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really, really good article from bayareasportsguy
Quarterbacking in the NFL is incredibly difficult. [COLOR=#red]A sizable contingent of 49ers fans believe that Aaron
would’ve been a far worse player if the 49ers drafted him with the first overall pick for a reason.[/COLOR] If a quarterback has very little support, either on or off the field, he has no chance.
Vance is one of my least favorite 49ers ever
Adam Gase?Watched that Kap pressed from last night, sad but dude has the yips big time. Talmbout protecting throws and not trying to make mistakes..
Like Red said, the infrastructures not in place to help him. Really could have used an offensive mind as HC.
Vance is one of my least favorite 49ers ever
co-sign to the trillionth power. how do you manage to have worse hands than VD?
i still won't let him off the hook for that wide open downfield pass he dropped in that home game vs Carolina two seasons ago. that pass would have put us in a position to score in an already low-scoring game. I can't stand this guy. that pass he failed to catch yesterday ruined any sort of momentum they had going. let Celek and Bell take his snaps, dude is scorching hot trash, along with the other dudes he lines up next to, pears and devey
[h1]Jed York’s biggest mistakes (Kaepernick Edition): Under-valuing the QB expertise of Harbaugh and Roman, over-valuing Dilfer, Chryst, and… Steve Logan? WTH?[/h1]
Posted on October 5, 2015 by Tim Kawakami .entry-meta
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Hey, what a surprise: The 49ers are 1-3, have scored the fewest points in the NFL (48, the same amount Atlanta scored yesterday)… and Jed York is AWOL. Underground. Silent. Disappeared.
Actually, York ducking under the nearest desk (metaphorically) and sending his minions out to explain why it’s not his fault whenever things get rocky in 49ersland… is the most predictable thing on earth.
But York is the guy running the 49ers, he’s the one who made the call to undermine and then fire Jim Harbaugh, he hand-picked Jim Tomsula to replace the most successful 49ers coach since the Bill Walsh/George Seifert era and Jed York has his fingerprints over everything about this recent swoon.
Last I checked, York also asked the world to hold him accountable. Except that’s hard to do when York won’t face cameras or columnists, when Levi’s Stadium is earning his family in excess of $100M in profits a year, and when he can’t and won’t fire himself as team CEO/president/superman.
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–One note to start off today’s conversation: York and GM Trent Baalke could’ve hired Adam Gase as their coach last January, and Gase was in talks to keep Vic Fangio as his defensive coordinator if that happened.
But…
Instead, at the 11th hour of their long day of negotiations, Baalke told Gase he had to accept Tomsula as his DC.
Gase’s response (paraphrased): What the hell???
So Gase wisely ran away from that at full sprint–he was never officially offered the HC job but had been led to believe the job was his–and then Gase swiftly and repeatedly declined Tomsula’s entreaties to come aboard as the 49ers OC.
Eventually, Gase signed on as the Bears’ OC… and Fangio signed on as the Bears DC.
Oh, by the way, the Bears defense looked pretty good against the Raiders on Sunday, I might point out.
The clarifying point is that York decided his guy was Tomsula, period., so Tomsula got the 49ers HC job and promoted Geep Chryst in the OC job and Eric Mangini as DC.
The 49ers had Harbaugh. Replaced him with Tomsula. When you think about the ruined QB play, just think about that.
You want a direct line of accountability for the unraveling of Colin Kaepernick? Let’s look at what and who York and Baalke have churned through in the last few months:
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-They had Harbaugh, Greg Roman and Fangio, the braintrust that got them to three consecutive NFC championship games and that picked and developed Kaepernick (and yes, had some bumpy games with Kaepernick in 2014)… and essentially fired all three;
-They could’ve had Gase (who probably would’ve served as his own OC) and Fangio;
-They ended up with Tomsula, Chryst, Mangini and QBs coach Steve Logan (who was a radio host most recently). And then York said Tomsula could be the next Steve Kerr.
Whew.
There are so many mistakes to list, some intentional, some not, some that York and Baalke don’t even fathom yet, but maybe they’re starting to…
Let’s just list a few that directly involve the on-going de-evolution of Kaepernick, who just looks lost out there these days, in his fourth season as a starter…
1. York didn’t value what Harbaugh and Roman did generally, but specifically didn’t understand what they meant to the QB spot and Kaepernick most especially.
In fact, probably with the whispered assistance of 49er-buddy Trent Dilfer, York and Baalke decided that Harbaugh and Roman were THE problem.
And that was wrong. About as wrong as an owner and GM can be, and York and Baalke have been doing a lot of that lately.
You can explain it any way you want, but York and Baalke put Kaepernick’s future (and the 49ers’ short-term future) in the hands of Tomsula, Chryst, QBs coach Steve Logan, Dilfer and whoever else kissed up to York.
This is what York said to the NFL Network soon after putting the new staff together…
“But with Kap you got a guy in Geep Chryst who knows him better than anybody else. You have a great guy in Steve Logan that’s coming in that’s going to work with him on fundamentals and to put a system that’s going to put Kap in the best position to make plays.
“How many quarterbacks in this league can run 90 yards for a touchdown? I can’t think of many, but you have to put Kap in position where he can make those plays and put Kap in position where we can run the ball.
“We can throw the ball in ways that allows him to be successful and let him be the absolute stud that he can be on the field, and that’s what you’re going to see from us next year. Defenses are not going to want to play against us because you’re not going to know where we’re going to hit you.”
That’s babble. I never understood what the 49ers’ plans were for Kaepernick this season–and I said so repeatedly–and this was the start of the nonsense.
Oh, they want him to run it 90 yards at a time. Good to know!
The scheme? Who cares, Jed says they’re going to let Kap be Kap.
That’s an owner thinking he can be an OC and a QB coach and only wants to believe flattering things about himself and his team and who doesn’t want a strong-minded coach to intrude on the ownership musing.
It’s the thinking that led the team to the Mike Singletary era, which, coincidentally, was the last time they coached the QB this poorly.
2. The “let Kap be Kap” blather wasn’t harmless–it tangibly screwed up Kaepernick.
You don’t want a QB second-guessing every throw he makes in an NFL game. But that’s exactly what the 49ers have done. Much of this is Kaepernick’s fault, but the 49ers brass is fully responsible for this, too.
Again, this was an intentional de-valuing of the work Harbaugh and Roman did to try to keep Kaepernick settled, to use his legs only when they had to use them, and to try to nudge him towards more efficiency.
York and Baalke and Dilfer thought that was wrong. But listening to Dilfer has only made it worse and made Kaepernick worse.
Yes, working with Kurt Warner last offseason–right out of the Dilfer playbook–made it worse.
Again, I never followed the logic of this but it made sense to 49ers management: They believed working on his pocket skills with Warner and also designing an offense suited to his runs would let Kaepernick cut loose.
But it never made sense, when you put it together. They were pulling Kaepernick both ways and he didn’t know enough or wasn’t strong enough to stop and say, THIS DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.
Actual result: He looks like he’s hesitating in the middle of every throw, trying to think through the release, then re-think it, neither fully committed to just throwing it naturally or to a clinical approach…
And that’s the worst kind of in-between for an NFL QB.
Harbaugh and Roman were trying to get Kaepernick to feel natural in the pocket–it didn’t quite take last season and who knows how well it would’ve worked into the future if they hadn’t gotten dismissed.
But now the York-Baalke Dilfer-Warner-Chryst-Tomsula version of Kaepernick doesn’t look natural doing anything.
That’s not regression, that’s obliteration.
3. While the non-guaranteed $126M contract was a shrewd deal for the 49ers–because they can cut Kaepernick without much financial stress–it set him up to be their fall guy and knowing the 49ers, we knew they’d eagerly take that route at the first possible opportunity.
I don’t know why his agent or Kaepernick himself didn’t see this. I argued this point as soon as we learned about the true details of this very, very team-friendly deal.
It didn’t help the 49ers’ salary cap (unless they cut him); it helped their bank account, though, if they were planning to cut him.
–Two summers ago, I thought the 49ers would give Kaepernick something like three years and $45M, with much of it guaranteed, which would’ve paid him through 2016 and also given him huge incentive to understand that he’s still competing for his job.
–The 49ers chose not to do that, largely because they knew Kaepernick didn’t realize that their non-guaranteed offer was worse.
–That made it all about the 49ers’ bottom-line.
And once you get Jed York staring at his bottom-line, that’s all he can think about… and once Kaepernick got off to a slow start, no shock, the usual 49ers management cronies started saying Kaepernick was a problem.
He’s the fall guy. And he’s wilting under the pressure. Just falling apart under that scrutiny.
This is unhealthy. This is how you blow up your team.
I’m not saying the 49ers shouldn’t exercise every negotiating right. Kaepernick signed the deal, he has to live with it, and if they cut him this spring, that’s the way it goes.
But the very structure of this deal set Kaepernick up to be a fall guy before he deserved it and that’s not a confident way to run a franchise.
4. OK, they set up the chance to get rid of Kaepernick whenever they wanted. BUT: They didn’t acquire anybody to compete with him or to replace him.
Kaepernick was at his best in 2012… when he was coached by Harbaugh and Roman and… competing with Alex Smith for the starting job. Smith was never better than back then, either.
It’s not bad to have a competition. I figured the 49ers would do that at some point by drafting a QB–the same way Bill Belichick does it every three or four years by bringing in somebody younger than Tom Brady–but Baalke kept taking injured linemen or safeties.
Now they have Blaine Gabbert as their back-up QB and, though they might end up having to play Gabbert, if he’s their starting QB by definition they’re not a very good team.
Even if Kaepernick turns this around a bit this season, the 49ers will have to draft or acquire a QB in the spring just to make sure they have somebody in waiting.
It’s ridiculous that they didn’t do this already.
5. One more time: They put Jim Tomsula in charge of the team.
Nice guy. Popular guy. Really nice to the Yorks.
Is he the guy the team–or Colin Kaepernick–knows can lead them out of trouble? You know the answer to that one, the 49ers players know it, and I would’ve thought Jed York could know that, but he didn’t.
I would ask him about that. Except he’s hiding under his desk, and might be hiding for a long time.