In the summer of 2016, Colin Kaepernick was far removed from his improbable Super Bowl run from a few years earlier.
Let’s backtrack a bit: In 2012, Kaepernick, a second-round draft pick out of Nevada, took over the starting job from Alex Smith and piloted the San Francisco 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII, which they would lose 34-31 to the Baltimore Ravens.
Since that career highpoint, the 49ers had shed several of their big-name veterans and were on their third head coach in three seasons. The team was in the midst of a rebuild. Kaepernick, meanwhile, was in a quarterback competition after four years as a starter. Then, during a preseason game, he started a protest movement against police brutality that became a huge national news story and ultimately costing him his livelihood.
Kaepernick opted out of his contract following a 2-14 season once the team informed him they planned to release him. He hasn’t played an NFL snap since New Year’s Day 2017.
In his new memoir, The Perilous Fight, Kaepernick pulls back the curtain on how it all went down, from his departure from San Francisco to his attempt to secure another NFL contract. The book, which was released in September 2026, also details Kaepernick’s upbringing as the adopted son of a white couple and offers new insight into his feelings about Jay Z after the rapper partnered with the NFL.
This is Everything We Learned From Colin Kaepernick’s New Memoir, The Perilous Fight.
Kaepernick experienced a horrific racist attack as a child in Turlock, California.
The Perilous Fight opens with Kaepernick recounting a traumatizing story from his childhood. When he was eight years old, a group of older white kids, who he’d just been playing with, tied him to a tree and peppered him with racist insults. “Go back to Niger, ni**er,” one of them spewed. Luckily, his attackers dispersed after a neighbor intervened. He never mentioned the incident to his parents.
Kaepernick idolized Allen Iverson growing up—which led to friction with his parents.
Kaepernick was just nine years old when AI made his NBA debut but he was immediately transfixed by the rookie’s style and swag. His mother did not approve. “I distinctly remember the difficult conversations in my house,” Kaepernick writes. “When my mother called Iverson a thug, I didn’t have the words or the articulation to tell her that her words were racist because they implied that Allen Iverson being himself, being Black, was a problem, a threat.”
Kaepernick was embroiled in a paternity suit while enrolled at the University of Nevada.
As a freshman in college, Kaepernick briefly dated a woman he calls “Jennifer.” A few months after their relationship ended, he says she told him that she was pregnant and that he was the father. A paternity test revealed that Kaepernick had a “zero percent chance” of being the father—yet he still received a child support order. The dispute ended following a second court ordered test.
Kaepernick almost went full Latrell Sprewell on his college coach.
Kaepernick says that longtime Nevada head coach Chris Ault often made him the scapegoat in practice, criticizing him and cursing him out in front of the other players. One time it got physical when Ault, who Kaepernick nicknamed the Little General, grabbed him by the face mask. “I snatched him up, grabbing him by the shirt with both hands,” Kaepernick writes. “‘Don’t you ever put your fucking hands on me again!” Kaepernick yelled.
Kaepernick had two near-death experiences in college.
He lost control of his Ford F-150 after it hit a patch of black ice while he was driving back to college from a visit home and nearly avoided an oncoming semi truck that had been driving behind him. The next fall he was attending a house party off campus when a fight broke out resulting in three people getting killed. In the chaos, one man pointed a gun in Kaepernick’s face.
NFL teams put him through some weird interviews during the pre-draft process
Prior to the 2011 NFL Draft, Kaepernick met with representatives from the New York Jets, Tennessee Titans, Miami Dolphins, and San Francisco 49ers. During his meeting with New York, the Jets head coach Rex Ryan narrated game film from Kaepernick’s college career as if the quarterback wasn’t in the room. The Titans had Kaepernick look at pattern recognition drawings, the kind you’d find in the kids magazine Highlights. The Dolphins had him meet with a psychiatrist in a dimly lit room. The 49ers were the sole team to talk X’s and O’s with him and would eventually select him with the 36th overall pick.
Randy Moss was an early advocate on the 49ers.
Along with Allen Iverson, Randy Moss was one of Kaepernick’s childhood heroes. Kaepernick met Moss prior to the 2012 season when the veteran wide receiver signed with the 49ers. The experience did not disappoint. One day during OTA’s, Moss sidled up to Kaepernick, who’d been struggling in practice, and said to him, “Just take a deep breath and do what you do.”
Later on, as the two walked off the field, Moss said, “Hey, look here, my ni**a, this white boy [49ers starting quarterback Alex Smith] ain’t gonna take us to the Super Bowl. So, if we gonna get to the Super Bowl, you got to take us there.”
San Francisco 49ers GM Trent Baalke wasn’t a fan of Kaepernick’s sartorial choices.
Kaepernick says Baalke criticized him for rocking snapback baseball caps during press conferences and for wearing sleeveless hoodies during practice.
Kaepernick almost couldn’t play in Super Bowl XLVII.
Kaepernick took over for Smith midway through the 2012 season and led the 49ers to the Super Bowl. But on the morning before the game his back locked up during some mild stretching. A full panic ensued. Kaepernick underwent extensive treatment from the team’s medical team and considered taking a Toradol injection to numb the pain. He felt better 24 hours later and the adrenaline of stepping onto the Superdome allowed him to manage the pain and make it through the game.
The Jim Tomsula regime in San Francisco was even worse than reported.
The lightly regarded defensive line coach was elevated to head coach after the 49ers fired Jim Harbaugh following the 2014 season—and three consecutive NFC Championship Game appearances. The 49ers would go 5-11 in 2015 and fire Tomsula after one season. Kaepernick summarized his tenure with this anecdote:
“For the whole season, we couldn’t even get a straight answer on a simple question about route running. When a receiver runs a shallow route of about 3 to 5 yards, if he sees a defender in front of him he can either run a hook and turn to catch the quarterback’s pass, or he can just keep running by the defender and catch a pass further across the field. Sounds simple enough. But for the entire 2015 season, we could never get agreement from the coaches on whether the receiver should do the hook or keep running. In reality, it doesn’t matter which one you pick—you just have to pick one so everybody is on the same page. . . It got to the point where I was just guessing what the receiver was going to do.”
Kaepernick believes the 49ers medical staff wasn’t forthright about his injuries.
Kaepernick says that during his injury-plagued 2015 season the team discouraged him from getting an MRI on his shoulder and insisted that his pain stemmed from a contusion. Eventually, on the advice of his future wife Nessa Diab, he demanded an MRI. Team doctors said he had a slight tear in his labrum. He then took the images to an independent orthopedic doctor who said that the injury was much more serious and recommended immediate surgery.
Kaepernick’s protest was spontaneous.
Kaepernick underwent a political awakening prior to the 2016 season after he began dating Nessa Diab. He read The Autobiography of Malcolm X and other texts and went into a “deep funk” following the rash of high-profile police brutality killings during the summer of 2016. Kaepernick’s feelings boiled over prior to the 49ers first preseason game in August 2016.
“I hadn’t given the anthem a second’s thought before I walked out onto the field that day, but it hit me in that moment that I should find a seat. I didn't want to stand up while that song was playing. . . I looked around and spotted big Gatorade coolers stationed next to the bench. I went over and sat down on one of them while “The Star-Spangled Banner” played.
Kaepernick’s relationship with Dr. Harry Edwards was much different than what was reported.
Edwards, a 49ers consultant, sociologist, and a longtime activist, was described as a mentor to Kaepernick during the quarterback’s national anthem protest. But Kaepernick didn’t look at it that way. He says that Edwards suggested that he stand for the national anthem prior to the 49ers-Rams game on September 11, 2016. “You’re going to see the white people in the stands crying,” Edwards said to him.
Kaepernick thought to himself, You’re not the person I thought you were going to be, especially in this moment.
“His motives and incentives were different from what they were when he was a staunch advocate for the aggressive activism of Black athletes,” Kaepernick writes. “He’s not the same guy he was forty-eight years earlier when he inspired the athletes at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, when he was actually advocating for Black athletes to boycott the entire event.”
Jay Z tried to sign Kaepernick to Roc Nation in 2017. It didn’t go well.
When Kaepernick met with president of Roc Nation Sports Juan Perez, aka OG Juan, in the management company’s New York offices, he was unimpressed with his pitch.
He writes: “When he started pitching me on why I should join the company, he said something like, ‘Yeah, when you’re traveling and you like Skittles, we’ll have Skittles in your room. We’ll make sure everything is set up for you when you come home; we’ll make sure your fridge is full when you come back from trips.”
“It was starting to feel like a joke,” Kaepernick writes.
The meeting then went from bad to worse when Perez asked him who was on Kaepernick’s t-shirt.
“Oh, this is Huey Newton of the Black Panther Party,” Kaepernick said.
Perez frowned. “The Black Panthers—isn’t that a hate group?”
Kaepernick did not sign with Roc Nation.
Jay Z asked Kaepernick to appear on stage with him during the 4:44 tour.
Kaepernick and Jay Z exchanged emails after the rapper wore his jersey during a Saturday Night Live performance in September 2017. They lost touch until Jay Z emailed him asking Kaepernick to come on stage with him and take a knee while he performed “The Story of O.J.” Kaepernick declined.
“He wasn’t willing to take a phone call or meet with me, but now he wanted me to be a prop for one of his songs as he raps about O.J. with the refrain ‘still nigga’? Nah, I’m good,” Kaepernick writes.
The next time they spoke was the day before Jay Z announced his deal with the NFL
On a call, Jay Z told Kaepernick that he was entering a partnership with the NFL where Roc Nation would serve as the NFL’s “live music entertainment strategist” and book the Super Bowl Halftime Show. Kaepernick says he told Jay Z, “I just want you know, one, you’re serving the culture up to a bunch of racists and, two, they don’t care about you. You’re the music guy to them. They quite literally need a Black face—and have said as much.”
Jay’z response: “Well, the ink’s dry.”
Kaepernick texted him afterwards. “You want to do your deal, do your deal. But keep me out of it. I don’t want any part of it. Don’t reference me.”
When Jay Z was asked at the press conference announcement whether Kaepernick would be involved in the partnership, he said that he had spoken to him, but “you’ll have to ask him; I’m not his boss. That’s for him to say.”
J Cole suggested that Kaepernick hold public workouts.
During a March 2022 FaceTime call, J. Cole, now a close friend, told Kaepernick that he should link with some NFL wide receivers and put his workouts on camera. Kaepernick eventually posted workouts from Houston, New Orleans, Miami, Las Vegas, Atlanta, and a workout with his former coach Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan.
The workouts led to Kaepernick trying out for the Oakland Raiders.
When it was over, Kaepernick said that Raiders coach Josh McDaniels and Raiders owner Mark Davis both praised his performance. A Raiders scout then told him, “Honestly, I’m surprised they let you walk out of the building without signing you. This was the best quarterback workout we’ve had in years.”
But Kaepernick didn’t hear from anyone in the organization again.
“The only conclusion I could come to was either the league had gotten to them and shut it down, or the whole thing was just a PR stunt,” he writes.
