Usually, you can’t get Colin Kaepernick to say a word. He stands there in news conferences answering in sullen monosyllables, staring straight ahead like a dead mackerel. But today he’s in Super Bowl World and he’s giving interviews to everything. It turns out he even has a personality.
Naturally, he addressed the season-ending pass he threw to Michael Crabtree that Richard Sherman knocked away to a teammate. Sherman then bragged about the play.
Here is Kaepernick The Talkative: “If I throw that ball one foot farther, it’s a TD, and now you’re the goat, Richard Sherman.”
Kaepernick needs to be quiet and think about what he said.
If he had thrown a better pass, Sherman would be the goat. But he didn’t throw a better pass. That means Kaepernick is the goat.
Black and white. Either you did or you didn’t.
Really good quarterbacks make the pass, throw it a foot farther. Joe Montana threw the ball to the exact right place when Dwight Clark made The Catch. Joe didn’t say, gee if only I had thrown it right.
Here are analogies to what Kaepernick said:
The batter who struck out swinging to end the World Series: “If only I had my bat an inch higher I could have hit a home run.”
The basketball player who missed the jumper at the buzzer and his team lost: “If only I had shot the ball two inches farther we would have won.”
You get the point. Kaepernick didn’t throw the ball a foot farther. He may even have choked. There is no credit in his “if.”
He needs to be quiet.