San Francisco 49ers general manager John Lynch revealed they would've cut Colin Kaepernick if he didn't decide to opt out of his contract.
Kaepernick remains a free agent well into the summer, with some believing his protest against racial inequality and police brutality is a contributing factor.
Lynch and 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan met with Kaepernick, believing he would not be a stylistic fit within the new offense, the general manager revealed on Wednesday to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk.
Yes, and we had that conversation with him. So I don't want to characterize it as he made a decision to leave here. We both sat down and under that current construct of his deal, it was a big number. (Coach) Kyle (Shanahan) had a vision for what he wanted to do, and one thing I think Kyle was very clear and I think Colin appreciated, is that Kyle has an idea of how he'd play with Colin Kaepernick. But he preferred to run the exact offense that he ran in Atlanta last year that was record-breaking in this league. And if you change it for the quarterback, you change it for everybody on that offense. So he had a great discussion that I think gave Colin clarity, so we moved on.
Lynch said he apologized to Kaepernick for unintentionally creating the notion that the quarterback doesn't want to play football and would rather focus on his charitable and philanthropic efforts.
I want to put that to rest. I'm sorry that this came out of this building. That's one of the challenges that I'm finding is controlling the message that comes out of your building. There's so many people, and it's hard to find because, 'Sources this, sources that.' I didn't feel good about that and I've talked to Colin. That was what was most important to me, to talk to Colin directly and let him know that I was sorry that that did (come out) and that nothing else like that will come out of this building if I have anything to do with it. That's where that is. We wish Colin the best and I can tell everybody out there he very much is sincere in his interest to get back in this league, and I hope it works out for him.
