Forty Niners Forever

Had to devote a thread to Lon Simmons. Lon passed away at 91 yesterday after a LOOOONG run as a broadcaster for most of the Bay Area sports teams at one time or another. He got his start broadcasting for the 49ers in 1957, with local guy Bob Fouts (who’s son ended up being a pretty good QB). He held that job til 1980. He was also the voice of the Giants from their move west til 1973, then off and on through last year. He also was there in the A’s booth to broadcast the A’s beating the Giants. Bittersweet to say the least.

Anyone who grew up in the Bay Area in the last 60 years instantly recognized his voice. He was as big an icon in the area as any athlete. He was unfailingly described as one of the nicest guys out there, and never had a bad thing to say about anyone. Unless of course it was about some of the inept teams he was covering. His laconic style belied a cutting sense of humor that got the listening audience laughing and commiserating. I was bummed he missed out on the initial Super Bowl run for the Niners, but he came back in time to broadcast the John Taylor game winning TD in Super Bowl XXIII. He has been a constant presence recently with the Giants, and he has always been a true representative of both sports and all the Bay Area teams and a true gentleman all the way.

My wife had the pleasure of meeting Lon at a Giants charity event back in the heyday of the Al Rosen/Roger Craig Giants, and said he was very nice, courteous, and thoughtful. The same couldn’t be said for Mike Krukow.

These are two of may favorite Simmons moments.

I was at the Minnesota game, sitting in the wrong end zone, and it was funny just watching the crowd on either side of the field standing up as Young got further down the field toward the south end zone. When the far end zone erupted, the rest of the crowd on our side of the field erupted as well. Like a slow-motion backward wave.

It wasn’t until we got in the car to go home that we got to hear Lon’s call. By the time he was done, we were all laughing hysterically. One of the greatest moments in Niner, Candlestick, NFL, and Lon Simnmons’ distinguished history.

Rest in Peace, Lon. Condolences to your family.

Well, the 49ers did sign Desmond Bishop, he of a couple starts last year when the team got decimated by injuries. Lots of guys are coming by for visits, including WRs Hakeem Nicks, erstwhile NY Giant, and ex-Vike Greg Jennings.  Funny thing is, Michael Crabtree appears to be the forgotten WR as he dangles in free agent silence while players latch on to new teams. He may be a man without a team come June.

My hope at this point is we get a TE or two to compete with Vance McDonald. He has been underwhelming to say the least. Then again, the TE position last year was a wash, as VD did little to nothing, and the rest did less than that.

A slew of linebackers, including Lance Briggs, Phillip Wheeler, and Erin Henderson also paid visits last week. I’d like to see us get more line depth on both sides. Looks like that will be the focus in the draft.

Granted we need bodies to get through camp, and gaining depth will definitely help come draft day, but there’s nothing too thrilling about this process at this point. 28 days til the draft, and 24 days til I’m a year older . . .

Hangin’ in the Boise airport for a little while so I have time for a couple burgers and a cold one. Or vice versa. Something like that. And a little blog action. Crazy weather out here in western Idaho, eastern Oregon, Treasure Valley region. Rain, temps in the 20s, snow, then 75+ degrees today.

There’s talk that The Chipper may be machinating his way to somehow working a deal with Cleveland to pry their 12th pick in the draft, as they seem interested in Sam Bradford. But what then? Cleveland holds the cards to trade up and get Mariota much easier than Philly, despite the fact they have Johnny Rehab cooling his heels in the Magic Hills detox center, oft-travelled Josh McCown (remember him? I don’t), and no-name supremos behind those guys. Come to think of it. I’d be shopping for a QB if I was the Browns. They don’t lack for trying, but they are as good at getting QBs as the Niners are at drafting WRs.

So, will Cleve take the bait from Philly and get Bradford, a semi-proven commodity who can’t stay healthy?  Or do they package their 2nd first round pick into a deal to move up? Even they would pay a price to get to the #2 spot, and Jameis Winston is pretty much a lock to go #1 after killing it in the combine. Tenn has Mettenberg, a bit of a surprise 6th round success story (the next Tom Brady? No) that Tenn says they are committed to, but really, given the shot of getting Mariota, a guy with a much higher ceiling, I’d find it hard to fathom that they don’t go with him. Unless they trade down for some booty. Which makes a lot of sense for them.

But I digress. How does Philly proceed from there? Trade Bradford and get Cleve’s 12th pick, and then work a deal with Tenn if they are amenable? Tenn needs defensive help in a big way. Maybe they’ll trade recently acquired Bill Kiko Alonso and throw in a  3rd round pick. Chip keeps saying he ain’t gonna mortgage the future for the present,  but I’ll believe it when I don’t see it happen.

The Niners? Who knows? I think we are in a desperate BPA mode right now. I don’t think we can afford to target someone too hard at the cost of others. I don’t see us trading down out of the 1st, unless we get some kind of strong offer from someone for proven talent, or a plethora of picks.

Then again, I’m rarely right about this. Go Kentwan!!!!!!

Not much going on these days. The dust has settled, and the hens are clucking about the demise of the team. Oh, the unwashed masses. The hipsters are selling their tickets as fast as the hipsters coveted them it the first place. How easily they are distracted by the hope that wasn’t to be, and the reality that we now face. The team was getting old, the offense was stagnating, and the Lord God of coaches wanted to go to the Big House. Let’s hope the real fans realize that there was something to the team’s offensive woes, and the stagnation that seemed to creep in.

Throw out the meddling of the front office, or Harbaugh, or whoever engineered the maelstrom, and there’s very little that would be different right about now. Harbaugh wanted Super Bowl money for not winning the Super Bowl. Not gonna get it. Willis would have retired, Gore would have gone after the Indy money, Cully and Cox would have chased the money they weren’t going to get here as well. Borland? Yup. No one saw that. The coaching exodus? Not sure around the report that Gase would have stayed but for Jed saying Tomsula had to be the DC is simply baffling since that precludes the notion that this is Baalke’s team. Hard to think the entire coaching staff was blown up over Tomsula and his role going forward. But that played out as it played out.

So, either way, we would be facing a huge draft with a bunch of holes to fill. The only thing I thought would happen was one of Cully or Cox would stay. Oh, well. CB becomes a need. As does DL, OL, and LB. We get a 4 and a 7 as noted, so we have 9 picks.

This IS a very important draft, and Baalke needs to feel his oats in a big way.

As it lays now, I see BPA in the first 3 rounds. With two 4s, they can take a flier on a QB. Gonna be an interesting draft to say the least. I think we don’t try any more bargain bin injured guys, or trading around. This is going to be a straight load-up draft.

What I see if everything else is equal is:

DL, CB, OL, WR, QB, LB, DB, OL, WR.

In an offseason that just keeps getting more and more bewildering, Chris Borland shockingly announced his retirement today. Borland cited many earlier head injuries and concussions in high school and college.

Borland certainly is looking to his future, bit you rarely see this after just one year in the league. One where he was very very good in replacing Patrick Willis.  I wonder if they had inklings of this as they haven’t let Wilhoite or Brooks go and they need bodies back there.

This appears to be the new NFL paradigm though. Players looking to get out with their brains intact.  3 others retired aged 30 or under this past week.

Well, as every week goes by, our draft needs seem to change. This is certainly the case now.

Are you gettin’ it?

Oh what a week that was. And it’s only Thursday. For all the angst around the players apparent mass exodus (Gore leaves, Willis retires, Iupati, Crabs, and Cox soon to follow) the only one I didn’t see coming was Willis. the rest? Meh. Gore took the money and ran. The 49ers certainly weren’t going to offer him 3 years. Cox? Don’t know. He says he’s amenable to staying here but he’ll ‘let this play out’. But as I’ve said either one of Cox or Cully would go. I thought it would be Cully and his legal woes, but that may be the factor that ends up keeping him here. Crabs and Iupati were known defectors as soon as the whistle blew against AZ. Stuka to Jax? Fine, a backup LB isn’t going to be that hard to find. Justin Smith still hasn’t made his announcement.

So all in all it isn’t like they (or we) didn’t see any of this coming. Brooks was surprisingly kept on. I guess he’s happy now that Harbaugh is gone. Maybe he even gives the team a cap-friendlier deal. Stranger things have happened. They filled RayMac’s spot with Darnell Dockett, they got a burner in Torrey Smith, and are looking around a a few more pieces, like Reggie Bush/CJ Spiller at RB.

In other news, DeVante Parker, one of the top 3 WRs in the draft, paid the Niners a visit. Hopefully a permanent situation come draft day. The Vegas booksters have sure soured on the team. Dropping them from 6:1 last year to 40:1 this year. But that had nothing to do with their dropping to 8-8 and missing the playoffs last year. And I have some beachfront property in Sparks to sell.

Tell you one thing,  a solid draft will do wonders to move ahead this season. With the signing of Blabbert, I see a QB taken in the 4th round.

Well, it looks like the bellwether is gone. Frank Gore is reportedly ready to sign a deal with the Eagles. A little disconcerting to me, but hey, them’s the breaks. The guy paid his dues, and got handsomely rewarded for his efforts, but like I said earlier today, if he wants to get one more big payday, better someone else than us. The 49ers will hopefully have Carlos Hyde and Kendall Hunter back at full strength to get the run game going. I thought Tomsula would maybe be a tipping point, as he and Gore had a pretty solid relationship, but again, he wants to get a big deal, go for it. It is a business after all, as much as I’d have liked to see him play out his career here. Looks like we are going to spend one of these draft picks on a n RB now. They seem to be coming back into vogue.

Much more intriguing to me is the fact that the Niners appear to be trying hard to get Anquan Boldin’s ex-teammate Torrey Smith. He’s a bona fide deep threat and would immediately elevate the other WRs on the team. These guys all talk about the run, but with Iupati certainly on the way out, it would be a good time to get more versatile with our blockers. Move a little bit away from the road-grader types and get a more agile quick line. I wonder how the blocking scheme will change this year, if at all.

All in all, I’m sad to see Frank go, but the ball is in his court. If he really wants to stay, he can. I’m also sure the Niners won’t have the best offer on the table.

No franchise tags, no rumors about trading the head coach, none of our free agents have been retained. Not much happening this offseason, discounting of course the gutting of the coaching staff a while ago.

To those of us that have moved on, the building of the roster is paramount as of now. The first step in that direction was to sign Darnell Dockett. He of the AZ Cardinals. With RayMac banished to the NFL hinterlands (along with AP, Ray Rice, and Greg Hardy) as a pariah who is waiting for the heat to drop, and the possible (but less likely each day) retirement of Justin Smith, the Niners need to get some D line help. He’s a bit long in the tooth, and missed all last year with a torn ACL, but he had been a solid guy for 10 years with the Cards. He apparently passed a physical from the Mimers, so he should be good to go.

Other than that, once the 7th rolls around, the team will start getting serious about Gore, Cox, Skuta, and their crop of free agents.

The calendar watch shows:

This is the start of the first round of player movement.  As the end of the 2014 calendar NFL season winds down, a few big names have been cut, but as of now, there hasn’t been a lot of news.

Today at 1:00 PM local time, teams need to franchise their players, thus pissing them off, and setting up acrimony for next season. The 49ers likely won’t use their tag, and it looks like a ton of other teams won’t either. KC’s OLB Justin Houston is the only guy who has been tagged thus far. Dez Bryant is reportedly going to be tagged and that should set up an interesting scenario in Jerry-land. He usually throws money around like a drunken sailor, but has he learned discretion being the better part of valor? He has DeMarco Murray to sign as well.

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves and wish/pray/demand our favorite draft picks, we need to address the 19 free agents currently floating off the books. Ad, this doesn’t include the pending decision to come from one Justin Smith, stalwart of the defensive line, who had a solid year at the age of 35.

The twenty are:

Frank Gore                                     Kyle Nelson
Michael Crabtree                          Chris Cook
Mike Iupati                                     Tony Jerod-Eddie
Blaine Gabbert                              Kassim Osgood
Dan Skuta                                      Raymond Ventrone
Chris Culliver                                 Josh Johnson
Brandon Lloyd                              Alfonso Smith
Perrish Cox                                    Phillip Tanner
Garrett Celek                                 Desmond Bishop
Michael Wilhoite                           (Justin Smith)

The obvious no-signs are Gabbert, Tanner, and Bishop. All are buried on the depth chart and Gabbert flat sucks balls. Alphonso Smith may stick around as cheap insurance. Bishop, Ventrone, Osgood, and Nelson are STers that have varying levels of importance. The long-snapper certainly stays. Celek falls under blocking TE who has done little. He’s cheap, so let him dangle.

Wilhoite, J-Eddie, Skuta, and Cook all fall under the category of solid backups. Wilhoite may be expendable with the emergence of Borland and Lynch; and Skuta has proven himself to be solid when called upon. More so than Wilhoite. Still and all, as last year proved, when the injury bug hits, backups become a necessity. So, Wilhoite is gone.  Backfill in the draft.

The starters fall under varying different scenarios. Crabytree, once the season ended, removed everything 49ers from his social media accounts. A ringing endorsement of his thoughts on the matter. Irregardless, he’s never quite lived up to the level of WR that he thinks he is, and I think he wants a big fat payday. Let Dallas give him money. He won’t get what he thinks he’s worth, but at least he’ll be in Dallas. Happy trails.

Iupati is another starter who likely goes. The 49ers appear to be moving away from the road-grading, straight-ahead blocker they have been favoring in the run-heavy scheme of things. Guards aren’t as hard to find as tackles, so I think they let him go. Brandon Thomas, our supposed 3rd round steal last year, is nearly recovered from his ACL injury in last years pre-draft workout, so there are options already on the team. Backfill in the draft.

Culliver and Cox both played well, and also had off games as well. With Brock hopefully coming back at full strength, one of Cox or Cully will likely go. With the impending hit-and-run, and possession of brass knuckles cases due soon, Cully is probably out. Keep Cox.

Lloyd? Meh. Losing Crabs and Lloyd seemingly weakens our WR corps, and with Stevie Wonder disappearing after a promising start, you’d think we need him, but the hope is we can fill this in through free agency and the draft. With new coaches comes a new offense. One that can hopefully use WRs effectively.

Gore? Well, It shouldn’t be too difficult to sign him to a 2 year, $6-8 mill incentive-laden deal.  His leadership alone would be a big boost to a team that is in need of some strong clubhouse leadership. the same applies to Justin Smith. The ‘smart’ thing may to be cut your losses, but with the wholesale turnover of the coaching staff, some clubhouse stability is needed. Hyde and Hunter should be back from their injuries, so it isn;’t like we will need Gore to carry the ball 20 times a game. 12-15 touches, and we are good.

That’s my $0.02 anyway. What say you?