Alex Smith Says 'The Country Wasn't Ready' for Colin Kaepernick Anthem Protests

Washington Football Team quarterback Alex Smith praised former San Francisco 49ers teammate Colin Kaepernick on Friday during an appearance on Kyle Brandt's 10 Questions podcast.

Smith said he is "proud" of Kaepernick and expressed his belief that Kaepernick unfairly paid the price for kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 because "the country wasn't ready" to address social justice issues:

Smith added:

"He's sitting there trying to tell everybody through a completely peaceful manner about some of the things going on in this country that had been going on for a long time, and to see the backlash that happened, it hurts. It hurts looking back at it.

"The country wasn't ready for it, and he suffered the repercussions with his job. ... I mean, he lost his livelihood. ... [It was] tragic, sad, but obviously, he was incredibly brave and [I'm] certainly proud of him, to even know him and what he's done, because fast forward a few years later and I think we all were like, 'He obviously was trying to tell us something.'"

Kaepernick was the first player to kneel during the anthem as a means of protesting against social injustice, racial inequality and police brutality in the United States.

Kaepernick has not caught on with an NFL team since the end of the 2016 season, and the overarching belief is that his protests have played a role in his going unsigned.

With teams declining to sign Kaepernick despite the fact that he made 58 regular-season starts with the Niners over six seasons and led them to the Super Bowl once, he filed a grievance against the league, alleging that teams were colluding to keep him out of the NFL.

In 2019, Andrew Beaton of the Wall Street Journal reported that the NFL paid Kaepernick less than $10 million to settle the grievance.

The NFL seemingly viewed Kaepernick as a pariah for an extended period of time, and it was outspoken against the practice of kneeling during the anthem as a form of protest.

The league's tune changed last year, however, in the wake of several events, including the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor by police.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell released a video in June admitting the NFL was wrong for not encouraging its players to protest peacefully:

Also, in an appearance on Emmanuel Acho's Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man (h/t Nick Selbe of Sports Illustrated), Goodell offered a formal apology to Kaepernick:

"I wish we had listened earlier, Kap, to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to. We had invited him in several times to have the conversation, to have the dialogue. I wish we had the benefit of that, we never did. We would have benefited from that, absolutely."

While it seems unlikely at this point that the 33-year-old Kaepernick will make it back to the NFL after four seasons away, his goal of spreading awareness on social issues is progressing.

Kaepernick was undoubtedly ahead of his time and his efforts likely should have been celebrated by the league rather than demonized, but he deserves credit for initally bringing the national spotlight to a long-running conversation that has become mainstream over the past year.