Colin Kaepernick's journey from fresh-faced upstart to $126 million sensation to NFL pariah has unfolded without evaluators fundamentally changing what they thought about his skills.
What has changed, acutely, is how evaluators perceive Kaepernick's mindset and prospects for development. Although those perceptions changed long before Kaepernick, a free agent, ever knelt during an anthem in the name of social justice, his controversial protests are obviously a significant part of this multi-variable equation.
My notes from four years of conversations with 21 league insiders form an oral history of a career that is both remarkable and confounding.