In a recent interview, Colin Kaepernick claimed that San Francisco 49ers medical staff misled him about how serious an injury really was during his final seasons with the team. Nearly ten years after leaving the NFL, it’s one of his strongest accusations against the organization yet, and it’s bringing back questions about how his time with the team truly ended.

When asked whether he had been injured the following season but continued playing while waiting to renegotiate his contract extension, Kaepernick confirmed it.

“No, I was still playing because our doctors lied to us. Yeah. Or lied to me. Yeah. So, I kept playing…” Kaepernick said. He then added, “They didn’t give me anything because they told me they were contusions or bruises.”

Colin Kaepernick’s body had been through a lot in recent years, but 2015 turned out to be the toughest of them all.

In January 2016, reports surfaced that the 49ers quarterback had undergone surgery on his injured right thumb in Vail, Colorado, and the Sacramento Bee reported he’d also had a procedure done on his left knee while he was there. The 49ers did not confirm either surgery at that time.

Officially, Kaepernick had gone to Colorado for a checkup on his surgically repaired left shoulder.

Since the 2015 season had kicked off, Kaepernick had gone through three surgeries.

The thumb injury occurred during the Niners’ 20-3 loss to Seattle on October 22, 2015. The knee injury came just a week later in a 27-6 defeat to the Rams. Things spiraled from there. Kaepernick got benched for Blaine Gabbert after being sacked 28 times across eight starts, with the team sitting at 2-6.

By November 21, he landed on season-ending injured reserve and had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his non-throwing shoulder. Interestingly, neither the shoulder nor the knee injury ever showed up on the team’s official injury report, though the thumb did after that Seahawks game.

For comparison, he had thrown just six touchdown passes over that same stretch, not a great ratio for a starting quarterback. Back in January 2016, that raised a real question about whether he’d even be healthy enough heading into April 1, when $11.9 million of his 2016 contract was set to become fully guaranteed.

Despite everything, he recovered and returned to the field. Then, in October 2016, he agreed to restructure his contract, giving up the injury guarantees and adding performance-based terms instead, a move that also wiped out his salaries for 2017 through 2020 with San Francisco.

Still recovering, Kaepernick fought for the starting job, but Chip Kelly opened with Gabbert. Kaepernick ended up playing twelve games that year, throwing for 2,241 yards with sixteen touchdowns and just four interceptions.

Then came the offseason shakeup. The 49ers fired Kelly and brought in Kyle Shanahan as head coach, with John Lynch stepping in as GM. The team let him know they intended to release him, so instead, he opted out of his contract on March 3, 2017, and became a free agent when the new league year opened.

What followed was silence. No team signed him through that entire offseason or the 2017 training camps. The Seahawks brought him in for a visit that May but never worked him out or made an offer. And here we are, years later, and Kaepernick still hasn’t played a down since.

Pittsburgh Steelers defensive lineman Cam Heyward, now entering his 16th season and still chasing his first Super Bowl appearance, doesn’t buy the silence around Kaepernick’s name.

He’s called him a “hell of a talent,” someone who gave opposing defenses real “headaches,” pointing back to a Super Bowl performance where Kaepernick threw for 302 yards, ran for 62 more, and had a hand in two touchdowns.

Talent clearly was never the question.