This is the part of the season that, while intriguing, I don’t really get too thrilled about. I’ll cursorilly (sure, that’s a word) look over draft boards (Walterfootball, fftoolbox, Barrows, Maiocco, etc) and opine about who we’ll take. It’s interesting to see who actually gets drafted, and I was shocked as anyone when the Niners picked Kentwan Balmer, as I predicted a few years ago. Won me a semi-worthless signed Alex Smith jersey that I’ve worn to a few games (but noth the Miami game). I even picked the Niners to draft Colin Kaepernick 2 years ago. Huzzah. Blind squirrels and nuts, and all that.
This time around, we have the intrigue of what happens to Young Sir Alex (yes, the blog gift that keeps on giving), the possibility of drafting 14 players (unlikely, as the team is fairly loaded and doesn’t need to fill that many holes), and the general uncertainty of what the game plan is for this draft in the eyes of Trent Baalke and Jim Harbaugh.
My $0.02 on the subject is that the Niners will find a trading partner in KC for Alex (a 2nd round pick in 2013 and a 3rd round pick in 2014), and fool everyone by drafting Zach Ertz with their 1st pick. They can then jettison Delanie Walker and keep Garrett Celek. There are plenty of defensive linemen and DBs out there with their remaining picks, and they’ll get needed depth as they let Goldson sign a big deal elsewhere and move Culliver to FS.
Forty Niners Forever 
You think Barkley=Kappy? Wow. There’s a stretch. If Smith is a starter, he’s worth 8 mill. That’s fucking peanuts for a starter in the NFL. Geno Smith? Don’t make me laugh. By that rationale, anyone could sign Purple Drank for peanuts and reap the rewards of saving all that money. Good luck, skippy. Or Gross Rexman or any number of washed up turds. Barkley isn’t going to come in and do anything remotely good. At least not for 3 years. He’s Hot Tub Matt Deux. The last couple drafts have had insanely talented QBs, and no one in the foreseeable future looks to make the impact that Kappy, Wilson, Griffin, or Luck did. They’ll all end up somewhere like Weeden. Shakey, with some good games, and some crap-ass ones.
Your bias is showing again, Spitty.
New thread BTW.
PS, Spitty you are the only one who thinks that Paraage fucked that deal up. It was a make-good deal that Kappy trumped. It’s GOOD thing the Niners have an out.
I agree somewhat, but I also believe the reason the 49ers structured the Smith deal the way they did was so they could trade Smith. The only way a team pays Smith 8 million per year is if they can sell Smith as the quarterback of the future. NFL fans know that’s not Smith.
The contract structure covered all the eventualities. If Kap didn’t pan out they had Smith at a low ball salary, ranked 20th for a starting QB I think. They can cut him without a cap hit, they can trade him and his cost is reasonable for a starting QB, it was a good team contract and Smith got paid 9 mil. Niners win. And even if by some weird confluence of the universe they do keep him as a backup the total cost of all 3 QB’s on roster would be in the bottom 3rd in the league for the position so the Niners still win.