Whether or not Colin Kaepernick plays another down in the N.F.L., I’m going to say that he can achieve more off a football field than he — or anyone else in the sport — can achieve on one.

Football, in the larger scheme of things, is not that important. Kaepernick, meanwhile, has a message about crucial aspects of our frayed but hopefully repairable nation that will continue to grow. If he has the devotion to work for change, he could outclass Tom Brady, or any player you might name, as someone who did something that truly matters for future generations.

But I thought it might be useful to at least consider something. The conventional wisdom is that Kaepernick, who opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers after last season and has yet to be signed by another team, does not have an N.F.L. job on account of his politics. In protest against racism and police brutality, he won’t stand for the national anthem, and he’s increasingly outspoken on social issues. Earlier this summer in a tweet he likened the police to members of the fugitive slave patrol. N.F.L. owners, the thinking goes, must be racists who don’t like his politics — or cynical pragmatists who don’t like that their racist fans don’t like his politics.

What seems to me more problematic than Kaepernick’s not having a job is the general unwillingness to consider that this situation might be justified on the merits, given Kaepernick’s current attributes, or lack thereof, as a quarterback, rather than assuming, as part of a kneejerk gospel of victimhood, that persecution must be the cause.