Colin Kaepernick’s vegan diet is the latest excuse NFL teams are using not to sign him

It wasn’t all that long ago that Colin Kaepernick was being criticized in the media for his tattoos and wearing his hat backward. Ahhh, the thinly veiled racism of hot takes from what seems like another epoch. Since then, Kaepernick’s peaceful protest last season has been easy fodder for hot takes and, worse, it’s led to teams blacklisting him from working in the NFL.

Now teams have apparently found another stupid reason for not signing an above-average quarterback: He’s a vegan.

Here’s what Matt Maiocco of NBC Sports Bay Area reported Friday morning:

“At season’s end, Colin Kaepernick stated he was fully committed to football. But some teams are unconvinced and wonder about his vegan diet.”

There’s a history behind this. Kaepernick doesn’t eat animal products for ethical reasons. A lot of people make the same choice. This isn’t the first time his veganism has been in the news either.

At the start of last season, he talked about struggling to reach his optimal playing weight while on a vegan diet. He was also coming off three surgeries, which tends to have an impact on a person’s weight too. However, he has since managed to get his weight back up.

But never let the facts get in the way of dumb anonymous NFL front office people.

Kaepernick isn’t the only vegan who plays pro football. Tony Gonzalez became a vegan in 2007, covering the last seven seasons of his Hall of Fame career. There’s even another quarterback who’s mostly vegan — Tom Brady. The five-time Super Bowl winner is a vegan for “most of the year,” but adds a small amount of lean meat to his diet in the winter ... just enough lean meat to make him ALL ‘MURICAN!

Any team concerned about Kaepernick’s vegan diet might as well be just as worried about his tattoos or the angle of his cap impacting his play.