Should the New York Giants pursue quarterback Colin Kaepernick following the season-ending injury to Jaxson Dart? Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk thinks so, citing a recent John Harbaugh comment about his thought process back in 2017.
The suggestion does not hold up in 2026.
Harbaugh told The Athletic he wanted Kaepernick in Baltimore when the dual-threat quarterback was still close to the player who took the San Francisco 49ers to a Super Bowl.
That was a different roster, a different coach, and a different league. Kaepernick turns 39 in November and has not taken an NFL snap since the final week of the 2016 season. A decade away is not a layoff. It is a career that ended.
The Giants already have a starter in Jameis Winston, with Jake Haener behind
him. Harbaugh said all options are on the table, including a trade. Those options should be current football players. A workout for a 38-year-old whose last formal look came years ago would not solve the depth problem. It would turn a football emergency into a sideshow.
The sideshow is not theoretical. Kaepernick is on a book tour and recently compared the NFL’s evaluation process to slavery, calling the intentions behind it the same. A quarterback who frames the league that way and then asks to rejoin it would dominate every press cycle in New York. The Giants do not need that noise while they try to keep a season together.
Harbaugh’s 2017 interest was a football judgment made in real time. Treating it as a standing invitation in 2026 ignores age, absence, and the distraction -- whether that is fair or unfair -- that would follow Kaepernick into the building.
The Giants need a quarterback who can help this roster now, not a polarizing figure who has not played since Barack Obama was president.
This article originally appeared on Giants Wire: No, the New York Giants should not consider signing Colin Kaepernick
