The Ravens' cowardly, conflicted debate over Colin Kaepernick sums up the NFL hypocrisy

The coach and GM are interested in signing him. The owner is not. How it’s all playing out in Baltimore reveals a lot about the NFL.

Joe Flacco has been on the shelf with a bad back since last Wednesday. The Ravens backup quarterback, Ryan Mallett, has been struggling on the practice field. In the days since then, the Ravens have been talking publicly about their private deliberations about signing Colin Kaepernick to upgrade the No. 2 QB spot and give them a reliable starter should Flacco miss more time during the season.

The team’s self-aggrandizing hand-wringing over the question of signing Kaepernick has exposed a rift within the organization and reminded everyone of the hypocrisy of those deciding on Kaepernick's playing future.

Last Thursday head coach John Harbaugh took the unusual step of mentioning Kaepernick as a roster possibility to the press.

"He's a guy right now that's being talked about,” Harbaugh said Thursday, less than a day after Flacco’s injury. “We'll see what happens with that. Only speculation right now. He's a really good football player and like I said, I do believe he'll be playing in the National Football League this year."

The Ravens mentioned Kaepernick before the media. Why?

This the strangest part about the story, so far. It’s unusual in the first place for a coach to talk openly about players they’re considering to add to the roster.

Usually someone reports a team is interested in a player, information they most likely got via a team source or an agent, and maybe someone with the team will confirm in a follow up with reporters. But that’s about the extent of it. Coaches and general managers are conditioned to be notoriously tight-lipped about player acquisitions.

Harbaugh’s expressed his support for Kaepernick in the past. In March, he echoed his brother Jim’s (Kaepernick’s former coach with the 49ers) assessment that Kaepernick “can win games for people.”

He also said at the time that he didn’t believe Kaepernick was being blackballed. It’s harder to defend that notion given the reports out of Baltimore this week.

Harbaugh may have put Kaepernick’s name out there last week because he knew he’d get asked about him.

This could also be a case of Harbaugh publicly lobbying the team’s owner to let them sign Kaepernick.

Kaepernick fits a pattern for the kind of veteran free agents Ozzie Newsome has signed over the years. They’re players like Anquan Boldin, Steve Smith, Owen Daniels, Chris Canty, and Will Hill. These are guys who fill a specific need for the team, usually as kind of a one- or two-year stopgap, who aren’t the most expensive players on the market for one reason or another.

Newsome and Harbaugh may see a quarterback who’s a big upgrade at backup and one who will keep the team competitive if Flacco’s back injury creates more problems during the season. But Kaepernick isn’t a player the GM and head coach can just sign because he’s got the talent and addresses a need the team has. It’s not a decision they can make without the owner.

Floating his name like this in the locker room and in the public can serve as a trial balloon, a way to gauge the reaction and/or put some pressure on owner Steve Biscotti.

It looks like that’s exactly what happened too. According to the latest report, Harbaugh and Newsome “support” adding Kaepernick to the roster. Owner Steve Bisciotti doesn’t.

The team responded to that report within two hours.

That doesn’t contradict Russini’s report. She said “meeting resistance” from the owner. The Ravens’ statement is more specific, saying that the owner has not “blocked” them from signing Kaepernick.

It’s an unusual statement to have to make, but an inevitable one after Bisciotti publicly inserted himself into the decision making process over the weekend.

The owner gets involved

At a fan forum on Sunday, Bisciotti said he didn’t like Kaepernick’s protest and wasn’t sure he could help the team win games. That’s the most direct quote we have from an owner disagreeing with Kaepernick’s protest.

Bisciotti and team president Dick Cass said at that same event that they were talking to fans — namely the ones who buy premium seats and season tickets — and sponsors about the possibility of signing Kaepernick.

"We're very sensitive to it, and we're monitoring it and we're still, as [general manager Ozzie Newsome] says, we're scrimmaging it," Bisciotti said Sunday at a fan event with Roger Goodell at M&T Bank Stadium. "We're trying to figure what's the right tact. Pray for us."

If circumventing the head coach a proven GM to crowd source a personnel decision seems weird to you, that’s because it is.

Remember something Adam Schefter said last week:

“Do I think that certain owners have blocked teams from visits or interest? I do, I do believe that. And I think that there has been more interest in him from the coaching and front office level than there has been at the ownership level. So it was always going to take a unique opportunity for him to be brought in, in the right place, at the right spot, at the right time.”

Giants owner John Mara openly worried about the angry fan mail he’d get for signing Kaepernick, but was more than willing to stand by Josh Brown, a serial domestic abuser.

Harbaugh being so open about their interest in Kaepernick as a means of lobbying the owner makes more sense with that insight and the report from Russini.

What makes this especially troubling for the Ravens weren’t concerned with what fans or sponsors thought when it came to Ray Rice or Ray Lewis following their involvement in highly publicized off-field incidents. (Bisciotti lobbied Roger Goodell directly to get Rice’s initial suspension reduced to just two games following his arrest for domestic violence in February 2014. It wasn’t until TMZ leaked the video of Rice punching his then-fiancée that the released him).

Bisciotti’s comments represent the high point of the league’s hypocrisy when it comes to signing Kaepernick. Just because he was more open about it than any other NFL owner has been, doesn’t make it any less jarring ... or just plain dumb. The former 49ers quarterback took a knee during the national anthem, a harmless protest to draw attention to a serious problem in our country, but somehow he’s been vilified for it and written off as too controversial to sign, no matter how good of a football player he may be.

Fans and sponsors weren’t the only ones the Ravens owner consulted. He also reached out to franchise legend Ray Lewis, which is an odd move in and of itself.

Ray Lewis weighs in

Why consult Lewis in the first place?

The problem here is that I’m not sure Lewis is capable of giving the team an unbiased opinion.

Look at what he’s said about Kaepernick since last fall. It’s clear that Lewis doesn’t support him, and after listening to him talk more about it this week, I’m not sure Lewis even understands the full situation.

Here’s what he said on Fox Sports back in September 2016:

“I understand what you’re trying to do, but take the flag out of it. [...] I think if Colin really just steps back, because to affect change, if you don’t have a real solution, if you ain’t seen as a true activist to go into these hoods and do these things on a daily basis and not just jump up and protest because you’re sick of this one thing …”

Kaepernick pledged $1 million of his own money to “real solutions.” Did Lewis overlook that?

In June, Lewis later repeated another narrative crawling its way through the NFL media when he said that Kaepernick needs to choose between playing football and being an activist.

The issue came up again on Monday’s episode of Undisputed. Lewis and Shannon Sharpe debated the issue. I’m not trying to be snarky when I say it’s hard to make sense of what Lewis is saying here. The one thing you can take away is that while Lewis acknowledges issue of police brutality and the disparate treatment of non-whites, he’s apparently against anyone in the NFL taking a stand on the matter.

After Lewis gets around to acknowledging the need to bring in the best players available, Sharpe brings it back to Mallett and Kaepernick. Lewis can’t bring himself to admit that Kaepernick is even potentially a better option for the Ravens backup QB.

That brings us to Tuesday when Lewis posted a video on Twitter to address the issue. The long and short of it is that Lewis advises Kaepernick to set aside his social activism if he wants to play football.

Suspend for a moment the notion that a player cannot both play football and be active in the community. (Players do both all the time; they’re encouraged to do so, albeit with issues seen as less controversial by the NFL). What Lewis tells Kaepernick to do is impossible without somehow bending the space-time continuum.

"If you do nothing else, young man, get back on the football field and let your play speak for itself. And what you do off the field, don't let too many people know, because they gonna judge you anyway, no matter what you do, no matter if it's good or bad."

Getting back on the field is exactly what Kaepernick is trying to do, but he needs a team to actually sign him before that can happen. Lewis also seems to be overlooking the fact that Kaepernick has said that he will not kneel during the national anthem this year.

It should be pretty clear that, whatever Bisciotti’s intentions, Lewis was not the right person to ask.

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There’s still a chance the Ravens could sign Kaepernick, especially if Flacco’s back problems flare up again later in camp or during the preseason. However, given how badly they’ve handled it up to this point, it seems unlikely. The owner made it clear, intentionally and through their own ham-fisted handling of this, that he doesn’t want Kaepernick on the roster.

Too bad. It’s an incredibly short-sighted decision to eschew from signing a player who would make the team better because the owner disagrees with Kaepernick’s stance and is afraid of whatever controversy the move might generate.

If Bisciotti was determined to get an approving nod from Ray Lewis in order for this to happen, he should’ve listened to another piece of advice from his cherished counsel:

“You got to be willing to walk in a storm. That's what I tell people all the time.”