Andrew Hawkins speaks in defense of Colin Kaepernick

Former NFL wide receiver Andrew Hawkins is making it very clear: Colin Kaepernick deserves to be in the NFL.

The San Francisco 49ers quarterback hasn’t played in the NFL since the 2016 season due to the whole “kneeling” controversy. At the time, the NFL and its league owners were not in support of the movement. Although it was made clear by Kaepernick and others that the players weren’t protesting the flag, but instead, protesting the police brutality of African-Americans, the league still stood by its policy which discouraged players from engaging in kneeling during the playing of the national anthem.

Hawkins, who played in the NFL for six seasons, addressed Kaepernick’s situation while appearing on NFL Total Access.

“You can’t erase Colin Kaepernick,” said former NFL wide receiver and current NFL Network analyst Andrew Hawkins, who wore a black No. 7 Kaepernick jersey during an NFL Total Access appearance this week. “You can try, but you’re going to be swimming upstream. A hundred years from now, he’s going to be in history books, so it’s just a matter of how you want to be positioned in those history books, because he’s going to be there, and he’s going to be on the right side of history. That’s just a fact.”

“To be honest, it’s bullshit that he’s not in the league, and anyone who has any football knowledge whatsoever understands that,” Hawkins told The Athletic. “I’m hoping as the year and the years go on, people will start to correct that mistake.”

Since policy brutality has become a hot topic issue in society again, there have been rumors that Kaepernick could return to the league. In fact, Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll recently stated that there’s “one team” who has shown interest in signing the 32-year-old quarterback.

“After all of the time, the years that have passed, I never received a phone call, I never talked to another head coach about it, never talked to anybody about it until today,” Carroll told reporters Thursday during a video conference. “I got a phone call today. I’m not going to tell you who it was. I got a phone call today asking and inquiring about the situation. So somebody’s interested, you know, and we’ll see what happens with that.”