A video reminder that Colin Kaepernick is ready to play football

Colin Kaepernick hasn’t played in the NFL since the 2016 season. The same season where he started protesting the oppression people of color in the United States face, by taking a knee during the national anthem.

Thursday, video surfaced of Kaepernick working out in Houston. And wouldn’t you know it, he still looks like an NFL quarterback in really good shape. Who would have thought!?

Kaepernick has been working with trainer Josh Hidalgo, where they primarily work in New York City, according to Sports Illustrated. Kaepernick was in Houston for Texans owner Bob McNair’s deposition in his collusion case, per Yahoo’s Charles Robinson.

Just as he always did, Kaepernick’s stayed in the weight room as well:

Kaepernick kept working with Hidalgo since his last NFL snap on January 1, 2017. Hidalgo described as much to the MMQB’s Peter King:

“Colin has been there since January, training with me five days a week. We have been getting ready for football as if he was a starting quarterback for an NFL team. When I read that people don’t know if Colin wants to play football … this guy’s been doing it five hours a day, five days a week, like he has a starting NFL job. And we don’t take days off.

“This isn’t a normal off-season, obviously. We are leaving no stone unturned. Working out, sleeping, eating, massages, getting ready to do it again the next day. Colin is not a guy at the clubs … He is in the gym. We knew he was going to be dissected. We knew any chink in the armor was going to be dissected, so there are no chinks in the armor. We knew this was the be-all, end-all for us. Colin came in around 220 pounds; he lost all that weight last year because he was recovering from three surgeries. And now he’s 230, a solid 230, and he’s eating perfectly. He is putting extremely clean nutrients in his body. He does not put any garbage in his body. He believes in clean fuel.

“I would just ask any team wondering anything about Colin: Come and see him. Come to the gym. Talk to him. They’ll see he’s in as good shape as a quarterback can be in. He’s ready to lead a team.”

Here’s Kaepernick working out, from another angle:

Plenty of quarterbacks far less talented than Kaepernick have been signed since his last snap — whether that was during the offseason last year or this one. President Donald Trump’s “sons of bitches” comment during the season made the NFL protests an even bigger issue, one that got away from Kaepernick’s original message.

One of the first players who joined Kaepernick in protest — his former teammate Eric Reid — is now a free agent himself. Time will tell just how much of an effect the protests will have on Reid, as they seem to have had on Kaepernick. But it’s crystal clear why Kaepernick doesn’t have a job yet, and if Reid goes untouched, we’ll know why.

We’ll see if Kaepernick’s workout video makes teams interested. Though it’s hard to see teams suddenly changing their mind after he threw for 2,200 yards, 16 touchdowns, and just four interceptions on a 49ers team with very little talent.