'It Was Garbage': Former Eagle Donovan McNabb Calls Out NFL For Handling Of Colin Kaepernick Workout
PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) -- It was a wild weekend for Colin Kaepernick and the NFL. The former 49ers quarterback called a last-minute audible ahead of his NFL-arranged workout Saturday, moving the showcase's location.
The exiled quarterback staged his own impromptu passing display on a high school field in dwindling light as hundreds of fans cheered him on from behind a chain-link fence.
In total, seven teams scouted the QB, including the Eagles.
The sideshow surrounding the workout seemed to overshadow the play on the field.
On Monday, former Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb appeared on 97.5 The Fanatic's Farzetta & Tra In The Morning and took aim at the NFL for its "garbage" handling of the workout.
"For one, I thought it was garbage. How do you set a workout the day before everybody's playing? That, number one, was an X for me," McNabb said.
"The NFL was running it all, talking about 'we'll control the video, we'll control who comes and watches.' If my agent is setting a workout for me for teams, we need to know what teams are coming, we're picking the location and we're pretty much having it either on Monday or Tuesday," McNabb said.
In a move no one saw coming, the league that Kaepernick claims blackballed him called Tuesday with a take-it-or-leave-it offer to hold an extraordinary workout at the Atlanta Falcons' training complex in the sprawling suburbs north of the city.
All 32 teams were invited. Former NFL head coaches Hue Jackson and Joe Philbin were set to run the drills. The league said 25 teams were sending scouts and representatives — many of whom had already arrived at the Falcons' indoor training facility in Flowery Branch when word came that Kaepernick wasn't going to take part.
Instead, he decided to hold a workout open to the media, unlike the session at the Falcons' facility, at a high school stadium just south of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Sixty miles away.
With barely more than an hour to spare, the media that had been herded into a gated-off area in the parking lot and told that was as close as they would get to Kaepernick's workout hustled to their vehicles to set off for a high school most had never heard of.
But only eight of the original 25 team representatives followed along to the new location, including Eagles vice president of football operations Andrew Berry. It appeared the New York Jets, Kansas City and Washington also had scouts in attendance.
They stood along the sideline, jotting into their notepads as Kaepernick tossed passes to four free-agent receivers.
"He wasn't in the league because the NFL didn't allow him to get back in the league because these owners didn't want to get the backlash from the media of bringing him in," McNabb said.
Listen to McNabb's full interview on 97.5 The Fanatic here.
(©Copyright 2019 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)