http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/sports/football/49ers-to-start-colin-kaepernick-contract-injuries.html 2016-10-14 23:42:02 Is It a Risk for the 49ers to Start Colin Kaepernick? Not Anymore The Niners restructured their already team-friendly contract with their quarterback ahead of his start on Sunday, eliminating their financial exposure in case of an injury. === When the In 2014, though, the 49ers missed the playoffs, and by the middle of last season Kaepernick was playing so poorly that he lost his starting spot to Blaine Gabbert. This season, Gabbert has been awful, and so have the 49ers (1-4). The team’s desolate fans have taken to chanting, “We want Kap.” So Chip Kelly, the team’s coach, is giving Kaepernick another shot at running the team. As woeful as the 49ers have been, and as much as the fans need that sliver of hope, the team would never have let Kaepernick onto the field unless he had agreed to renegotiate his contract. The new deal was completed Wednesday. For Kaepernick to play, the 49ers told him, he had to be willing to accept all the financial risk of a serious injury. Given Kaepernick’s three surgeries in the last year, this possibility is not exactly remote. (The team declined to talk about Kaepernick’s reworked contract.) Major League Baseball and N.B.A. players sign contracts that pay them even if they sustain a career-ending injury. Football players, who have the highest risk of serious injury, are, for the most part, not afforded such financial protection. This may not rise to the level of the racial injustice Kaepernick has been protesting, but it sure doesn’t seem right. When you read that a basketball player has signed a four-year, $60 million contract, those numbers can generally be taken at face value: The player is guaranteed to receive $60 million over the next four years, even if he is injured or cut from the team. But when you read about a football player’s contract, the numbers don’t necessarily reflect reality. For years, the typical football contract allowed a team to cut a player who got hurt (or didn’t play up to par) and not pay him anything beyond the season in which he was injured — even if his contract was for multiple years. The situation has improved markedly, with many players now receiving signing bonuses and some guaranteed money, but a football contract that is entirely guaranteed is still the exception, not the rule. Kaepernick’s contracts have been typical. As a second-round draft choice in 2011, he signed what was described as a four-year, $5.1 million deal. Of that, however, only $3.8 million was guaranteed, including a $2.2 million signing bonus. So if he flamed out or got hurt, the 49ers would be out only $3.8 million rather than the $5.1 million the contract suggested. Three years later, after leading the 49ers to a Super Bowl in the 2012 season and the N.F.C. championship game in the 2013 season, Kaepernick signed a new deal with the team that was purported to be worth as much as $126 million over six years. It included what was described as a “record” $61 million in guaranteed money. In fact, the deal was terribly lopsided — in the 49ers’ favor. Although Kaepernick’s annual salary was in the range of what top quarterbacks were getting — he was guaranteed almost $13 million in 2014 — there was clause after clause that benefited the team. Most marquee players have contracts calling for the team to pay for a disability policy in case of a career-ending injury; Kaepernick’s contract called for And that $61 million in guaranteed money? It was a mirage. Much of that money was supposed to involve an “injury guarantee” clause; it said that if Kaepernick was seriously injured in one season, and remained injured as of April 1 the next year, he would have to be paid his entire salary for that second year. That was certainly more protection than players had gotten in the past, but it was hardly a $61 million guarantee. Why, you might be wondering, don’t football players have the kind of financial protection against injury that baseball and basketball players have? The obvious answer is that the owners are fierecely opposed to it. Serious injuries are far more common in football than in baseball and basketball. Paying players who are hurt for more than one season would be expensive. In addition, the And while the marquee players operate from a position of strength, the average player doesn’t have much leverage. The typical length of an N.F.L. career is less than four years, and most football players are surprisingly fungible. So few of them are willing to hold out for contract guarantees. They know what happened in 1987 when the players went on strike only to see the owners hire replacement players — and break the strike in less than a month. More than athletes in other sports, football players fear for their jobs. And the owners know it. Which brings us back to Kaepernick. Observers of the 49ers will tell you that by the time he was benched in November 2015, the relationship between Kaepernick and the team’s management had soured. Kaepernick felt he was being blamed for the team’s decline — even though the coach who had transformed the team, Jim Harbaugh, had departed and the talent surrounding Kaepernick wasn’t nearly what it had been just a few years earlier. The front office felt that his skills had declined so much — he was the league’s 30th-ranked passer — that he no longer merited an elite quarterback’s pay. In late November, Kaepernick had shoulder surgery (which, because of his contract, cost him money because he was no longer suiting up for games). Two months later, he had operations on his thumb and his knee. And a month after that, he demanded a trade. The 49ers shopped him around, and though a few teams were interested, they all wanted Kaepernick to take a pay cut, which he refused to do. As the trade possibilities faded, speculation grew in the San Francisco news media that the team would cut him. But the 49ers couldn’t cut Kaepernick. Before April 1, he was still recovering from football-related injuries, and under the collective bargaining agreement, teams can’t cut players in that situation. And if they had cut him after April 1, they would have had to pay him his full 2016 salary. So he remained part of the roster for 2016, and his “injury guarantee” kicked in for 2017. That meant that if Kaepernick sustained a serious enough injury during the 2016 season, he would be due his entire 2017 salary, which amounted to $14.5 million. The prospect of spending that money on a player it no longer wanted could not have been pleasant for the 49ers’ front office to contemplate. Kelly, the coach, claims that no one in the front office ever said anything about the financial consequences of playing Kaepernick. But that’s hard to believe. Entering Sunday, he had been on the field for only three plays, all of them handoffs to a running back. And this week, in anticipation of his start against the Bills on Sunday, the 49ers and Kaepernick agreed to a contract restructuring. Under the new terms, he will earn about $14 million in 2016, and has an option to remain with the team in 2017. But the remaining years of his old contract will be erased — and, most important to the 49ers, so will his injury guarantee. Thus, if Kaepernick sustains an injury this season, the team will no longer be on the hook for his $14.5 million salary in 2017. Some contend this is a win-win for the team and the player. But it’s not. Kaepernick agreed to the deal because he wants to play — and wants to show other teams that he still has the goods. He hopes to score big in free agency after this season is over. But Kaepernick is the one taking all the risk — including the risk of serious injury — while the 49ers have managed to eliminate their own financial risk and move it onto the player. Which is exactly the way they like to do it in the N.F.L.