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Former Cleveland Browns coach Hue Jackson said he wanted his team to sign Colin Kaepernick after the quarterback became a free agent in March 2017.

“I wanted him. It just didn’t work out,” Jackson said Friday on WKNR AM-850 in Cleveland. “Obviously, those things do have to work from a finance, draft, whatever all that is. And that wasn’t my decision.”

Jackson’s comment, however, doesn’t coincide with a statement he reportedly made in March 2017.

“We haven’t really discussed Colin,” Jackson said at the time, via ESPN. “There are other players at this point that we’ve really had a lot of conversation about to see if we can put on our team. Not saying that it won’t come up later on. I think you have to exhaust everything you’re doing. But at this point, he hasn’t come up that much.”

Kaepernick started the movement of kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality in August 2016. He later became a free agent and hasn’t received another opportunity in the NFL.

The Browns went in a different direction from Kaepernick. They acquired Brock Osweiler in a trade with the Houston Texans and selected fellow quarterback DeShone Kizer in the second round of the 2017 NFL Draft.

Jackson, 54, posted a 3-36-1 record in 40 games as the Browns’ head coach from January 2016 through October 2018.

–Field Level Media (@FieldLevelMedia)