Quarterback Colin Kaepernick hasn't played in an NFL game since the 2016 season. That, of course, was with the San Francisco 49ers during the season preceding the arrival of general manager John Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan.
In 2016, Kaepernick kicked off an initiative to create awareness surrounding social injustice by kneeling in peaceful protest before games during the national anthem. The quarterback's stance was misconstrued as disrespect for the nation's flag or the military.
Recent events have changed many of those views.
"The way the world has been, even in 2016 and 2017," cornerback Richard Sherman told reporters on Wednesday via a video conference call, "when those guys were making it about police brutality and just changing the inequities that we live in as African Americans, they found a way to dull down that message, and to divert it, and make it about something else in a way to avoid the conversation.
"And I think, this time, it's too full-fledged, and most people are actually getting the messaging and seeing it first-hand. Nobody can turn their eyes away. Nobody can turn away from what they're seeing."
Sherman was explicitly asked about Kaepernick's continued unemployment from the NFL. The 49ers cornerback believes that Kaepernick — once a division rival — deserves to be on an NFL roster.
"That's the thing. The NFL is a PR machine," Sherman said. "They know how to construe the messaging to get their point across, and to appease and pacify the public without overstepping what they consider their moral high ground, and stepping off of that pedestal.
"That's the unfortunate part. I don't know (when Kaepernick will re-join the NFL), and that's a question that will be up to you asking (NFL Commissioner) Roger Goodell or these owners who haven't employed him.
"I told you this before. We (the players) don't employ people. I can want him to have a job, and I can think he deserves a job as much as anybody, and everybody has said it, who said anything, because he was a good player. He showed that he can play in this league. He can play at the highest level, so he deserves a job.
"But in order to answer those questions, I have to be one of the decision-makers who didn't give him a job, and I'm not that person. And I think that until those people are asked those difficult questions, we'll never get the answers."
