ESPN’s Max Kellerman has a bone to pick with the Denver Broncos.
On Tuesday, the Broncos reportedly signed former Jags QB Blake Bortles to a one-year deal after it was revealed that starting QB Drew Lock was going to miss a significant amount of time due to a strained rotator cuff injury he suffered on Sunday.
Broncos signing QB Blake Bortles to one-year deal. (via @TomPelissero) pic.twitter.com/toHkQKTM4m
— NFL (@NFL) September 22, 2020
Before signing Bortles, head coach Vic Fangio remarked that Colin Kaepernick’s name hadn’t come up in discussions while they were looking for a backup QB.
Fangio: Colin Kaepernick’s name “hasn’t come up in the brief discussions” that he’s had with John Elway about fortifying the QB room in the wake of Drew Lock’s injury.
— Andrew Mason (@MaseDenver) September 21, 2020
On Tuesday morning edition’s of ‘First Take’, Kellerman blasted the Broncos for not even bringing in Kaepernick for a work out before quickly signing Bortles.
Max Kellerman calls the Broncos “incompetent” for not looking into signing Colin Kaepernick pic.twitter.com/y3QfLhlaDy
— gifdsports (@gifdsports) September 22, 2020
“I have a huge problem with it. Nothing wrong with signing Blake Bortles, but wait a minute. If you’re looking for a quarterback and there’s legitimacy in terms of your competitiveness… if it’s really a meritocracy. If you have some kind of ethical responsibility to try to be your best, what possible excuse do you have for not bringing in a guy who went to a Super Bowl, who wants to play, to give him a look?
You don’t have to sign him. You’re not going to work him out to see if he still has it? At all? You’re not going to give him….. his name hasn’t come up? At all? Now, are you an incompetent organization? Is there some mandate to not bring him up? Or do you just know ‘let’s not go there.’ At any rate, that’s a dereliction of duty! You have to look to fill a position, and you wouldn’t even discuss bringing in Colin Kaepernick to give him a look? It lays bare the nonsense that has been going on about him. He’s clearly been, for lack of a better word, blackballed.”
It is worth noting that the Broncos had once tried to acquire Kaepernick in 2016 via a trade while he was still under contract with the Niners. The Broncos and Niners had a deal in place but the quarterback couldn’t come to terms on a restructured contract that would have seen him take a pay cut to play in Denver.
#Broncos considered trading for Kaepernick before 2016 season.
He was still playing for the #49ers.
He had never protested.
He declined to take a pay cut for the Broncos.
They moved on.
This all happened before Kaepernick ever kneeled.
Please commit this timeline to memory. https://t.co/veR2xs5unh— Charles Robinson (@CharlesRobinson) August 31, 2018