show,

but whatever we hear now. Do you remember the first time that you became aware of Kaepernick as a player. Oh, it was probably, it was definitely like his, his last year at Nevada. The Boise State game that year was when I was like, oh, I don't really know what this is. This, like this player is fascinating just when you look at the size and speed, just kind of like the raw power that made him a fascinating NFL player too, but also like the pistol offense that

Nevada was like using that year. That really had kind of got them. Kind of to like the heights of of what Nevada football possibly could be and has been since then. They went like 13 and 1. They finished in the top 10 or right outside the top 10. They had the Boise State game that year where it felt like they absolutely couldn't stop him in overtime victory late in that game.

And it's funny because I was, I was talking to, you know, our buddy Nate Tice a couple days ago and he was doing, you know, he's doing his Wisconsin Badger's, propaganda, mid-2010s, Wisconsin Badger's propaganda. But he was showing the top offenses in the country from the 2010 season by advanced statistics. And there was Nevada number two, you know, on the, you know, EPA per play. And that was like all Kaepernick. When you go back and you go and watch them those games and see how just dominant he was within that offense, it really did kind of change the sport and obviously put him on the radar where he,

Damien, ended up a first round pick. So I remember for me in 2008, I was emailing with my old buddy to OG Bruce Feldman. And 08 was a year of a lot of really good young quarterbacks being out. That was Terrell Pryor's freshman year at Ohio State. That was Russell Wilson's red shirt freshman year at NC State. That was Robert Griffin's freshman year at Baylor. Like it was a lot of guys that was out there doing it. and I remember he asked me to put my quarterbacks in a list that he had.

I can't remember everybody. Like, I think Blaine Gabbard, like, it's kind of on that list, too. But, like, I can't remember everybody that I had. But I remember that my top two guys in some order, I think my number one was Griffin and my number two was Wilson. I remember that I think Bruce also had Griffin at number one because it made me feel, like, very good about my abilities to, like, evaluate stuff. But his number two was Kaepernick, of whom I hit Never Horace.

heard. I was totally unaware of who this person was. I was just like, huh, ain't that something. And I didn't bother to go find out more. And if I'm being honest, it's probably because I might have thought that he was a Caucasian. So I didn't really, I was going to find out soon enough. You know what I'm saying? I was like, huh, we all have the moment, though. We all have the moment, though. Yeah, like, I remember, it feels like there's this quarterback named Colin Kaepernick, and he's a Kappa. I'm like, what do you guys talking about? Oh, yeah, yeah. If somebody gave me the Kappa part, I'd have been actually confused because I thought he would have been like a white people Kappa.

And for those who do not know, the white people Kappas, they are Confederate. But anyway, so he tells me this about Kaepernick. I don't really like get into figuring out who he is. But I do remember. And I didn't watch that Boise State Nevada game. And for people who don't remember this or were not of age to know what happened in this gang, Boise State had, I forget who they beat in the bowl game in 2009, but 2010, Boise State was a legitimate national championship contender. And it was, you know, for many reasons, like a provocative question as to whether or not a team that played in the Mountain West could be that good.

But they had been good now for a very long time. I want to say that's the year that they played Virginia Tech early in the year in D.C. And they went and won that game. Like they had one of those, we can beat the teams that you think we need to beat. And they get all the way to the end of the year. And they play against Nevada. And I will always remember that after Kaepernick had set the world on fire, there was some woman at a game at a Boise State that had a sign that said,

we hated Kaepernick before it was cool. And the reason that they hated Kaepernick before it was cool is because he ate their asses up out there, right? Yeah. big, tall, strong, ridiculously fast dude, running an offense that if you were really like deep in the woods of college football, I think you understood what was going on with the pistol. But the truth was, unless you were really, what Chris Alt was doing there, unless he was out here watching Nevada football, it had really started working its way into other offenses, right?

So I've heard about this kind of let it. For me, it was almost like some old school stuff where you just hear whispers about guys. like I hear this dude that play at Eisenhower High School. They say he a beast, right? And then maybe somebody goes across town and checks him out, right? We didn't, like, the internet was not deployed in the way for us to become as aware of all these people as we might have. But he becomes that dude. The 49ers drafted him in the second round in 2011.

And for those you who don't remember, Cam Newton was the number one pick in 2011. And then some terrible whites went after him in the first round. And you're like, why am I referring to them as terrible white? Because being white is how Blaine Gabbardt, the athlete playing quarterback, Jake Locker, those are the, I don't think I'm missing anybody in the first round. Those were the two. Christian Ponder was in that first round too. Christian Ponder was on that.

They had the famous, like the Sports Illustrated cover. And they were like, which one do you take? I'll take the one that basically took a team that had one of the NFL player that made off that offense in the late Philip, Kirkson, Miami, or works in Miami, I forget, the fullback titan guy, and then Nick Fairley on defense.

And they went to Alabama, to Alabama against the defense that ended up having like eight or nine first round picks on it, like all the way through because CJ Mosley was a freshman on that team even though he still played. And they won.

Dude, like, why would you not take that guy? Well, I want to be fair to Sports Illustrated on that one, knowing a little bit about how things work, I know what happened. and I really submitted for me when Pete Thammer went down there tried to get Honey Badge for that interview that time and couldn't get him

and then that he's had a stock photo of Honey Badger on the cover with a monochrome background. Clearly the interview they tried to get with Cam Newton, they could not get. And I'm pretty sure it was because it was after that icon entertainer quote, right? Peter King got from him.

So they couldn't get a feature with Cam and so they're like, well, damn, now what do we do? And so they had stock photos of all the guys. eyes and they throw them out there. And Sports Illustrator is good for a yellow-ass inflammatory headline, right? They love those.

And so they put that out there. Yeah, we've been talking crazy about that shit forever. But I bring all that up because the second round, I want to say that the pick before Kaepernet was Cincinnati. I think it was, yeah, I would say Andy Don. And they took Andy Dalton, right? Which I think looking back, back on it was an interesting choice because Andy Dalton, even if as game manager,

I think was ready to start in the NFL and did. And they immediately became like a division champion level program. The drafted AJ Green in the first round. I mean, for a second round pick, they did all right with Andy Dalton. The next pick, yeah. Yeah, the next pick was Colin Kaepernick. And it was Harbaugh's first year with the 49ers. And it manifests itself when you get into 2012. But the thing that I didn't quite realize is that any player that a team takes in the second round is a player that a team expects to become a starter. Yes. Maybe they are not a starter tomorrow. But second round is for starters, right?

36 overall, yeah? Yeah. Like, that's a starter. But, I mean, they drafted Alex Smith. And Smith turned, who had been roundly considered one of the biggest busts at quarterback that there had been. we got five years to be there. Harbaugh, the quarterback whisper gets there. There is an improvement from Alex Smith.

And Alex Smith has that great game in the 2011 NFC championship game, right? Like, it was a great game and then had a bad game in the NFC. Excuse me, the NFC Division Round was the great game. The NFC Championship was the bad game where he couldn't convert a first down. Like, I think I forget how many first downs they did not convert on passing. And that gave us this Eli Manning's shit that we still got to deal. with because then he got two super bowls. Yeah.

Yeah. I think the Alex, the Alex Smith part of this is so important because, look, I get like when Alex Smith goes on, on his, sometimes on social media, you'll see him talking about,

man, we got to give these quarterbacks more time to figure things out. But there's the, we can find a happy meeting between like what he got and what, you know, what some of these other guys get, maybe where they're booted after a year. Because, man,

yes. He was bad for five. years. Five years, like really bad. And then ultimately, I think the captain pick, it's very illuminating even when you have that season with Jim Harbaugh because, okay, well, we waited six years and this is it. Like, it was fine. It was better than what you were.

But ultimately, like, you knew it wasn't going to be like some gunsling and stuff that could win you a championship or have like the upside. It had been six, seven years at that point. And you really hit the ceiling. So I think the pick, like, it makes sense. And for him to get that runway in the first place, I think when Harbaugh gets there, you're like, okay, nope, this is not enough for me a little bit more.

And then they go get like the powerhouse out of Nevada of Kaepern to come out for the season he had that year. I think that's correct. But I also, 2012 to 49ers were really good. Yeah. Like they were marching through that schedule. And then, and Alex Smith was averaging, like, not averaging. Like, a completion percent is like in the 70 percent rank.

he was on super game manager status as we'd all tried to figure out like, you know, can you game manage your way to a Super Bowl? By this point, Joe Flacco has not won a Super Bowl, but Joe Flacco is not a game manager, right? When it comes down to it, if you need to make a big play down the field, Joe Flacco's got that for you. One thing I remember from that 2011 season with Smith was, remember that was the Randy Moss comeback season.

And Randy Moss was still getting over. open deep. And Alex Smith was not looking at him. And we had never seen a guy not look at Randy Moss. Right. He just like, hey, man, I can't. I personally can't really do that. So anyway, we're about halfway through this season. Alex Smith is concussed in a gang. Kyle and Kaepernick comes in and starts. I want to say it was a Monday night game against the Bears. And well, buddy, things look different. Like, things looked. very, very different when he was in the game and they won. But look, end of the day, man.

God damn. Alex Smith was the dude that was making all the money. He had been good that year. That team was good. You don't disrupt all of. Harbaugh made that boy starter. He had that one start. It went well.

And he was like, yep, this is what we're going to do now. Yeah, they won that game 32 to 7. The game before, it was a tie, oddly enough. But they won that game 30. 32 to 7 and it was a whole new day. Everything changed right then. And it was basically Harbaugh looked at the team and said, we got a ceiling with this guy.

We have no ceiling with that guy. And it then took me back to the original point, which was he did not take him in the second round to not start him. We didn't see it coming. It seemed like a gigantic shock. Clearly, Jim Harbaal was waiting, just waiting for the chance to make that move. Yeah, and it's kind of funny looking back, like, when you see, I guess it's more like when you think about resumes being built in real time, like for Jim Harwell, because you can look back now and say, man, like all these quarterback, going back like Josh Johnson at San Diego, like Andrew Luck and Alex Smith at the time, like Colin Capric, that was still a little bit newish, you know?

So, okay, you figure to Alex Smith, we already thought Andrew Luck was cold maybe kind of no matter what. So I'm not really sure how much credit like he was getting for that. for him to come back and say, well, he was this guy that was a pretty raw player at Colorado, or excuse me, at Nevada, because even when you go back and look at that Boise State game, they were up at halftime, and they needed to come back,

and there were some times where he didn't look great, but then you just see, like, well, at some point, he's just the best athlete on the field, and he's got the ball in his hand to every single play. We can work with that. And they come out, and he has the game against the Bears where you start to see they can really raise the roof on the offense, they can get more exposed to plays.

the past game while also still doing the hardball thing of keeping the past volume low. You know, we were getting more explosives while still not actually throwing that many times. So that's really attracted to that. And then obviously, I think the pinnacle is the Green Bay game in the playoffs, you know, where. Oh, yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get there. We'll get there.

We'll get there. Because the thing to me was that when you look at that roster, the big play threat was, that that was the year. Randy Boss was on that team, that Alex Smith. was not throwing the ball too. But the real big play threat on that team was Vernon Davis. And while Vernon Davis is a very good tight in, Vernon Davis is not Rob Grancowski. Like he's not supposed to be the number one threat in your offense. They had Frank Gore, who I think the underrated thing about Frank Gore was his capability of putting up big plays.

He has played the same way Alex Smith played for bad teams. Frank Gore played for bad teams. And so the only, only year Frank Gore had 300 carries, he had 1700 yards. Like we think of him as being a compiler when in reality. A little too long. Yeah, he was just playing for bad teams. But like the numbers are like four and a half, 4.7, 4.8 yards per carry. Like he's getting that.

So now Kaepernick is there. And it's also, Cam Newton gets into the NFL. And now we see the widespread proliferation of the zone read option, right? We start seeing those collegiate elements coming in in large part because the 2011 lockout made is such that a lot of these young guys coming in at quarterback. You ain't had that much time to install, but so much stuff.

So now we're looking up. 49ers have been bringing Pat Kaepernick in in these packages, but now they're running the pistol. They're running all of those things in the NFL. Robert Griffin is running a legitimate high school offense in Washington and setting the league on fire. But with Kaepernick, the 49ers now look like they might have a chance. And that gets us to that game against the Packers in the division round at home.

Where that dude, the Packers, they may be a lot of people after it all, it down trying to tell you the Capardtick couldn't play. What, none of the motherfuckers in no Green Bay. Capernick had a game with 180 yards. I want to say before contact. See, that game, like, I love the, like, defense's football. And I think that is one of the most embarrassing games

that, like, any team has ever played. And it's not even to take anything away from Capertic because it's just funny to think about you have these schemes in college or these schemes in high school that people say, oh, man, and that shit will never work in the NFL. Like, come on. on, man. Like, this is too sophisticated. This is, you know, it's too fast. It happens to, you know, the, the defenses of players are too fast or too smart, too physical. It won't work. And then you see in the divisional round against the Packers, they just ran like zone read, like the most basic form of it, right? Like, we're just not going to block the defensive end. If he crashes, column cabinet, you pull. And you can pull to the tune of 181 yards on 16 carries, two touchdowns. And then when you get to see him in the open field, then it's like, wow. okay, this is actually like tough to stop, like once he gets going too.

So it's not just the speed. It's also like the size. And then like I don't think that that was his best game throwing the ball, but it didn't matter because like I said, he almost had 200 rushing yards. And they were all, they were just reading like Clay Matthews off the edge. And when he crashed hard on Frank Gore,

just pull it. And then he's going to have a wide open rushing lane. And these were plays that, you know, people said these were knocks that guys could do that stuff in the past. And then here on the biggest stage, to punch the ticket to the MC championships game, they exclusively did that to win. And I think that that was kind of an eye-opener

from an NFL defense standpoint, we're like, okay, well, now these plays are coming to the NFL, right? If you can see that you can win playoff games with them, they're going to become more popular. We've seen all these quarterbacks that have to run over the past 15 years of football entering the league. It was kind of like a defining point for the league on like a national stage,

even though that had kind of been coming a little bit as we saw Kim Duton have that ridiculous for the years. too. Yeah, but it's another example of how the past becomes the future really quickly. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Like, for example, Gus Bousan and what he was running in college when he started breaking that out, it's the single wing from back in the day. You know, like, like, every now that there's something happens and you look up or like the idea of the live podcast, huh? You mean like TV? Yeah. Like the radio? Like the radio? Like it's, these are things that have been done. And that's very similar to what we have here. There is an unblocked man.

that you read and you force that guy to make a decision and guys at this level haven't had to do these things in so long and now they're having to do them against much bigger, much faster dudes than they ever had to consider this around. A bunch of coaches, if you've ever taken to college math class and can't none of them teachers add three plus eight. They don't do that no more. They do all their math with letters.

That was kind of what happened to defensive coordinators in the NFL. They don't, that part of their brain. They don't even use that no more, right? And so you take a guy that has actual NFL. FFL skills and then you add those elements, even if only, as a change of pace of something to do. And you get to the place where, hey, man, they're in the NFC championship game. 49ers ain't been this far. I want to say he says 1994.

Lucky for them, they was playing the Falcons. What was it? Did they go to a 21-3 lead? Or was it? Something like that. But Roddy was held at the end of the game, so whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, ain't anybody got time of your grapes right now.

I don't have to crap for this game. I don't, I don't, that, whatever, that's just what they do. Okay. But that game was kind of interesting because they, they kind of, I don't, if I remember correctly, like, they helped Kaepernick and check on the ground. But the problem was, like, they went into the game saying, shoot, we just saw it happen last week. 17 did nothing.

17 and nothing. Same, yeah, Tim, Tamayo tomorrow. 213, 23, 17 nothing, 24 or 2. It's all the same after a while. Oh God But in that game I don't have like the numbers been from me right now

But I remember that game was more They kind of watched the green The end in the last week And say well I can't let that happen to us You know? So they had dedicated more To stopping Capric on the ground But then that's where I think

The rest of like the story of this offense is Man they have some good players like all over the place. Like that offensive line was very good. And they were very good at specifically how Jim Barr Harbaugh wanted to play. And then you have Frank Gore who like it got lost to time. But when he was younger, he was a really explosive like athletic back. And they just pounded them.

They gave it to him. And then obviously, you know, Falcon stuff happened. The 49th defense, which was like all time good during the stretch to lock then. And, you know, they faltered up. But I really thought that game was interesting because it wasn't a lot of Kaepernick. was a lot of we're here to stop Kaepernick, and that makes everybody else better. And it kind of felt like, man,

like this could be something you can really build like a franchise on. Hey, man, 16 for 21 for 233 yards. That was the passing situation. He only had two carries in that game. And they were down 17-0 and walked them down. Like, like, this happened. Like, once you saw that he could run for 200 yards in the playoffs, and then you saw that he could run an efficient passing game in the playoffs

and then get you to the Super Bowl where they lose, they're four yards away from winning the Super Bowl. But like big, the question that you ask about any quarterback really is, can we get to a Super Bowl with him? Like where Jalen Hertz becomes defiant of all the things that I've seen is that he's gotten to two Super Bowls, right? And so whatever we say at the end of the day,

that's a quarterback you could get to the Super Bowls with. Colin Kaepernick was a quarterback, that you could get to a Super Bowl with who didn't even get to start at the beginning of the year. Like it was literally just the beginning. Like the only quarterback that I could think of coming in in the middle of the year and really performing at the level he did

was Dan Marino in 84. I mean, 83. I'm not even including Tom Brady because Tom Brady was, hey, man, just don't fuck this up, man. That's all. Like, Cabernick was being actively asked to raise the ceiling

as opposed to just minimize risk. Yeah, and he made everybody else better. And it works so well with that offense because that's when you get to see like the gravitational force. Like if the person who touches the ball on every play is like the most explosive player, then like we have a serious problem. Like it's kind of like when you laugh, when you go back and you see like Lamar Jackson being the 32nd pick, you're like, man, what the fuck happened there? Like, well, we know what happened there. But you know, like you watch them play. You're like obviously, yeah, like you're still able to do these things.

And when your quarterback is that athletic and that explosive, you don't need them to necessarily. be perfect. You just kind of meet them to scare the hell out of people. And that's what it happened because it happened so fast. Like all of a sudden, maybe when you start the year or you start looking at this team, you're thinking about Alex Smith and all of a sudden, whoa, like, here's a flamethrower. And he's good enough to maybe not like be pinpoint accurate, but when he is, like, it's going to be for big games. And when he takes off, it's a real threat. And when he's not taking off, we're still worried about him. And now there's Frank Gore and he's got like four, three hundred 30 pound guys just blowing holes in front of him. It's, it was really, really fun to

watch because I was, you rewatching something before and I was like, man, like, they really just beat the shit out of all these defenses that they played it. And it still kind of is, even though Harbaugh had that success at Michigan, it still kind of is like the quintessential like Harbaugh team when I think about it because every single piece of it was built to punch you in the mouth at like the most physical level. And look, they didn't win that Super Bowl, but the next year they went 12 and 4 again, including another destruction of the Packers in the first game of the year, including another win against the Packers at Lambeau Field in the cold, which I actually think as a quarterback is a really underrated victory to put up. Like these are Aaron Rogers, Green Bay Packers,

right? Like this is Aaron Rogers around peak of powers, Aaron Rogers. And the winning team is not his, right? This other guy is the one who's doing that and they got him late because Cabernick was decent that year, though not as shocking, which is reasonable to expect. Like you and I talk about of quarterbacks. That year two, the league, you know, they see things, right? Like they go. They're not going to let you do the green bathing again, you know. Right. Then I can let you do that. And this is a Greg Roman offense. And as we've learned with the Greg Roman offenses in other places, they just get worse and worse every year. It just ticks down. But the truth is, after being one play away from winning the Super Bowl, they were one play

away again from going to the Super Bowl, playing against a team that ultimately won the Super Bowl by a a zillion points in the toughest environment in the world, which is to say, if they had, if Richard Sherman doesn't make that great play on that past the Crabtree and then he curked out on television. But if Sherman doesn't make that play and they score, the 49th is probably win that Super Bowl, I think. I think that they would have,

I think they would have had a, they would have done similarly as well against that Broncos team, regardless of how good Peyton Manning had been that season. Yeah, well, they presented the same problems, you know? Like, like, maybe you didn't have like the, hopefully like what the star power of like that legion boom defense became but you know still had like the late all in smith Justin smith on the inside the Patrick willis Navarro Bowman and then on the on the corner's like golden Dante Wittner yeah Dante Wittner

Dantzden my fault goals yeah yeah but like yeah Golston he was a jean Golston he was a good player man like like they really kind of had an underrated defense on the back and that you know they would have beat the crap out of that Broncos team because that That was the problem. Like, just a little bit too finesse. It was cold outside. And that's the only Super Bowl ever fall to sleep during that I was watching. Hey, man.

Let me tell you something about that defense. I always tell people that 2011-49 is team that I don't feel bad saying about this. What none of us watching them is that year was going all. They had Alex Smith at the quarterback. There was no reason to think. Like, and look, they got a first round by, right? Like, they were a really good team, but I know nobody watched. I'll just.

I, okay, so I was, I was in college. I was playing a defensive line at this point. So I was like, I was kind of in the trenches. Like I was the guy who was like, anyone who doesn't drafts Aaron Donald first overall, like you're smoking crack. I don't care,

but I know Jadavian Cliley. These guys like 280 pounds, he ran a four, six. Like, no, it's going to work. And I felt like the same way about Justin Smith. Man,

I thought that like if you, if you could find like any player that could raise a floor of your defensive line, like that guy, because he could do anything. Like he was 285, he could play nose tackle and like eat, triple teams. He could play off the edge. He was picking off stuff for Aldous Smith.

Then they had, you know, all these guys in the middle. Like, it was, it was so good. And it is kind of funny because I feel like that group has gotten undersold over time. When you go back and look at the numbers, like, no, they were incredible. I will just never forget. The moment I realized that I had been missing out was when the Saints Gate at ball to Pierre Thomas. And Dante Wittner hit him so hard. That's been 15 years. since then. And I'm trying to think if I can remember like a clean legal hit in the way where it was just like, oh my God. Like he was out cold well before he hit the ground. It was immediate. And I was like, oh, I just misunderstood what kind of team this was. And so they were this close to win in the Super Bowl.

They were this close to going back to the Super Bowl. And it was never that good again. So coming up next, we're going to talk about the next part of Kaepernick's career, which leads us into the protest, which leads us obviously into him never played again. Look, if your supplement shelf needs a reset, now's the time. GNC's semi-annual Live Well Sale is happening August 13th through August 26, with Bogo 50% off almost everything. Whether you're restocking your protein and creatine, grabbing your everyday essentials,

or finally trying something new, this is the moment to build a routine that works for you. From protein and creatine to hydration and energy essentials, you can find the pieces to keep your routine moving. It only happens twice a year, so don't miss the chance to stock up, save, and get ready for what's next. Don't wait. The sale won't last long. Shop at gnc.com slash sale. All right, we are back with the newly employed Charles McDonald, but we can't tell you exactly where.

And I just noticed that that's the Houston oilist hat on your head. Joel from Missouri City, you'll be the first. first and he don't hate on. That is on this show. But we get to the 2014 season with the 49ers. And so there are a couple things that play, right? Again, it's year four of Greg of Greg Roman. So this is going to whittle down.

It's also year four of Harbaugh, a man who burns people out. And so now he's in the fights with the front office, you know, and everything that's going. And they had a Rudy Poo 8 and 8, just a middling 8 and 8 season. I can't think of anything know worthy about the season. except for the fact that it felt coming into that year like there was a wide open window and then our recollection that that's actually not how football works. Yeah, I mean, right, precisely,

like these windows can slam shut at any point. And I think that the 2014 season, it just kind of became like, it just kind of felt like one of those things like, man, we got to close shop on this. For whatever reason it's not working, whether it's hardball, whether it's management, whether it's all of us, just we don't fit anymore, which is crazy to think about how fast this happened, man.

Like, when you go back and you look at like the go pro football reference or ESPN and look at Colin Capric's career, like, man, this is only a very short amount of time that all of this, all of this happened. Like before you even get to, you know, ultimately what happened in 2016, but 2014, it was just like, it got so unstable, so fast. And I think one thing that is funny, you know, looking back. which maybe should have been a little bit clear at the time, too, was Trent bulky versus Jim Harbaugh.

Yes. And how those careers have turned out, you know, when Trent goes to Jacksonville. It's clear that they picked the wrong horse. They picked the wrong guy. They're absolutely, especially considering because as soon as Harbaugh left, I think you kind of saw, man, maybe we just deal with the crazy stuff. And we just win these football games or at least have someone that can get us to functional. Because, you know, they have some offensive line injuries that year, like the run game.

wasn't great. Like, even the defense was not as good as they used to be. And then I think you saw maybe Caprickeptych's not quite ready to actually be like the hard, like the hard franchise quarterback and hold up the team. But they just didn't even give themselves a chance by, by ultimately letting like, choosing to let Jim Harbaugh go at like the first sign of tension, really. You know, like, because think about where, where you were before Jim Harbaugh got there, even before Calla Kaepernick. And we just talked about you had all those years. of Alex Smith being bad. It's not like you

just falling right back into that. Just out of the question. You weren't good for a very long time. And before that, like, man, we're talking about you need Steve Young or Joe Montana. Like, for you to have that relevance as a franchise, you can very easily be a bad team. And after they fired Hograud, it was bad

because, like, Jim Tom Sula ended up being the head coach. He did. He did. The only thing I remember about him is then they had the graphic where he like won his first game or something or won like a preseason game and they had like him with a hundred percent win total over like Bill Walsom like I'm like a good one but yeah that's where it really started to fall apart that's right because I remember the thing was they won the first game of the year but it was back when they used to do the Monday night double header to start the year and they were the late game and the home team would win every one of those because it would be a seven o'clock local kick is like a 1030 Eastern kick And a big part of it was this is the year of like the year the Colin Kaepernick

becomes a drop back passenger, right? Like that's where this was going. That was what the plan was. He had worked all offseason with Trent Dilfer. Put a pen in that. And then I think it was Jeep Chris. Another thing looking back.

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Like Jeep Chris was the offensive coordinator. And I remember watching him and them trying to do this. And he looked so, he looked imprisoned in the pocket.

Right? Like it looked like a. constraint where the pocket is supposed to be a protection. It looked much more like a constraint for him and he just bounced on his feet and he was just always boom, boom, boom, looking around like the rhythm of it wasn't there. Then he wound up getting hurt that year. I mean, there's no way around it. He was awful. He was not good. There are explanations perhaps that one could offer as to why he was awful. But for those eight games that he played, I mean, six touchdowns, five interceptions, and honestly, those numbers felt better than the X.

execution was. That was a dreadful football team. No, they, they were, they were terrible. And they, they really just had no chance. And I thought, because I remember I was watching, I was like, man, like, it's funny looking back at all this stuff. I remember watching it was like, man, like, is his career about to be over? And the answer was yes, but, you know, not, not quite for, for the reasons of that season. Because that was the season when Blaine Gabbert came in. Yeah.

They suck, dude. And that was the year that the defense was, I mean, like, that was the year where the defense, like, really started to fall off. And then in 2016, like, they had one of, like, just the most abominable defenses that I think maybe it doesn't really get talked about. But since I've looked at that year so much, it's something to burden my brain. But the going from- They gave up 480 points in a 16-game season. Yeah, yeah, they did. They sure did.

That's nuts. The 2015 season is, it really kind of hurt as someone who enjoyed watching Kaepernick. I was like, man, like, you can't go get Harbaugh back, right? Like, obviously that was the mistake that you had made. You're in it. Like, you had gone from Jim Harbaugh and, you know, even Greg Roman, that doesn't suck. But you went from Jim Harborough to, and Vic Fangio is your defensive coordinator to Jim Tom Sula and Eric Mangini in 2015. Like, that's a clear staff downgrade.

the players were getting worse. So clearly you saw you, you have made a mistake. And then it just, it took even another step back in 2016 when Chip Kelly was the head coach. And unfortunately, like this is where I feel like my stand hat

come on with Caputics. Like, that was the year where like, it kind of starts to turn back in his favor. So this is the thing for me on that is, this is where Colin really gets into what I call it a black quarterback zone, right? Yes.

And what I mean by that is, Once the black quarterback has a bad season, it is not a bad season. He has been exposed. Yeah, exposed, right? The progression of a quarterback is not like the progression of a running back or basically anybody else. Just about every other position in the NFL, you have a growth, a peak, and then a fall. The falls happen at different rates, right?

But it's a pretty standard. function that goes up until it reaches its maximum, and then it comes back down. Quarterback isn't like that. Quarterback is, to me, much more like being a baseball player in general, a pitcher in specific, where you may have these great, great year, these great numbers early, and then Peyton Manning had two bad years thrown in there as a starting quarterback. Tom Brady's second year as a starter was not quite in line with the others. Like, you're going to be hard pressed to find the quarterback that did not have a hiccup in his career, The hiccup many times can be a hiccup of multiple seasons, right?

Kaepernick had one bad season on a bad team where we acknowledge also that he was seriously injured, so injured in fact, it's the only thing that saved his job because he signed a bad contract that didn't really guarantee the money down the line, but he was too hurt to pass a physical. Yeah. So they could not cut him in place, you know, to give the job of all people to blame Gabber. Like to look around and be like, no, let's try. Nothing that he had done previously. All that potential that you saw before

it should tell you like, hey, oh. You just saw it, you know? You just saw, like two years before he was pretty good, right? One bad year when everything else was bad and the world was ready to shut it down. But give this to Chip Kelly, who you have to remember at this point had the reputation of not liking black people.

Black people he did. He had that. Now look, Chip Kelly's a man that once had John Carlos come talk to his team. And people thought he did not like, black people. It wasn't that he didn't like black people is that you young hippity hopiny black people made him nerves. Like that chip Kelly was a coach at the University of New Hampshire. Yeah. Right. He was not prepared for the world that he got to with big time college football and with the NFL, right? But he was the

one that every time they talk about college, he's like, yeah, college just hurt. Yeah, when college gets back, we'll see it. And then when collie got back, Chip wasn't no fool, he was like, Blaine Gabbard, what are you high? Put this boy back in. And, and like, this is the, this is the one, the season where I was like, you can't tell me that this guy, like, when it's all said and done, you objectively look at the season. Like, this is easily like one of the 32 best quarterbacks in the league. When he came back. Without question.

Without question. Yeah, 32 is trying to be really safe. Right. Yeah, really safe. Right. And that was, and I feel like sometimes I look back at things I said, like, man, I was being a little bit too nice to y'all goddamn racist. but I've grown in those mistakes won't be made again.

It's just, it's just like it was frustrating watching that game that season because it, that team was bad, bad, like capital B, like some of the worst stuff that I've ever seen like in professional football. So, because we, because we were talking about briefly like the run defense that they had that year. man they gave up 200 at least 248 Russian yards four times that season what four times they get up 248 to the falcons the saints 249 to the bucks and then 313 to the buffalo bills whose offensive coordinator was Greg Roman yeah Tyra Taylor and Lasham McCourtier and then not only that they also had 194 188 176 like this was one of the worst defenses in like the past 25 years of football, right? They get 30 points a game, you know? Hold on 30.0. 30.0. 30 on the nose. Yes. Yes. Okay. Dude, I'm looking at some of their stats now. 41% of the, or of their opposing drives ended in a score on offense, like, on defense.

It's like you get the ball. It's a coin flip on this year. You're getting like at least a field goal. That's embarrassing. And it kind of became like, this team is bad, so Colin's bad. When you kind of look at how that season went, you know, Chip Kelly, like you said, Chip Kelly had, he had the background of it. Maybe he doesn't like black people. But with Colin, he was okay. But it kind of wore it on him as the season went, kind of playing a little bit of defense

for Colin. And you could see it in the play Colin. There's going to inside zone, inside zone, Colin save us. And he kind of did every once in a while. Hey, man. Let me run this by you about the offense. Their leading receiver by far was Jeremy Curley. Yeah. With 64 catches.

The number two receiver was Quentin Patton, who could be one of 500 former NFL players. Dude, that was about to say. Right? Like, that's, that is the, Quentin Patton is the official name of a number three to five receiver, right? a guy who runs back kicks and also plays special teams. Like that is what that name sounds like. But the number two receiver had 37 catches.

The number one had 64. The number three receiver was Sean Dron who amazingly lasted to age 29 as a running back. Garrett Seleck was number four. Fake Brett Selik. He got his brother, you know, not even the real one. Oh, I forgot that. Yeah, you're right. Like this was a really, really, really bad team.

There was just no way around it. It was an awful team. But all the controversy swirled that year, but it truly felt like if you paid any attention, we had settled at a point now where Kaepernick is, I want to say, he's 29. Yeah, I think he just for 29 during the season. He's not a franchise quarterback, probably not.

But he was a starting quarterback, and those don't grow on trees, right? Like he was a decent football player. but it is crazy to think what the margins are, like how all of this plays out if they go to the second Super Bowl or if they win the first Super Bowl. Harbaugh doesn't burn those people out, right? He doesn't tear his labrum.

Like the margins on this and the whole football story itself being different are so thin and it matters because as we'll talk about in later episodes, it was the football that was used to justify keeping him out. But it was this close to being people were really going to have to tell on themselves. in order to do it. Yeah, yeah. And that's what was so frustrating because they did tell them themselves

and they were fine doing it and it just didn't matter, you know? Like, because when you go back, and the game that always comes back to my mind for that season is they go to Miami and, you know, he had, you know, 300 rushing yards or 300 passing yards, three touchdowns, ran for over 100 yards.

You saw it. It was like, okay. Like, even on a team as bad as this, in the right circumstances, he can still be someone that goes out and produces at a high level. You know, it's not like, like you say, he was 28, 29 years old. It's not like he was physically washed, you know?

Maybe he wasn't running a 4-4 anymore, but it was good enough where that was still something that you had to account for in the open field. And I just think, like, as the season went on, man, they had a game, then they had a game against Chicago where it, the weather was just so bad. I think he, like, one for five, like four yards, something like that. And that's the one that people point to and they lose all context and, like, what actually happened in that game. But when you made the surroundings, like,

more equitable and more standardized, he was obviously, like, a starting caliber quarterback that year. And whatever diminished the version of Chip Kelly's offense that had existed there, it was, it was really frustrating, like, watching people pretend like he was just, like, still having the same exact, you know, statistical

output that he was having a year before when you can see it. Like, it wasn't good because the team around him was terrible, but they were still functional enough at times to him on the field that you could make a case like if you were another team next year that was like, hey, maybe we give this a chance. Like I, like, I'm actually

kind of sympathetic to the idea that the 49ers might just want to move on clean after all of this and start over. Like, they hired Kyle Shanahan, but what happened after to Colin is like just objectively nonsense, you know? Right, but he was, and I think

this is important, and part of why I wanted to do this episode, he is legitimately a historically significant figure. Just as a football player. You're going to be watching football games for a long time and somebody's going to put up some crazy dual-thread quarterback line in the playoffs. And they're going to say,

and the only quarterbacks to do this, da-da-da-da-da-da-da and Colin Kaepernick. And we saw that come up as the controversy swirled in years where you'd have these lines and they awkwardly, didn't really want to bring that part up, right? Like, given that the 49ers haven't won a Super Bowl in, you know, 30-something years, they need to start treating that 2012 team, you know, with some serious respect. But also, that means some bringing you back, like, you bring Colin back to the stadium at some point, right?

Like, he matters to the history of that franchise. As we saw the way the league progressed, he matters to the history of the league. Because what we'll talk about as it goes down the line. tried to make the argument that the reason that Colin wasn't getting a job was, you know, teams don't really run the read option and do those things anymore. And 10 years later, they do them so much. They never stopped. You have to be able to do it almost.

You have to be able to do it. Like I always said when Josh Allen really struggled his first couple of years, I was like, if they treat him like he's black, it'll be okay. And that's exactly what they did. Get his big ass out there running the ball, get it outside, right? Like relieve some pressure in those ways. and they'll figure it out because that's what the game became. The defense got to be fast to the point where they had slowed those

defensive ends down with the rules as much as they could, but now that wasn't going to cut it, right? And part of why we saw that change in the paradigm of how football was played is that the 49ers got to the Super Bowl and almost got to another one with Colin Kaepernick, and they didn't have to hide them in order to win. Yeah, yeah. He was the driving force, like their offensive improvement. We talked about it before where,

where he ultimately ended up making the entire offense better because everything gets easier when you get to play 11 on 11 football. And that was quite frankly the only thing when you jump back forward to 2016, that terrible offense, it was the only thing that made the offense viable at the time. The fact that you had a quarterback

that could basically get you to play 11 on 11 and was kind of figuring his way back into the passing game. And I know it was said a lot at the time, but he's like, even if you if you can somehow take away everything that happened during the season with a million and all that, even if you just take like the raw

statistical output of Colin Kaepernick's career and treat it just as like a squad of numbers. There's never been a quarterback that's just disappeared after his five-year output that he had where you're getting to two conference championship games, you're getting to a Super Bowl, even in the season where you come back,

you're 29 years old, you're 16 and 4, and he never threw another pass. Like that, that has never happened in the history of the league. It's not like he's someone that, well, we saw him start two seasons and goddamn, he was the worst thing we've ever seen, you know? That doesn't happen. So for him to not even find a backup role or anything beyond that, like even that would, just off the numbers, just off like the on-field performance, that alone makes him like a somewhat

mysterious-ish figure until you throw in everything else, you know. Deshaun Kaiser, Trevor. Simeon. Wow. Blake Bortles. These are guys who were the primary starter for NFL teams that season. The ghost of Jay Cutler.

Oh, man. And I'm saying for the 2017 season, just to be clear. In Miami, that was embarrassing. Yeah. Case Keenum. What was left of Eli Manning? Josh McCown. Case Keenum had that 2017 season with the Vikings.

He did, but they could have done that with Cona Kavernick. Probably. That's all I'm saying. Like, this is a different story on the same thing. But when people keep talking about, could Kyle and Murray be the next Sam Donald, I'm like, he better than him.

Super Bowl or not. Like, like, what are we talking about? Yeah, I was like, man, I was here in New York. I like Sam, he's a good guy, but y'all not going to trick me. Yeah. What I watched my own eyes, man. No, no, come on. Look, the 49ers went out there with Brian Hoyer.

That was the guy that, I mean, I was with you. Hey, I understand if y'all need to, like, start over. Right. It makes sense.

But not to go get Brian Hoyer. Right. Like, I thought, oh, like, are y'all about to take, like,

Patrick Mahomes or. Right. Deshaun Watson. Right. Okay. You know, then like, I kind of get it.

But to take like Solomon Thomas, like, man, you don't even want to try it. Don't get me started. Don't give me started. Don't, this is your guy.

That could have worked. It could have worked. I mean, don't get me started. But like, But with all of that as it went, you could have easily had Colin as your backup because when nobody going to ask them to start. Right.

Like the people, this wasn't like Tim Tebow. We're like, oh, man, shit, Jesus freaks. They might start a rebellion outside. No, man, unless it was going to be the black Israelites out there, like when Kyrie was out, you know, was wilding. Oh, man. You wouldn't never go have that. But I think in all this time, you tell me if I'm wrong, I really think a lot of people,

I mean, it happened in real time, had just forgotten. and no, we had a beast on our hands here, right? And even if he just proved to be a comment in terms of his performance, there aren't that many comments. And he was truly one of them. Yeah, I mean, it's because it's kind of tough, like when we were talking about the 2014 season,

what I was thinking, I was like, man, I don't want to sound like, you know, the stereotype scouting report, you know? But that's what it looked like at times, you know? Man, I don't know if he feels comfortable with what he's looking at you right there. But they're like, like, look at what was going on around him. man, dude, Jim Thompson, we were laughing that guy the second they made him the head coach, just like looking at him.

And then he ended up being just as bad as we thought was going to be. And then by the end of it, like Trent Balke had just done such a terrible job managing that team post Harbaugh. There was nothing left. But even in like the garbage heap that was the 2016 49ers, you still had enough to say, shit. Maybe if I'm, if I'm Washington or something like that, and we're looking at, at like whatever you're going with Kirk Cousins or even if you're the 49ers that you're saying Kyle Shan's coming over and saying man like for a year just to try this out it it could have worked and I and I remember like thinking that I think that's kind of what they were afraid of too

like it could have worked and that is also like not an acceptable outcome for what the powers that be wants I'll say wanted but want like in general and it's just really unfortunate that like you see like a shiny star like that. Someone that you know like to a degree has kind of built the groundwork for guys to come after him and have success in the league. And at least for teams to take that little bit, that skill set a little bit more seriously just to vanish. Like that it's it's just horrible. It's horrible. But yeah, there's really no you can't talk about this reasonably and say that skill wise, he had no business being in the league without just telling on yourself, which was fine for a lot of people.

as we saw over the years, they didn't care about telling themselves and ended up being pretty profitable for them. Hey, man, that's Charles McDonald. Newly employed. Congratulations, brother. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, definitely excited to tell the people what's going on and get back to it.

It's been a weird summer, but this is the conversation I need to start thinking about the NFL again because I haven't thought about this shit in two months, but it was good. Welcome back, brother. And ladies and gentlemen, thanks a much for joining us here on the right time. We do this every few days during the summer. Mike McQuaid, telling everything behind the scenes. Thank you, sir. Hit the voicemail line 3-2-3-5-9-6-7-67-67.

Remember, follow the right time. Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in a couple of days. Take it easy.