If there’s one decision Colin Kaepernick has made with total clarity, it involves his kids. Asked directly whether he’d let his own children play the sport that defined his career, he didn’t hesitate. He and his wife Nessa have talked it through at length, and where they’ve landed says a lot about what the game has cost him.

“No,” Colin Kaepernick said to Tonya Mosley. “I’ve had this conversation with [my wife] Nessa, and we have talked back and forth on this, and we would avoid our kids playing football at all costs. I say that because we now know the impact of it. Now, if we had a son that was adamant on playing, I don’t think we would let him play contact football until he was much older.”

Colin Kaepernick and Nessa Diab reportedly started dating in July 2015 and went public the following February. In August 2025, Nessa revealed to TMZ that they had been married for years, quietly.

According to the reports, the couple later adopted a boy after losing two other sons to heart defects. Kaepernick has mentioned a son who’s adamant about playing, though he hasn’t shared much beyond that.

Either way, his stance on keeping his kids off the field comes from what his own body went through, year after year, in the game.

He was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in 2011, and Kaepernick quickly built a reputation as a dynamic, mobile quarterback. But the physical toll started piling up early.

In 2014, Kaepernick recalled a 2013 foot injury (Week 2 vs. Seattle) – a chipped bone and ruptured capsule. He said it healed on its own, and no offseason surgery was needed.

“I think that’s the kind of players we have on this team: You’re not going to let something minor, that’s not a true injury, keep you off of the field,” Kaepernick said. “You’re going to get hurt, yes. You’re going to have tweaks and problems. But you’re a football player; you can play through those.”

That injury lingered on the team’s injury report all the way through their bye week.

The 2015 season turned out to be the toughest stretch of his career. It started unraveling in October, when he tore his thumb during a 20-3 loss to Seattle. Just a week later, in a 27-6 defeat to the Rams, he banged up his knee too.

After eight starts, 28 sacks, and a 2-6 record, the 49ers benched Kaepernick in favor of Blaine Gabbert. By November, he eventually landed on injured reserve after surgery for a torn labrum, one of three procedures he underwent that year alone.

In 2016, Kaepernick’s situation shifted dramatically. Coming off three surgeries, Kaepernick entered the season still fighting for his job, competing with Gabbert for the starting spot. Chip Kelly picked Gabbert to open the year.

That offseason brought a shakeup. The 49ers fired Chip Kelly, brought in Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch, and let Kaepernick know he’d be released.

He opted out first, becoming a free agent in March 2017. No team signed him that offseason, not even through the 2017 training camps. The Seahawks brought him in for a visit, but it never led anywhere, and he still hasn’t played since.

Add it all up: the injuries, the surgeries, everything football took from his body, and keeping his kids off the field starts to feel less like a rule and more like a promise he made to himself.