NFL Trade: Broncos, 49ers have Colin Kaepernick trade in place
By Josh Hill
The 49ers and Broncos have basically agreed to swap Colin Kaepernick — but not with his current contract.
After months of light petting, the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos are ready to do business on a Colin Kaepernick trade. It was rumored that Denver, who lost Peyton Manning to retirement and Brock Osweiler to the Texans, would try to trade for the Niners quarterback before his roster bonuses kicked in.
The money San Francisco owes Kaepernick became guaranteed this week, but no deal was made before that. However, this hasn’t killed the idea of a trade — instead it has seemingly gotten the wheels greased enough for there to be parameters of a trade set in place.
According to Adam Schefter from ESPN, the Niners and Broncos have agreed to a trade that would send Kaepernick to Denver but the matter of restructuring his contract is all that is holding things up.
"San Francisco and Denver have the parameters of an agreement in principle on a trade for Colin Kaepernick, sources said, but before any deal can be completed, the quarterback and the Broncos still have to agree on a restructured contract, and the two sides have not been close."
Of course, this isn’t an agreement that has been forwarded to league offices for approval, as the major caveat of Kaepernick’s massive contract still exists. This means that while there is an agreement on what would be exchanged, there isn’t a deal yet and things could still fall apart.
But this is the closest we’ve been to something happening with this Cold War between the Broncos and Niners when it comes to Kaepernick. There’s no reason for the Niners to not eat enough of his contract to ship him out so they can start over new with Jared Goff, Paxton Lynch or whoever they take in the first-round of the draft this year.
Denver has little incentive to try and force feed the Niners their own contract with Kaepernick as there is no way Mark Sanchez is the starter Week 1. That being said, they have under $1 million in cap space to play with, which means this restructuring of Kaepernick’s contract is a must.