WASHINGTON -- The NAACP wants a meeting with the NFL commissioner to discuss the fate of Colin Kaepernick.

He's the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who refused to stand for the national anthem -- kneeling as a protest against police brutality. He once took his team to the Super Bowl, but he's a free agent now, and no club has signed him.

The NAACP says in a letter to the football commissioner, Roger Goodell, that it's apparently "no sheer coincidence" that Kaepernick hasn't been picked up.

Get Breaking News Delivered to Your Inbox

Derrick Johnson -- the NAACP's interim president and CEO -- says "no player should be victimized and discriminated against because of his exercise of free speech."

Goodell has denied Kaepernick is the target of discrimination.

"Those are football decisions that each team has to make and what they think are the right ways to make their football teams better," Goodell said.

CBS Sports analyst Boomer Esiason, a former NFL MVP, said teams "would have a very, very tough time signing somebody who protested the American flag and the national anthem."

The NAACP plans to participate in a rally Wednesday at NFL headquarters in New York in support of Kaepernick.