https://www.wsj.com/articles/nfl-paid-under-10-million-to-settle-colin-kaepernick-grievance-11553192288?mod=hp_lead_pos5

By Andrew Beaton
March 21, 2019 2:18 p.m. ET
Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, the NFL stars who alleged the league’s teams colluded to keep them off the field after they led protests during the national anthem, will receive less than $10 million to settle grievances with the league, according to people briefed on the deal.

The confidential agreement was widely celebrated as a victory for the players. But the settlement is far less than the tens of millions of dollars Mr. Kaepernick, especially, would have likely been owed if his grievance had prevailed. It couldn’t be determined how the payment is divided between the players and how much they will net after legal fees.

Mr. Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, and Mr. Reid, a safety, alleged in their grievances that they were blackballed by the league after they catalyzed a movement of protests—typically kneeling or holding up a fist—during the national anthem to draw attention to social issues and racial inequality. Mr. Kaepernick, who has gone unsigned the last two seasons, filed his grievance in 2017. Mr. Reid followed suit last year, and was later signed by the Carolina Panthers midway through the 2018 season.

An NFL spokesman declined to comment. An attorney for Messrs. Kaepernick and Reid said they are respecting the deal’s confidentiality agreement.

The league and attorneys for the players did not announce terms of the deal last month when they announced a settlement of the respective grievances. The parties said the agreement was subject to a confidentiality agreement and that there would be no further comment from any party. Details of the settlement have been tightly held among just a few league officials and Mr. Kaepernick’s attorneys.

If Mr. Kaepernick had won his grievance, the league’s collective bargaining agreement with its players would have entitled him to damages worth up to three times what an arbitrator determined he lost as a result of the collusion. If Mr. Kaepernick’s market value had been judged to be a total of $30 million over the two seasons he was sidelined—a ballpark price tag for a player of his caliber—he could have been awarded $90 million from the ruling.

If the league didn’t settle, it faced the possibility of costly litigation had Mr. Kaepernick lost and taken the case to court.

In the settlement’s aftermath, Mr. Kaepernick was widely hailed for making the league pay for the damage allegedly done to his career.

“I’m happy to see the news come out yesterday that he won his suit,” NBA star LeBron James said after the agreement was announced. “I hope it’s a hell of a lot of money that can set not only him up but set his family up, set his grandkids up for the rest of their lives. I hope the word of what he did will live on throughout American history.”

The settlements brought resolution to a dispute that extended far beyond football. The players’ protest movement stoked racial and political tensions, and the controversy surrounding the protests thrust the country’s richest and most popular sports league into tumult as it faced difficult questions about how to respond to competing pressures.

The protests turned Mr. Kaepernick into a high-profile activist, while it also transformed the NFL into a political lightning rod that drew the ire of critics, including President Trump, who called the demonstrations unpatriotic.

Mr. Kaepernick starred as a quarterback for the 49ers through 2016, the season he began sitting and then later kneeling during the national anthem. He was joined by players such as Mr. Reid, and others across the league, who would sit, kneel, raise a fist or demonstrate in other manners.

After the 2016 season, Mr. Kaepernick became a free agent. He has gone unsigned since then, even though his body of work compares favorably to other quarterbacks who have gotten jobs.

Mr. Kaepernick’s grievance, filed in 2017, accused the NFL and all 32 teams of colluding to keep him unsigned because of the protests and his role as an activist.

Legal experts say Mr. Kaepernick faced a difficult path to winning the grievance. Although his grievance argued that it was a “statistical impossibility” that Mr. Kaepernick had not been signed, the burden of proof in this type of grievance required proving that there was some type of coordinated effort to keep him unsigned.

Mr. Kaepernick led the 49ers to the Super Bowl in the 2012 season and the NFC Championship the following year, emerging as a transcendent star with a strong arm and remarkable speed. But from 2014 to 2016, he won only 11 of 35 starts as injuries, and diminished play in the eyes of some, damped the hype around him.

Even with Mr. Kaepernick unsigned, the fervor around the player protests grew. Mr. Trump repeatedly assailed the protests and criticized the NFL for allowing them to continue—placing the league in a direct feud with the president. In a 2017 speech, Mr. Trump referred to a kneeling player as a “son of a bitch,” and players—and entire teams—responded by kneeling en masse. Later, Vice President Mike Pencewalked out of a game when players knelt during the anthem.

After the 2017 season, the NFL briefly instituted a rule change that required players to stand and “show respect” for the anthem or otherwise remain in the locker room during its playing. In response, the NFL Players Association said it wasn’t consulted on the new policy and threatened litigation. The parties agreed to suspend the rule change, and it was never implemented.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported on depositions, taken as part of Mr. Kaepernick’s grievance, in which NFL team owners indicated that Mr. Trump’s pressure on the issue pushed them to shift their stance.

Mr. Reid became a free agent following the 2017 season and went unsigned, and he filed a grievance similar to Mr. Kaepernick’s. After the 2018 season began, Mr. Reid, who plays safety, was signed by the Panthers.

The settlement agreement, in February, came more than a year after Mr. Kaepernick filed his grievance but within a month or two of when his case had finally been set to be heard by the arbitrator, a person familiar with the matter said when the case was resolved.