Stephen A. Smith Says Colin Kaepernick’s NFL Career Is ‘Over’

Colin Kaepernick had his NFL workout in Atlanta, but it wasn’t the workout the league approved. Instead of showing off his skills in front of 25 teams at the Atlanta Falcons‘ facility on Saturday, Kaepernick decided to throw at a high school in the Atlanta area in front of eight teams, the media and fans. That led to ESPN host Stephen A. Smith sounding off on the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and he said he won’t play in the NFL again.

“Twenty five teams show up in Georgia at the Atlanta Falcons practice facility — state of the art facility, NFL personnel, equipment, video, everything, and what does Colin Kaepernick do,” Smith said, “Colin Kaepernick wants to change the venue. He don’t want to play, He wants to be a martyr.”

Smith continued to say that Kaepernick’s plan to switch venues was not the best move considering he had a chance to impress nearly the entire league.

“Guess what? It ain’t working this time. All of us believe that Colin Kaepernick would have showed out, and if he had showed out, I believe he would have had a job inside of two weeks,” Smith said. “But it didn’t happen, because he didn’t show. He wanted to show up at a high school in Georgia, not an NFL facility and then YouTube it live.

“You don’t want to work. You just want to make noise and you want to control the narrative,” Smith insisted, adding, “It’s over.”

So why did Kaepernick make the last-minute change? After his 40-minute workout at Drew High School in Riverdale, Georgia, Kaepernick explained why he decided to now show up to the league’s private workout.

“I’ve been ready for three years,” Kaepernick said to reporters after the workout. “I’ve been denied for three years. We all know why I came out here. [I] showed it today in front of everybody. We have nothing to hide. So we’re waiting for the 32 owners, 32 teams, Roger Goodell, all of them stop running. Stop running from the truth. Stop running from the people.

“We’re out here. We’re ready to play. We’re ready to go anywhere. My agent, Jeff Nalley, is ready to talk [to] any team. I’ll interview with any team at any time. I’ve been ready.”

Kaepernick has been a free agent since the end of the 2016 season. In 2016, Kaepernick started to protest during the national anthem to raise awareness of racial in social injustice in the country.