National Football League

Kaepernick explains how new contract is structured to help team

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 10:05 p.m. ET

foxsports

When the 49ers and Colin Kaepernick agreed to a six-year, $126 million contract earlier this month, talk quickly turned to the true value of the deal, and whether the team had gotten one over on its franchise QB.

Despite the big numbers, Kaepernick, who has led the 49ers to two NFC championship games and a Super Bowl in less than two full seasons as a starter, received little more than $13 million in guaranteed money — with nearly $50 million more in guarantees only for injury. According to FOX Sports NFL Insider Mike Garafolo, after paying Kaepernick $13 million this season, the 49ers will get to decide before April 1 in each of the next three years whether they want to cut Kaepernick or guarantee that year's salary ($12.4 million in 2015, $13.9 million in 2016 and a little more than $5 million of his $16.5 million salary in 2017).

Bottom line: The deal is extremely team-friendly for a franchise competing in perhaps the toughest division in football, one that is also home to the defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks.

But the question for critics has been did the team take advantage of its young star for the sake of staying competitive in the long term.

On Thursday, Kaepernick addressed the media at minicamp to give his side of the story. Judging from his comments in the video above, it sounds like that's a story in which team and player are on the same page.