Colin Kaepernick is using his memoir to revisit two very different corners of his life: a family story involving Taylor Swift, and a fresh swipe at Robert Kraft over the Macklemore controversy.
In The Perilous Fight, released Sept. 15 by Hachette’s Legacy Lit imprint, the former NFL quarterback says his adoptive mother once floated an unexpected dating idea while he was in the league. According to Kaepernick, she told him he and Swift would “be perfect together.”
Kaepernick says he wasn’t insulting Swift at all - just uninterested.
“No slight to Taylor Swift, but she was not my type," Kaepernick writes.
He then turns to a memory from his teenage years, saying his mother handled two homecoming photos very differently. Kaepernick says she kept a photo of him with a Black classmate in a drawer, but when he went to a dance with a white girl, she put that picture on the wall.
The Swift reference lands in a strange bit of NFL history, given that Kaepernick played for the San Francisco 49ers from 2011 to 2016, while Travis Kelce’s relationship with Swift began years after Kaepernick was out of the league. Kelce went to Swift’s Eras Tour concert at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City in July 2023, then said on his “New Heights” podcast later that month that he tried to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it but never got the chance.
Swift later described the whole thing as “metal as hell” in her TIME Person of the Year interview in December 2023. She made her first public appearance at a Chiefs game on Sept. 24, 2023, when she watched from Kelce’s suite at Arrowhead Stadium.
Swift and Kelce announced their engagement on Aug. 26, 2025, and got married on July 3 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Kaepernick also used a Sept. 16 interview with Ben Meiselas on The MeidasTouch Podcast to go after Kraft while discussing the Macklemore and Ed Sheeran dispute. The interview was part of his media tour for The Perilous Fight.
Macklemore was taken off the remaining U.S. dates of Sheeran’s tour after making pro-Palestinian comments during a performance. Then, on Sept.
14, Macklemore said Sheeran told him Kraft had called and pushed for him to be removed from the tour. Kraft owns Gillette Stadium, where Sheeran is scheduled to perform.
Kaepernick tied that episode back to his own grievance against the NFL, saying the situation reinforced his belief that owners can work together when their interests line up.
“The part that I hope people take away in this moment is what Robert Kraft and what they're saying by denying Macklemore ... is they are willing to collude.”
He said he had once heard the counterargument that NFL owners would not coordinate to keep a player out because winning mattered too much. But Kaepernick said he eventually came to believe the bigger priority was protecting their interests, power and money.
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