Forty Niners Forever

Gone is the plodding, methodical Harbaugh approach, and gone is whatever last year’s shit-pile offense was. Now we have the go-go Chip Kelly offense. Speed and simplicity replace endless shifting and the four-headed play calling system. They’ve only done a mini-camp, and the players are being taxed a lot more than under the last 2 coaches. The offensive players seem to like it so far, and I guess by association, the defense will get a lot of practice time in trying to defend it.

For the offense, the players said they were starting to catch on to the new system (hand signals, quick tempo) at the end of the minicamp, and the first of 3 OTAs start next week, so it’s full steam ahead. The giant question mark to this new team is the offense. And say what you will about Chip, he did wonders in Philly with their offense. How the defense plays, or even what their identity is, remains a mystery as well.

As we saw with Khaki Jim, things can turn around on a dime in this league. Chip? Hey it could happen. Not 13-3 happen, but 9-7 happen. Playoffs? Probably not, but a winning record would be manna at this point.

Free agency is over. The draft is over. All that’s left before the season starts is training camp and preseason. The 49ers shitcanned an entire coaching staff (have fun with your $10 mill, Jimmy T!) and hired an offensive guru who will bring his hyperdrive offense to the Team Under the Bay.  I even speculated months before it happened that it would be mildly interesting to see how Colin Kaepernick and Chip Kelly could run a mobile wide open offense.

However, the brain trust (insert Abby Normal joke here) bad-mouthed and whisper-trashed Kaepernick for half of last season before overvaluing him this offseason and demanding too much, and eventually crying uncle while Kappy still gets paid. Kappy did his own balloon-floating by stating his desire to go to the Jets.A no-go as the Jets are still courting Ryan Fitzpatrick (and his evil twin/lover Patrick Fitzryan) Denver diddled around and didn’t pull the trigger, and so here we are. With an untested offense, a disgruntled quarterback who has a huge distrust of the front office, and oh yeah, a right tackle who is engaging in his own tweet battle with the front office.

Sure, we’re stable. Stable as Kim Jong Ill.  The question is, do we have reason to be optimistic? Teams around us appear to be treading water. Seattle lost beast mode. Although his replacement chewed us up pretty well last year. Their defense isn’t nearly what it once was. AZ is still being led by  Captain Crunchy Carson Palmer. A guy who never met a playoff game he excelled in. And then there’s the recently re-minted LA Rams. Meh. I’ll believe them when I see them actually do something They’ve been the team on the rise for 8 seasons now with nothing to show for it. At least we rose to higher heights and then crashed spectacularly into a heap of smoking wreckage. They’ve just been fair to poor for nigh a decade. As Neil Young once said, it’s better to burn out than it is to rust.

Well, nothing to do but wait for the OTAs, camps, and walk-throughs to start. But this is a couple months away. All we have now is draft ratings, talk, and angst over anything and everything. The 49ers are a mess, hot or otherwise, and Chip has a lot of problems to address. But at least he’s somewhat versed in developing an offense that doesn’t shit the bed on a regular basis.

But this is a different team and a different scenario, what with the Kaepernick trade talk and the ensuing disinformation campaign waged by the whisper brigade. Every team has questions, up to and including the Super Bowl Champion Denver Broncos, who are in a tizzy as they wonder about the outlook of their immediate offensive future. Peyton Manning retired, and now they have Mark Sanchez’s tiny little feet filling his cleats. Paxton Lynch is certainly their QB of the future, but they would most likely want Lynch to sit for the next two seasons to pick things up. So, where does that leave Denver? Hard to say, but can Sanchez match Manning’s/Osweiler’s underwhelming performance last season? With that defense it looks fairly promising, but it is hard to repeat, and Denver’s line was a little less than stellar.

I mean, we’ve beaten our issues to death. Why not Denver’s?

Anyone think they are in better shape with Sanchize as their QB? Kappy? Should they start Lynch from the get-go? Hey, they did it with Elway. . .

Anyhow, here’s some chatter from Denver.

http://www.milehighreport.com/2016/5/3/11575164/paxton-lynch-long-term-but-what-about-2016

Here they are . . .

Round 1: Pick 7 – Oregon DL DeForest Buckner
Round 1: Pick 28 ( via trade with the Kansas City Chiefs) – Stanford G Joshua Garnett
Round 3: Pick 5 (68th overall) – Mississippi State CB Will Redmond
Round 4: Pick 35 (133rd overall) – compensatory – LSU CB Rashard Robinson
Round 5: Pick 3 (142nd overall) – from San Diego – Appalachian State DL Ronald Blair
Round 5: Pick 6 (145th overall) – Georgia OL John Theus
Round 5: Pick 37 (174th overall) – compensatory – Ole Miss OL Fahn Cooper
Round 6: Pick 32 (207th overall) – from Denver – Louisiana QB Jeff Driskel
Round 6: Pick 36 (211th overall) – compensatory – Florida RB Kelvin Taylor
Round 6: Pick 38 (213th overall) – compensatory – Michigan State WR Aaron Burbridge
Round 7: Pick 28 (249th overall) – from Kansas City – Western Kentucky CB Prince Charles Iworah

Raaah-thurrrrr. Prince Charles? Yes! U, really, I give this a Meh. Double Meh. Baalke once again plays it like he’s immune to criticism and he’s got unlimited time to turn this thing around. First pick is solid. Helping the line? OK I get it. But . . . we’ve gone over that. 3rd round? Yet another ACL guy. This time it’s Will Redmond, a  semi-troubled guy coming off a major  knee injury. The next CB is another problem child. He sat on a season-long suspension rather than transfer, and came out early. Little game experience, but the potential . . . yadda yadda yadda.

I also don’t get passing on Cook for Driskel. He’s QB 4, so I don’t even see him making the roster. He’ll be a taxi squad guy. If that. 3 CBs drafted, and 3 O linemen tells you what the braintrust thinks of our existing guys. So, as usual, a lot of late-round fliers mixed in with the first two picks.

UDFA additions:
Kevin Anderson, LB, Stanford
Jered Bell, S, Colorado
Devon Cajuste, WR, Stanford
Demetrius Cherry, DT, Arizona
Jay Fanaika, DE, Utah
Lenny Jones, DE/OLB, Nevada
John Lunsford, K, Liberty
Bryce Treggs, WR, Cal

WRs from Cal are usually solid to great. Same with Stanfoo. Again, you have to wonder what they think of the current crop of players when they get this many  UDFA WRs.

Draft grade so far? C.

We drafted the bookend DE to Aric Armstead in DeForest (Bones) Kelly, uh, Buckner, and traded up to get the only position we filled in free agency, namely Left Guard. Color me baffled. Most draft boards had Cody Whitehair as the no 1 guard in the draft. And he was scheduled as a 2nd rounder. Joshua Garnett, the Stanfoo product was the Outland winner, and such, but was slotted as a low-2nd/high 3rd round pick. Yes, we need a pass rush, yes we need bodies on the line, but Buckner is more an interior run-stuffing guy, and we already signed a guard a few weeks ago. Come to think of it, we didn’t stop the run well either, so there’s that. I just hope he provides more immediate impact than his Duck buddy Armstead did.

The guard thing though confuses the shit out of me, though. I ALWAYS get the sense Trent is drafting in a bubble of his own creation. Like saying he had AJ Jenkins name in an envelope 30 days before we drafted him smacks of arrogance and intractability. This was another pick that was about 1-2 slots too high for a guy that ended up being a complete bust. Even beyond the fact he was a washout, what does it say about Baalke that he doesn’t even pay attention to what happened leading up to his pick at 30 that year? Trading up for a 2-3 guy in the 1st is the same kind of thing. Like he knows something that no one else does. Like he’s outsmarting people by doing this. Well, all he is doing is outsmarting himself. KC is happy as hell with their haul of our 2nd, 4th, and 6th round picks. Att to jump 10 spots for a guy that would have been there.

That being said, I LIKE that he drafted line help. I just don’t understand why the trade for a guy that would have been there 10 picks later. Mainly because he’s burning whatever flimsy bridge there was between Anthony Davis and the 49ers. AD is a tool for doing what he did last year, but Baalke is the tool this year for acting the innocent party and floating trade rumors. As it is, we still need a right tackle.

Today’s proceedings get a little less fun what with the trade out, but hey, See you in the 3rd round.

No other way to put it. This team’s immediate future is in the hands of one Trent Baalke. A guy who has pissed away a loaded roster, and backfilled it with dogshit. Sure, he doesn’t stand alone on the pile of garbage that has become the stink by the Bay. Young Sir Tweetsalot played his part in alienating the previous head coach, and then hiring a fall guy to take his place,  further driving guys out. But still and all, the GM is in charge of getting the talent here. Through the draft, and through free agency. And the occasional trade.

We all are familiar with Baalke’s draft record. And we all saw the tremendous haul we got with our cap money. Zane (Meet the) Beadles, and a backup QB who’s name slips my mind. Oh yeah, Huey Lewis. The News isn’t good however.

Anyhow, based on how these last few drafts have gone, I have no idea what Trent has in store for us today in the 1st round. We are in desperate need of O line help, CB help, ILB help, and WR help. Funny thing is, I wrote this exact same fucking thing last year. Trent did NOTHING to address the needs of the team last year, and we paid for it dearly with a crappy line, an inconsistent defense, and a punter we wasted a 5th round draft pick on who turned out to be a vanilla-flavored turd.

Today? No clue. With us out of the QB sweepstakes, and no QBs of note on the horizon for next year’s draft, my hope is that we build up the O line. Namely an OT. Someone to bookend Joe Staley. Fortunately, it looks like we’ll be able to get Ronnie Stanley. The Staley/Stanley show.  Laremy Tunsil, the top tackle in the draft, won’t get by Ozzie Newsome and the Ravens. Vernon Hargreaves is also on my radar as a CB who could very well slide right in to the line up.

Unfortunately, there’s an injured guy who looked to be a top pick until recent knee issues popped up. Yes, the undersized part-time RB and feisty ILB Myles Jack. Leave it to Baalke to draft a guy who’s undersized, hurt, and on a gimpy peg. We are thin at ILB, but still, I’ll give up the team if he drafts Jack . . .

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Anyhow, in case you live under a rock (hi, NoFear), and need the draft schedule, here it is:

Round 1, Thursday: 5 p.m. on ESPN and the NFL Network; and online at NFL.com/apps and Watch ESPN/Watch ESPN apps.ESPN Radio will carry Thursday and Friday rounds.

Rounds 2-3, Friday: 4 p.m. on ESPN and the NFL Network and online at NFL.com/apps and Watch ESPN/Watch ESPN apps. At 8 p.m., the coverage shifts to ESPN2. Each team has seven minutes in which to make its pick.

Rounds 4-7, Saturday: 9 a.m. on ESPN and the NFL Network and online at NFL.com and Watch ESPN/Watch ESPN apps. Each team has five minutes in which to submit their official pick; they’ll have four minutes in Round 7.

Since I haven’t been paying much attention to the draft, I haven’t had the unfortunate disappointment of seeing Mel Kiper Jr’s disgustingly smug face disgracing my big screen TV. Then again, maybe they didn’t dig him up from his coffin of mothballs to pontificate on the idiot  GMs of the day next weekend. But you have to give it to the Not-So-Odd couple of ESPN and the NFL to conjure up what used to be a back-room-of-the-Hilton three-hour mundane conference into the orgasmic shit-show of babbling inanity that is the NFL Draft. Nowadays, there are no less than 6,000,000,000 mock drafts out there, and all of them are wrong. In fact, you get past 4 picks, and all those 6,000,000,000 are still wrong. How one can profess to even bother with who Cleveland will pick with the 273rd pick is baffling to me. In the last 10 years I got Antawn Balmer right (and a signed Alex Smith jersey), and I correctly guessed Kappy in the 2011 draft. I think I’m ahead of 5,999,999,999 prognosticators out there. But that is neither her nor there. This is about the draft, not my picking acumen. Although I should at least be getting Kiper money for this.

Anyhow, the marketing frenzy that is the draft has left its’ home of the Big Assho, uh, Apple to be held in its new home of Sweet home Chicago. The latest craze with it is to be bestowed the God-like status of hosting the thing. Much like the Super Bowl, the city hosting gets the full-throttle corporate overload of crass consumerism and utter bullshit crammed down their gaping maws. Having just walked through Super Bowl city not too long ago it was the usual overpriced crap, multiple vendors selling overpriced food (in a city where you can good cheap food nearly anywhere), and cushy environs to enjoy the frenzy from a safe distance behind moneyed entrances. Didn’t bother with the pay-per-orgy side (the SOMA part) of the thing so I don’t know what I missed short of the shit I saw on TV.

But I digress. The point being, uh, I don’ know. This is a clusterfuck of the usual corporate glad-handing to the rich sponsors and their minions to support a world of disillusionment. Blah blah blah. BUT! It is paramount for the 49ers to have a very strong draft if they are to make anything out of this season. New coaching staff and new expectations be damned, this team has hemorrhaged a ton of talent since the 2014 season of disappointment. Trent Baalke has overseen a team with few holes to now a swiss-cheese like roster. All in 3 short years. Take a look at the drafts alongside this blog. They go back to Scotty’s last stand, 2010. The list of busts is long and varied, with a few late-round surprises sprinkled in.

And speaking of disillusionment, the good news is Trent Baalke has 12 draft picks at his disposal this draft. The bad news? Wait for it. Trent Baalke has 12 draft picks to waste this draft. He went on record (!) to say that the Niners take a ‘draft and develop’ approach to the draft. As opposed to a ‘draft players that can actually play’ approach. to me it sounds like ‘draft unknown guys who either won’t make the cut when their rookie deals come due’, or ‘draft damaged goods that don’t set foot on the field for 3 years’. Or ever.

For all you School House Rocks fans out there . . .

Word from those wonderful league sources (what are they, fucking moles that scurry in tunnels between all the team HQs?) is that the 49ers are in the lead for the services of one Josh Norman, a very elite cornerback who is a surprise free agent from Carolina after they pulled his (franchise) tag. The battle for his services falls to us and the Jacksonville Jaguars. Two teams with $50 mill + in cap space. So he looks to score big.

And really, where would you rather live? The Bay Area, a cosmopolitan city with gorgeous weather, or a glorified retirement home?

Norman had 19 passes defensed, 4 picks, 2 pick-6’s, and 3 forced fumbles to go along with his 56 tackles  last year. No small feat.

Whatever the situation is, DO IT NOW, TRENT!!!

And all the joy within you dies.

Don’t you want somebody to love?

I digress. But word out of Oregon (???) is that the Niners are going to trade up with the Dallas Cowboys to select Carson Wentz in the upcoming draft. I have certainly advocated to trade up, mainly because all these draft picks for Baalke has netted bupkus (or Butkus if you prefer), I wouldn’t trade up for Wentz. I would trade up for Goff.

I get the theory though. Might as well package those picks up for a dire need.

While this sounds nice, it leaves the possibility that the Rams take Wentz, and the Browns take Goff. Or vice versa. Trading with Dallas does nothing to get us either guy. They’re basically be in the same boat just by waiting in the 7 hole. The Browns are looking to trade out. If you are going to make a move, take their pick. This is a fairly lame article, but hey, slow times and all.

http://www.oregonlive.com/nfl/index.ssf/2016/04/chip_kelly_49ers_to_trade_up_t.html

Never miss an opportunity to go Gonzo. . .

Well, the Newly Minted Los Angeles Rams made a big splash in this newly minted football season by trading two first-round picks (15th overall this year and the one in 2017), two seconds (the 43rd and 45th overall this year) and two thirds (76th overall this year, and one in 2017) to Tennessee for their golden ticket of the overall 1st pick in the 2016 draft. I guess the thinking is, we traded our out of the 1st round pick (2nd overall) with Washington a few years ago, got a ton of picks, and basically shit them down the toilet, so, we might as well see how trading a shit-load of picks for a QB works out.

I mean, Washington is the perfect example. See how well RG III worked out? Oh, yeah.

Word is that the Rams are very high on Carson Wentz. The guy from a D-II school (ndakst) who oversaw a run-heavy offense. What could go wrong? As Washington proved, a lot. Tennessee looks to be an up-and-comer, but how does this trade affect the 49ers? Well, you can say goodbye to Jared Goff. Whoever the Rams don’t pick (Goff) will go to Cleveland. Unless they monumentally break down and pass on him. Yeah, I know they just got RG III (hey?), but that don’t mean shit.  He’s getting backup money, and they can stash Goff behind RG until his wheels fall off, and Bryan Hoyer no longer can lace ’em up. Not sure how long that will be, but it very well could be sooner rather than later.

I guess there’s the tiny hope that Cleveland doesn’t think Goff is the guy and they wait until next year’s crop of uninteresting QBs are ready to be taken at #1. Hey, I got through a thread without mentioning Colin Kaepernick. Oh, wait. Ahhh, fuck.