A biography for Colin Kaepernickhasn’t been written yet.
“If you're going to do something, you're going to do it to be the best.”
“You have to be able to do everything as a quarterback, and that's not necessarily taking care of your job but making sure you're preparing everyone else to go out and play well. And make sure you have them in the right mindset when they step on the field.”
“When it comes down to it, you're playing football regardless of what offense you're in.”
“All my life, I've had these flashbacks, these dreams, nightmares, daymares, like visions, where I relive certain plays. Only the bad plays. I see them over and over, as if somebody's rewinding a tape and forcing me to watch.”
“The support I've gotten from my teammates has been great.”
“Mental health, for me, is doing everything I can to help this team win. Sitting around not doing anything isn't something I've been too big on since I was young.”
“I have a very high expectation for everything I do. And when I go out and compete, I expect myself to make every play.”
“I refuse to take shortcuts.”
“The NFL is a performance-based business, so you should have to perform to earn some of your money. At the same time, I realize that my success isn't just because of what I do out there.”
“When I'm actually getting off the bus, I still have my gospel playing. That's the way-to-the-game kind of music.”
“I've had times where one of my roommates was moving out of the house in college, and because we were the only black people in that neighborhood, the cops got called, and we had guns drawn on us. Came in the house, without knocking, guns drawn on my teammates and roommates. So I have experienced this.”
“I'll never take the easy way out.”
“I think, between the tattoos, the way I dress, the way I talk, people don't think it should go together with a franchise quarterback or someone that's leading the team or representing the organization.”
“Every time I step on the field, I step on the field to make plays.”
“We have a lot of people that are oppressed. We have a lot of people that aren't treated equally, aren't given equal opportunities. Police brutality is a huge thing that needs to be addressed. There are a lot of issues that need to be talked about, need to be brought to life, and we need to fix those.”
“You have to train hard and be strong while staying flexible and limber, so I'm trying to find that balance.”
“All my tattoos, they've been thought out, thought over, been a work in progress for at least a year before I've got them. So I'm not walking into a tattoo shop, picking tattoos off a wall. It's something that means something to me. It's something that I believe in.”
“It is funny to me that because I can run, because I'm athletic, people tend to see that as my only asset.”
“I'm here to play football.”
“Most people don't want to change. They're comfortable and set in their ways. But in order to change, you have to be able to agitate people at times. And I think that's something that's very necessary for us to improve as a country.”