Kaepernick nearly led Harbaugh’s brother, Jim, to the championship in New Orleans on Feb. 3, 2013. That night, he threw for 302 yards and a touchdown and ran for 62 yards and another score. As Kaepernick drove his 49ers down the Superdome field on a potential winning drive that ultimately stalled near the goal line, CBS analyst and former Super Bowl MVP Phil Simms said on the broadcast, “My gosh, I’m really literally mesmerized by some of these passes.”
John Harbaugh wanted whatever that player had left in his arm and legs after the 2016 season. His Ravens quarterback, Joe Flacco, was dealing with a back injury before what would be his final year in Baltimore as the full-time starter.
Ten years after Kaepernick peacefully protested police brutality and the systemic oppression of people of color by refusing to stand for the national anthem, Harbaugh remembered that he was not deterred by the quarterback’s standing as the league’s most polarizing player.
“In all honesty, that wasn’t a factor,” the first-year New York Giants coach told The Athletic. “Yeah, there was conversation that there’s going to be a certain percentage of the fanbase that’s not going to appreciate this, but we decided that wasn’t going to be our driving factor.”
What, then, were the factors driving Baltimore’s interest in Kaepernick in the spring and summer of 2017?
“His talent, and also the fact I had inside information as to who he was from my brother,” Harbaugh said. “We talked a lot about him, and I’d met Kap many times, had numerous conversations with him because of that. We talked about it at length as an organization, and we liked the fit.”