Forty Niners Forever

UPDATE: Carlos Rogers to be cut today.

How’s that for a fairly obscure Kinks song? Something front the later years.

Anyhow, I’m a little confused as to what the 49ers are up to in regards to their secondary. They have CB Tremaine Brock signed, and rookie phenom Eric Reid is in the fold. After that it gets murky. Carlos Rogers is most likely going to get cut (today?), along with his $8 million salary cap hit. CB Chris Culliver is coming off a major knee injury, Tarell Brown is possibly going to get signed, but that hasn’t happened yet. He may still be pissed about missing out on his $2 mill from last year’s contract snafu. Wright and Cox are nickel backs/depth guys at best, and Swanson and Morris are less than that. They aren’t even ST fodder at this point.

Moving to safety, the Niners are dragging their feet with Donte Whitner a little bit. He’s being courted by the Jets and Rex Ryan, but at this point nothing is imminent. Since Craig Dahl is the backup, I’d think Strong Safety (and thus Whitner) would be a priority. We’ll see how this plays out, but it will be soon.

Since tomorrow is get-under-the-cap day, the Jets just cut Antonio Cromartie and his $15 mill cap hit. The Niners are safely under, but you wonder how long they hold on to Rogers. Maybe restructure? I doubt it because he’s pretty much a nickel back himself at this stage of things. I wonder if the Niners would look at some kind of cap-friendly one-year deal for Cromartie to sign. Certainly worth a try.

I say this because the Niners would be leaning on a young defensive backfield should Whiter and Rogers leave. A young backfield that needs a couple guys who would be drafted in May. If they do let Whitner go, I’d think they’d look for a vet CB and draft a safety. Any top guy available (Jaruis Byrd or Louie Delmas ferinstance) would be just as expensive.

I’d rather they keep Whitner and take their shot with a very deep CB class. What do you think?

Now we go from the Who to one of my favorite underrated bands of all time. One of the most influential bands no one gives a shit about anymore, the Kinks. They were true punks 12 years before the Sex Pistols exploded on the English scene, yet beyond Lola, you don’t hear too much about them anymore.

Be that as it may, the 49ers have their own dedicated follower of fashion, and a new blogosphere topic sure to at least get close to the fun we used to have with Alex Smith, and that is one Colin Kaepernick and his impending contract upgrade.

The 2 main camps are; pay the man, or hedge the bet and wait a year. If necessary, franchise him.

Either side has it’s plusses and minusses. Frankly, my take is pay him now because his price will only go up in the front office drags their feet. This is hard to dispute since guys like Romo, Cutler, and Ryan have monster deals in place and they have done little to nothing in playoff games. Kaepernick on the other hand took over both Green Bay playoff wins, and willed the team back in the Atlanta game, and the Super Bowl after the defense laid a huge turd in the 1st half of both those games.

The only reason not to sign Kaepernick is to think he isn’t the quarterback of the future, and that he’ll somehow revert to Mark Sanchez and fail miserably. With the structure this team has in place (for now), a huge backslide like that is highly unlikely. I mean really, this isn’t Tannenbaun, Rex Ryan and the Jets. And if this comes down to franchising Kappy, that isn’t the trail to happiness. The Saints travelled this road with Brees, and ended up giving him the biggest contract in NFL history at the time. Not something the Niners want to do.

So, pay him $18 mill as a base and give him incentives to jack shit up if he wins it all.

The on;y wrench to be thrown into this is Kappy himself wanting to hold out and play out his deal in the hopes of winning it all and really forcing the issue (kinda like what Harbaugh is doing). That is a dangerous road for anyone, let alone your fearless scrambling quarterback.

Me? I’ll be lazing on this sunny afternoon.

Since blind sheep were part of the last thread, this seems like a natural progression.

Slip kid, slip kid, slip out of trouble
Slip over here and set me free
Slip kid, slip kid, second generation
You’re slidin down the hill like me 
No easy way to be free. . .

One of my favorite obscure Who tunes. Young Sir Jed York appears to be the lead slip kid as the shitstorm seems to have subsided. Michael Rosenberg of SI wrote a piece about Jim Harbaugh, who speaks evenly and glowingly about his relationship with A) the front office, B) Trent Baalke, and C) the world in general. At least in his mind, the kids are alright, and he can see for miles the clear road ahead of him and the team as he’s gpoing mobile. No more fiddling about. Well, at least for the next 2 years. And in a bit of fortuitous timing, Anquan Boldin signed a 2 year deal to remain with the Niners, all the well knowing he would have likely gotten something better than 2/$12 mill from someone else. But he won’t get fooled again. He refuted the ‘unnamed source’ story that stated there was dissent in the locker room, and certain ‘significant players’ said Harbaugh’s antics were ‘wearing thin’ and had vexed Tim Kawakami, Ann Killion, and Cousin Kevin et al into hyperventilating yet again over unsubstantiated malarkey. You’d think they’d wonder “Is it in My Head?”

Folks such as I would never stoop so low. Just call me Happy Jack.

Switching to the Who here. Lots of stuff to mine from that band.

Anyhow, the rumor mill is in hyperdrive as reporters are asking the towel boys and the ancilliary personnel if Harbaugh has stopped kicking his dog yet. In the unending blather, Harbaugh has become the pariah in quite a hurry. He wants to be GM, he wants ultimate control over personnel decisions, he wants control of the draft board, and finally he wants $10 million a year.

Funny thing is, none of these things are true. These factoids have been generated by a feeding frenzy of innuendo that started with the Harbaugh-to-Cleveland trade. Since then we’ve had a plethora of hyperventilated reports of player discontent, tension between Harbaugh and Paraage Marathe, Jed York, Greg Roman, the gardeners, the groundskeepers, and just about everyone else in the front office. On FO side of course, there has not been a peep out of York, Jed, or Harbaugh, or Baalke other than the discounting of the trade proposal by Jed and Harbaugh, which was sort of true from their perspective, again depending on if you believe it really didn’t gain any traction other than crooked Jimmy Haslam talking crazy talk.

While this is something to do during the quiet time between football and baseball, this has the real potential of tearing apart a very good team. MY goddamn team that I’ve been following since the late 60s. I suppose Jed and Company could all be sitting around and laughing at all the hyperbolic bullshit flying hither and yon, but I doubt it. There’s too much mud being slung around, and the longer we get silence from the front office and the coaches, the more potential there is for permanent rifts to be developed in these relationships during the radio silence.

Of course we know Young Sir Jed, the owner of the 49ers, is currently in the land of make-believe. He’s also on vacation is Dinseyland. I’m also pretty sure he doesn’t want to cut his vacation short to deal with this, or hold a press conference in the Haunted Mansion to explain why his emplyees are trying to tear each other apart, so this is what we get. He’s a young father with little kids to placate and have fun with, so he gets some vacay time.  Since I have no idea what Jed’s schedule is, I have no idea when he’s coming back to the land of reality, but I certainly don’t think he’s going to stay there until the owners meeting on the 23rd. That’s way too much time spent in fantasyland.

The thing is, he has to step up pretty quickly to address the apparent discord in the building. As we all know, Harbaugh’s an intense guy who may rub people the wrong way. Baalke himself has been pegged as a hard-headed guy as well. Throw in Marathe’s throwaway comments about lowballing Kaepernick, and the bullshit flying around the office, and there you have it. The 49ers again start looking like a Mickey-Mouse outfit. York fiddles while the front office crumbles around him. All we need at this point is a pictrure of Yed York flying back from Disneyland with a pair of mouse ears on. My point is, don’t f^%$ this up so close to the finish line. Win a couple Super Bowls before you strip the gears . . .

Turn out the lights. 
Well, the music is your special friend.
Dance on fire as it intends.
Music is your only friend.
Until the end.
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Yet another speculative article by Mike Florio apparently points to the Niners resigned to letting Harbaugh walk after 2015.

Florio sez:

The San Francisco 49ers are prepared to let coach Jim Harbaugh walk away after his contract expires at the end of 2015.

The distance between Harbaugh and the team’s front office seems to be growing by the day and if Harbaugh had wanted to go to Cleveland, the club would not have blocked him.

The 49ers are in a good position because offensive coordinator Greg Roman, who was a candidate for several head coaching jobs in 2013, could easily slide into Harbaugh’s seat and keep the continuity of the offense intact.

Florio writes:

‘We first developed a clear sense that the Niners wouldn’t compel Harbaugh to stick around after his name emerged as a candidate for the University of Texas job last season.  If Harbaugh had wanted to leave for Austin, the 49ers would have wished him well. As a result, things can get very interesting as 2014 unfolds.  Barring a long-term, big-money deal that binds the Niners and Harbaugh together beyond the next two season, other teams will inevitably call the 49ers after the season ends, if not sooner.’
____________________________________________________

I give this one a big whatever as well, with a big But. If things are as fucked up as currently being reported, this catastrophe won’t last until June, let alone the conclusion of the 2015 season. The part that makes me want to puke my guts out is the line where Florio says that they can simply install Greg Roman in Harbaugh’s place and continue on their merry way. If this comes to pass, well, I’ll be lead pitchfork calling for Jed York’s head on a silver platter.

Frankly, I find it hard to believe that the players in this Sysyphusian Greek tragedy are so willing to blow this shit up when they are so close to pushing the rock to the top of the hill. If they reach the promised land and win the Super Bowl this year, will these guys still be at each others’ throats? Will they still be willing to chuck this all away?

What if they don’t reach the playoffs this year?

In keeping with the Doors-themed threads . . .

Other than that, there’s no new news out of the rumor maelstrom that is 4949 Centennial Blvd in Santa Clara. I suspect things quiet down for a while as these guys hunker down and try to come to some sort of concensus. Short-term at least . . .

The big news is this is the day for DBs at the NFL combine is Indianapopolilissss. My dream CB Stanley Jean-Baptiste is going to run, and hopefully he sticks around the low 4.5 area. He has shown skill as a press-cover guy,  but can also play off the line and zone. Size up the wazoo. Keith McGill is another big guy who has the flexibility to be a press-cover guy.  He’s big himself, so these guys  could possibly rocket to the 2nd round or higher if they put up anything in the 4.4 range.

Smaller guys like Kyle Fuller,  Louie Purifoy, and his teammate Marcus Roberson will be around in round 2, so they may get a look. They are all fast. Purifoy had some shitty games, and off field trouble as well so there you go.

Apropos of nothing, Clowney’s 4.47 is flat crazy.

. . . to paraphrase Mr. Mojo Risin’ himself, Jim Morrison.

As far as the story that won’t go away goes, and all this hyperventilating about the Harbaugh trade to the Browns, the one thing to come out of it is the notion that Jim Harbaugh and Trent Baalke are not pals. As in, they can’t be in the same room together, and they now communicate strictly by email. Now I’m not a huge proponent of Kumbaya, peace, love, granola, and all that shit in the workplace, but really, we’re poised at the edge of the 2014 draft, and the head coach and General Manager aren’t talking? Not a good scenario.

The Niners very recently travelled this road when sloppy Scotty McLoughan was canned a month before the 2010 draft, and Baalke took over as the interim GM. Of course that draft netted Anthony Davis, Mike Iupati, Navorro Bowman, Nate Bynam, Anthony Dixon, KW, and Phillip Adams. The only really bad guys from that draft, for us anyway, were Taylor Mays and Nate Bynam, although they are still in the league. So, maybe a little turmoil is good. But I’m not too happy to hear about all this shit right before the draft.

Throw in the apparent problems between Harbaugh and Greg Roman regarding play calling, and the recent uproar around the Harbaugh trade, there seems to be power struggles at every turn. All centering on Jim Harbaugh. And to me, this is the crux of the biscuit. Harbaugh wants more control. From the draft perspective, and from the play calling side as well. All the while he’s been stonewalled in his attempts to negotiate a contract extension with the 49er front office. Which leads me to believe he wants top money. Lets’s say the $9-10 million range? In other words, he wants Super Bowl money, even though he hasn’t delivered a Super Bowl.

Harbaugh’s point appears to be, well, I need to make the personnel decisions to GET us to the promised land. That’s fairly easy to infer from all these machinations going on. Also the play calling aspect. As I wrote a few threads ago, this team is in transition as to how the offense is built, the players they have, and the plays they are calling. There was a link to a story that addressed this very thing. About how the team is building itself to evolve into a more wide open offense as the old guard power running guys leave or retire. Of course the main thread of THAT story didn’t have the notion that the HC and GM can’t look at each in the eye, and that Greg Roman is becoming a puppet in his job.  

So, this situation has become a lot more than offseason speculation and the nothing-to-talk-about news cycle. Although this certainly feeds into that in a big way. If this power struggle really is as bad as the noise suggests, Harbaugh is certainly the guy holding the aces. When he came here the 49ers, from top to Singletary’s flashing bottom, were seen as a national joke. A team with perennial high draft picks who managed to find new and intersting ways to lose. Head coaches who couldn’t design an offense other than Gore right, Gore left, Gore up the middle, punt. A front office of mid-level managers all wandering around the building with no direction or purpose.

Harbaugh comes in, and with little time with the team due to the lockout, takes them to the NFC Championship game in year 1, the Super Bowl in year 2, and the NFCCG in year 3. So, which piece is essential? It certainly isn’t Baalke. Or Roman. Strange days, indeed. Young Sir Jed has his hands full all of a sudden.

Through all the injuries and inconsistency around the passing game last season, there is plenty of talk about the need for a wide receiver with speed. Someone who can get behind a (Seattle) defense and score on big plays. The blogosphere certainly has been burning up with ideas on who to draft. Since our division rivals up north appear to be the only thing in our way of reaching the promised land, it would seem to make sense to build a beast that can beat their beast. How do we do that? Little T.Y. Hilton had himself a day against the vaunted Seattle legion of boom. He and Reggie Wayne accounted for over 200 yards on 11 catches. Houston put up big numbers as well in a game Shaub gave away. NO and Minn put up some big numbers, but that was because they were hopelessly behind. Still and all, to me a big thing missing from the Niner attack IS a deep threat.

Strictly by the numbers, the Niners were, uh, 30th in passing yards. Terrible. But  Seattle was not much better at 26th. So, what does this mean? Well, beyond the fact that the Niners and Seahawks were 3rd and 4th respectively in running the ball, it means you don’t throw as much as many other teams because you burn time running. Old schoool NFL football. Throwing 15-25 passes a game isn’t going to garner most QBs big passing numbers, but both Wilson and Kaepernick rated out 7th and 10th in rating respectively, and if you look at ESPN’s Total QBR, Kappy is 7th, and Wilson is 13th. That being said, of the top 10 passing teams in the league, 7 made the playoffs. The NFL is heavily tilting toward becoming a Mouse Davis run-n-gun wonderland of 4 WR sets, flooding the field with pass catchers, whether WRs, TEs, or RBs, and heaving the rock all over the field.

Back to SF, what is our plan going forward? Can we tweak the passing game enough to matter? Are we going to stick with this 1970s style offense of ground and pound? Like the QB that preceded him, Colin Kaepernick came from a wide open system where he’s now being converted into a pocket passer. Part of Colin’s strength IS the breaking contain and scrambling for big chunks of yards (GB must be sick of him), but his development as a passer is at the point where there are questions regarding his progress. And the reasons for this are varied and manifold. The lack of viable WRs certainly played a part. As did the inconsistent pass pro. Kappy however, locked on to WRs at times, and threw some pretty terrible picks when the play obviously wasn’t there and he forced it.  Then there’s the whole play calling aspect of which has been beaten to death. Without knowing the design of plays and options, it’s hard to figure if plays are designed to only go a certain way, but it was disheartening to hear Kappy repeat that he’d throw that pass to Crabs given that one-on-one coverage by Sherman 10 out of 10 times.

I’d much rather hear him say he should have looked around for other options and checked down instead of throwing the pick. Being that it’s only talk, and maybe it’s false bravado after throwing the pick and enduring the choke sign Sherman gave him, but Kappy needs to learn from that play rather than stick to his narrative.

What irks me is Sherman ALWAYS lines up on the left side and takes the outside WR. Why not put Crabs in the slot? This is also where a speed WR can help greatly. Put the speed guy outside, and Crabs in the slot. With Boldin on the other side, and VD running routes as well, you can gain some favorable matchups. You can even run better with 3 WRs out there.

In the endless tug-of-war between system or personnel, the prevailing sentiment regarding the state of the Good Ship 49ers is that the team needs more speed at WR. While that sounds good, and God knows we need a deep threat, but the problem is, the Niners let their most recent deep threat walk away ignominously last year in Ted Ginn. He was nominally our 3rd WR and PR/KR guy. Ginn started with a bang against Seattle a few years back, scoring on a PR and a KR to seal Harbaugh’s 1st NFL victory. As a pass catcher he showed little. His biggest play, a 70 yard TD, was called back by a bogus illegal blocking penalty on Gore a couple years back. Ginn of course went to Carolina and caught more balls in one year there than he did for 3 years here. This leads to my dilemma. If we DO get a speed WR, will we know how to properly use him? Are we built to USE a speed guy right? Ginn did fine in his other NFL stops.

On the other hand, there are grumblings that this team needs to re-tool their running game with more better backs. That Gore isn’t getting it done because he’s old and in the way of himself. A younger, fresher back would be able to get through the holes and bounce shit outside. The thing is, I have the same problem here as I do with the passing game. Mainly because we aren’t built as a power sweep team, or a pitch/screen kind of team. For whatever reason (personnel), our run game is 90% between the tackles with the occasional WR sweep/reverse. Hunter isn’t built to run like Gore. LMJ is REALLY not built to run like Gore. Hence my thought that this offense needs to come up with a blocking scheme that suits the players they have. Iupati and Davis are barely adequate pass protectors. Staley and Boone are solid pass pro, and decent enough in the run game. Either get 2 guys who are more agile pass protectors, or sign Iupati and keep with the road grading type run game, and forgo a screen/sweep/outside running game. If we had a shifty runner, would we be able to use him how we are currently build? I think not.

If Iupati goes, then that opens the door for Looney (or even Netter), both smaller, more agile guards to get on the field. Can they get outside on sweeps/screens? Can they pass pro well enough? That’s what camp is for. And the draft. Goodwin will hopefully be replaced (Kilgore Trout? Looney?) to give this team more flexibility.

Can we build an offensive line that can pass protect better, AND allow for some outside running? Do we need new backs to do that? Is Kaepernick being held back by the coaches? Is there little faith in the pass pro for Kappy to adequately learn how to read defenses quicker? Or are these issues a driect design flaw of the Roman/Harbaugh offense?  

In other words: Is Roman the cart, or the horse?