The NFL may want to forget Colin Kaepernick exists, but Amnesty International is making that hard to do.

human rights organization Amnesty International on Saturday bestowed its highest honor, the Ambassador of Conscience award, on Kaepernick at a ceremony in Amsterdam.
Accompanying Kaepernick was former 49ers teammate Eric Reid. Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem in the 2016 season to protest police brutality against men of color. Reid soon knelt down beside Kaepernick in solidarity. Both players are free agents. Neither has been able to find a job in the NFL.
Said Amnesty International Secretary General Salil Shetty in a statement: “(Kaepernick) is an athlete who is now widely recognized for his activism because of his refusal to ignore or accept racial discrimination.”

I think that it's a shame that Eric Reid's part in this gets ignored.
Then, if you read a bit further, you will find a very interesting part.

Kaepernick was invited to Seattle to work out for the Seahawks earlier this month, but the visit was canceled when he wouldn’t promise to discontinue his social justice protests. Reid visited the Cincinnati Bengals but left without a contract offer when he wouldn’t commit to stop protesting.

So now we know: it's blackballing. Plain and simple.

Recently, the NFL owners and players met to discuss this, and someone even made an audio recording.

The players sounded aggrieved. After discussing a proposal to finance nonprofit groups to address player concerns, they wanted to talk about why Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who started the anthem protests to highlight social injustice and police brutality against African-Americans, was, they believed, being blackballed by the owners. The owners sounded panicked about their business under attack, and wanted to focus on damage control.
“If he was on a roster right now, all this negativeness and divisiveness could be turned into a positive,” Philadelphia Eagles defensive lineman Chris Long said at the meeting.
...The New England Patriots owner Robert K. Kraft pointed to another “elephant in the room.”

“This kneeling,” he said.

“The problem we have is, we have a president who will use that as fodder to do his mission that I don’t feel is in the best interests of America,” said Kraft, who is a longtime supporter of Mr. Trump’s. “It’s divisive and it’s horrible.”

The owners were intent on finding a way to avoid Trump’s continued criticism. The president’s persistent jabs on Twitter had turned many fans against the league. Lurie, who called Trump’s presidency “disastrous,” cautioned against players getting drawn into the president’s tactics.
...
The owners kept returning to one bottom-line issue: Large numbers of fans and sponsors had become angry about the protests. Boycotts had been threatened and jerseys burned and — most worrisome — TV ratings were declining.

Those billionaires sure don't have much courage.