The Washington Redskins upset leftists on Monday with news they signed Mark Sanchez to be their backup quarterback, and not because of his infamous “butt fumble.”
The signing came a day after the team’s starting quarterback, Alex Smith, suffered a leg compound fracture during the team’s 23-21 loss to the Houston Texans. Now, Colt McCoy will likely serve as the team’s starting quarterback and many leftists, especially in the media, are outraged that the team did not sign Colin Kaepernick to be a backup quarterback instead.
Add Mark Sanchez to the growing list of QBs to get a job before Colin Kaepernick
— Leonard Greene (@LeonardGreene) November 19, 2018
*checks on status of Colin Kaepernick’s collusion case* https://t.co/kcN6zUWAXq
— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) November 19, 2018
Hard to believe there’s not some type of collusion going on when NFL teams are hitting up Mark Sanchez for QB help over Colin Kaepernick. #Redskins
— gary washburn (@GwashburnGlobe) November 19, 2018
bringing in mark sanchez but not colin kaepernick just in case you were wondering https://t.co/MmMwSVwuK9
— Taylor Rooks (@TaylorRooks) November 18, 2018
While they are free to express their outrage and discontent over the team signing Sanchez because of his lackluster track record, to say signing Colin Kaepernick is the answer here is absolutely absurd. By now, it should be clear to everyone that he probably won’t ever play another down in the NFL because he hurt their bottom line — and we should respect each team’s decisions on the matter.
It’s clear Kaepernick irked a lot of football fans with his actions during the 2016 season. He started kneeling for the national anthem and helped the NFL’s TV ratings drop by more than 17 points in a two-year span because of it; 26 percent of respondents in a 2017 JD Power Poll said they watched less football because of kneelers, more prominent than any other reason given. In a ratings-based industry, that’s not the kind of employee desired by employers.
The same season Kaepernick started kneeling, he also wore socks depicting police officers as pigs and a t-shirt with Fidel Castro on it. Since he last played in the NFL, his brand has become even more toxic.
In August 2017, he was pictured smiling in a photo with Islamist Linda Sarsour, who is now deemed too anti-Semitic and homophobic for the Women’s March; many are now calling for her resignation because she is a supporter of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has chanted “death to America” while in Iran, called Jews “termites,” and said Adolf Hitler was a “very great man”.
A month later Kaepernick donated $25,000 to an organization honoring domestic terrorist and cop killer Assata Shakur, a member of the Black Liberation Army, who fled the United States for Cuba in 1984.
Imagine a player posed for a picture with an alt-right anti-Semite like Richard Spencer or David Duke. Think about what would happen if a player donated to a fund honoring a white nationalist terrorist like the one who rammed his car into a crowd at the Charlottesville, Va., rally last year, killing Heather Heyer. Would media be calling for someone like that to be signed by an NFL team? The hateful ideologies are near parallels of one another.
If a team actually wanted to sign Kaepernick because they did not care about the repercussions from their fan base and thought he could help them win football games, so be it. They have that right, and if kneeling for the national anthem was his only sin, they’d probably even have a compelling argument. However, most teams seem to understand the business side of football matters as well, and that all games rely on ratings from people around the country (not just fans of their respective team).
Odds are, Sanchez won’t see much playing time with the Redskins, and neither would Kaepernick had they signed him instead. They’re both lackluster players, performance-wise. Kaepernick’s 49.3 QB rating in 2016 ranked 23rd of 30 qualified NFL quarterbacks. He fumbled nine times in 11 starts as his San Francisco 49ers went 1-10 in that span. Meanwhile, Mark Sanchez has thrown as many interceptions as touchdowns (86) and he never cracked a 60 percent completion rate in a full season under center.
Is all of Kaepernick’s baggage really worth bringing in an unspectacular player? No, not really. So just let Mark Sanchez hold the clipboard on the sidelines for a few games, and let Kaepernick stick to doing Nike commercials.
Tom Joyce (@TomJoyceSports) is a freelance writer who has been published with USA Today, the Boston Globe, Newsday, ESPN, the Detroit Free Press, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Federalist, and a number of other media outlets.
