San Francisco 49ers general manager Trent Baalke said he “absolutely” expects Colin Kaepernick to be on the roster on April 1, when his $11.9 million base salary is set to kick in. If he remains on the roster, Kaepernick will be paid a starting quarterback’s salary despite being benched for Blaine Gabbert last season.
49ers GM said he ‘absolutely’ expects Colin Kaepernick to remain with the team
Trent Baalke said at the NFL Combine that Kaepernick will compete with Blaine Gabbert for the starting quarterback job.
Kelley L Cox-USA TODAY Sports
While speaking to reporters at the NFL Combine, Baalke said that Kaepernick will have an opportunity to compete with Blaine Gabbert for the starting role.
“The good thing is we’ve got two guys who’ve gone into games and proven they can play. Colin’s done some awfully good things in his career, won some big games for the San Francisco 49ers,” Baalke said. “I expect him to come back.”
However, it's still not a guarantee that Kaepernick will be with the 49ers next season -- it's still possible the team will try to trade Kaepernick or decide to release him prior to April 1.
Kaepernick's career with the 49ers to this point has been rocky at best. He started as Alex Smith's backup and then took over the team in the middle of a playoff run when Smith went down with injury. Kaepernick hit a major high point in 2012 when he kept the starting job and led team past the Green Bay Packers and Atlanta Falcons in the playoffs, before losing to the Baltimore Ravens in the Super Bowl. The following year, he led the 49ers to the playoffs again, but they fell to the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC Championship.
The wheels came off after that. His 2014 campaign was inconsistent and when the 49ers missed the playoffs, Jim Harbaugh was fired. Jim Tomsula took over and Kaepernick was benched after eight games for Blaine Gabbert. Kaepernick was playing in a terribly managed offense, but he did himself no favors with bad interceptions and low completion percentages.
After he was benched, there were immediately credible rumors about Kaepernick not being a leader in the locker room. His relationship with the 49ers looked fractured, and any hopes of him sticking with the team seemed lost. Tomsula’s time in San Francisco was disastrous and on top of Kaepernick’s regression, there was also weirdness surrounding a shoulder injury that may or may not have been hidden for multiple weeks.
The 49ers will be more than $50 million below the cap when the new league year begins, so Kaepernick’s contract isn’t a huge strain on the team, while at the same time Kaepernick has little incentive to restructure given the team-friendliness of how his deal was structured in the first place.
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