Colin Kaepernick has been out of the NFL since 2016 and the reason why isn't due to his performance on the field. To confirm what we already knew, Joe Lockhart — who is the NFL's former vice president of communications — said that Kaepernick's career ended because he was ‘bad for business' in the eyes of the NFL.

In a column by Lockhart, who is a CNN political analyst now, gave a behind-the-scenes look at what led to Kaepernick being blackballed by the NFL:

“[F]or many owners it always came back to the same thing,” Lockhart wrote. “Signing Kaepernick, they thought, was bad for business. An executive from one team that considered signing Kaepernick told me the team projected losing 20% of their season ticket holders if they did. That was a business risk no team was willing to take, whether the owner was a Trump supporter or a bleeding-heart liberal (yes, those do exist). As bad of an image problem it presented for the league and the game, no owner was willing to put the business at risk over this issue.”

Colin Kaepernick was once considered by some to be the best dual-threat quarterback in the NFL. In his first season as the starter for the San Francisco 49ers, he was able to lead them to a Super Bowl.

Given that, his demise didn't stem from his inability to play quarterback. Instead, it was due to him kneeling and speaking out against the same issues that have caused heartbreak this week.

It was the owners and the league that chose not to listen to what Kaepernick was saying. While they continued to ignore his message, they realized that silencing him would be better for business. Now, everyone is realizing that Kaepernick was speaking the truth.