Steelers legend Jerome Bettis open to Pittsburgh giving Colin Kaepernick a shot

If the Pittsburgh Steelers decide to give Colin Kaepernick a tryout, team legend Jerome Bettis would be all for it. 

With the new NFL season getting ready to get underway, Colin Kaepernick once again finds himself not on a roster. He last played in the league way back in 2016, watching games from home for the past three seasons.

Kaepernick has made it clear he’d be open to returning to the NFL if a team decided to give him a shot, especially after he settled his collusion lawsuit with the league. So, what if the Pittsburgh Steelers decided to give him a tryout to work behind Ben Roethlisberger?

This week, FanSided spoke with Hall of Fame running back and Pittsburgh legend Jerome Bettis about that possibility. Bettis said he’d be all for Kaepernick going to the Steelers if Mike Tomlin and his coaching staff decided he’d be a strong fit.

“The question is, where is he accuracy wise,” Bettis said. “He hasn’t played in multiple years, so you want to see where he is physically in terms of throwing the football. You know that he probably still has the escapability, but you still want to know what his arm looks like. Does it still have some zip on the pass? Is he accurate?

“Those are the things from a football perspective you want to see because it’s a big decision when you bring him in. Obviously you don’t want to bring him in if he doesn’t fit the system, so you want to look at all of those things.”

Would Colin Kaepernick be a distraction to a team if they brought him in?

Nearly four years ago to the day, Kaepernick became the first athlete to kneel during the National Anthem. He did this to protest the racial injustices going on around the United States. Fast forward to present time, and those protests are still taking place.

Last month, several sports leagues across the country saw teams and players boycott from playing games after police in Wisconsin shot Jacob Blake in the back seven times, leaving him paralyzed.

With Kaepernick, many fans of teams have voiced their displeasure at the thought of him joining the team because he’d be a potential ‘distraction’ for the rest of his teammates. Would that be the case if he landed with Pittsburgh?

“No, not at all,” Bettis said emphatically when asked if Kaepernick would be a distraction. “I think he would be someone who would advocate for social change. I don’t think he’d be a distraction. A person who’s a distraction is someone who’s selfishly doing some things that takes away from the team concept, but I don’t think he would be doing anything selfishly. All he’d be doing would be bringing to light the issues at hand and I don’t think there’s anything selfish about that at all. I don’t think anything he’s done up to this point was selfish.”

As of now, there’s no sign Kaepernick and the Steelers have any mutual interest. However, if things should change in the coming weeks or at some point during the middle of the season, Bettis will surely be supportive of the decision for Pittsburgh, or any team for that matter, to give him a strong look.