King of the kneelers, Colin Kaepernick, is more known for his social justice laden media stunts than he is for his abilities on the gridiron.

After three years it seemed Kaepernick was pulling all the strings in order to get himself back into the NFL. It was arranged by the NFL to hold a practice at the Atlanta Falcons stadium with scouts from many teams in attendance, as well as media.

Then, just hours before the workout was supposed to happen, Kaepernick switched venues to a high school outside of Atlanta due to a beef he had with the NFL’s free-agent contract agreement. Kaepernick also wanted his own media team there to film his workout, but the NFL denied him that, saying that the Atlanta Falcons media team would film it and distribute it to all 32 teams.

In other words, the NFL rolled out the red carpet for Kaepernick, but Kaepernick still found a way to play the victim.

Sports Center’s Stephen A. Smith heard the news and decided to post a video breaking down what happened, and tore Kaepernick a new set of orifices.

Smith said that Kaepernick kept saying he’s been ready for three years to get back into the NFL, and that NFL teams were lining up to see him practice out of fear and said that should he be denied by any of them, there’s no telling what they’d be accused of, and so the NFL provided cover for them.

“Twenty-five teams show up in Georgia at the Atlanta Falcons practice facility — state of the art facility, NFL personnel, equipment, video, everything, and what does Colin Kaepernick do,” Smith said.

He continued by noting that Kaepernick had the agreement in his hands days before the practice and only decided to act on the issue with it three hours before the practice was set to take place.

“Colin Kaepernick wants to change the venue. Colin Kaepernick wants his own receivers. Colin Kaepernick wants to video things himself,” said Smith.

“See, he don’t want to play. He wants to be a martyr,” said Smith, “but guess what? It ain’t working this time.”

“All of us believe that Colin Kaepernick would have showed out, and if he had showed out, I believe he would have had a job inside of two weeks,” Smith said. “But it didn’t happen, because he didn’t show. He wanted to show up at a high school in Georgia, not an NFL facility…and then YouTube it live.”

“You don’t want to work. You just want to make noise and you want to control the narrative,” Smith said, “It’s over.”

It’s hard to disagree with Smith here. It’s likely that many NFL teams were going to make a show of being friendly toward Kaepernick in order to show themselves as on board with what he stands for, but Kaepernick had to go out of his way to make the NFL’s offer, focused solely around him, as an attack.

Kaepernick gets more benefit out of being a media spectacle than doing the work of being an NFL player. The only thing I disagree with Smith on is that while this is definitely over, it was over long before Kaepernick abandoned the practice. Kaepernick decided he was better off as a social justice warrior with a spotlight not long after he began kneeling. It was over then, not now.

While numerous NFL teams were to show up, one that seemed to withdraw from the practice was the Dallas Cowboys. According to team owner Jerry Jones, they’re more than happy with Dak Prescott right now and weren’t looking to expand their roster.

While that’s definitely a safe answer, I think the real reason goes a bit deeper. Jones believes NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell mishandled the kneeling controversy from the very beginning. Jones has been very clear that his players will not disrespect the flag and that if they do, then they don’t play. While Prescott is lining up to be one of the NFL’s top QB’s in 2019, it’s more likely that Jones wants Kaepernick to stay away from the Cowboys.

Other NFL teams could stand to follow the example set by Jones.