Forty Niners Forever

At this point, the jury is still out (but the decision is coming soon) on perennial underachiever AJ Jenkins and his bid to get out of the depths of the doghouse hole he dug himself into last year by running poor routes, dropping balls, and generally not paying much attention to the game he was picked as a 1st round draft choice for last year. According to camp reports, he’s spent most of his time in camp falling down, mis-running his routes, dropping passes, and generally spending his practices sprawled out on the field.

In other words, of all the WRs to get hurt, why hasn’t it been AJ? I’m kidding, but really. He’s had ample opportunity to get on the field with a pretty much nondescript crew of healthy WRs currently suited up, this year and last, and he’s playing like the 5th best guy on a list of 4 players. Certainly no one but the Niners FO had this guy on the radar before last year’s draft. In fact, many thought him a high 3rd rounder. I had high hopes for him when Kappy came in to start last year because they practiced a lot together when Alex Smith was the starter. Plus, there was all this happy talk from the AJ camp that he was rededicating himself to getting prepared for this season. He worked out with Kappy after the Super Bowl, and wanted to get on the same page, etc. Well, he’s not making any progress. I had some hope for him going in to camp, but as of now, he looks like a bust.

It’s hard to get them all right, but AJ was a real shot in the dark that failed. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him cut before the season starts.

Would you like the bad news or the bad news? Funny enough, Kyle Williams, who just recently got off the PUP list, pulled his hammy on a 40 yard pass play from Kappy yesterday, Quintin Patton has a cast on his right hand (index and middle fingers, and AJ Jenkins continued to get wide open yet drop passes.

Needless to say, it’s early. These things should work themselves out. KW says he’s fine. Don’t know what happened to Patton. And AJ? Well, he just may be a lost cause.  The bright side, I suppose, is that KW’s knee held up after he got banged around in his first full-contract drill since getting hurt last year. He may not be spectacular as a WR, but he’s got what most of these other guys don’t. Experience.

According to the reports out of camp, a lot of the pass catchers weren’t catching passes. They were dropping stuff everywhere. Including 2 by Vance McDonald. Other than that? No other injuries to report. And, there’s news out of Seattle that Percy Harvin may miss the season with hip surgery.

Be still my heart. The defending NFC Champion San Francisco 49ers officially kick off the 2013 season today. Once again, they are in a position to avenge a crushing last-minute defeat to finish out their season. 2 years ago it was a heart-breaking loss to the eventual Super Bowl Champion New York Giants in the NFC CG. Last year, of course was the stalled drive on the 6 yard line to close out the Super Bowl. Certainly motivation isn’t an issue for these guys.

As teams go, the 49ers didn’t really retool the offense, but the biggest change was due to the blown out achilles of erstwhile #1 WR, Michael Crabtree. This made the Anquan Bouldin acquisition all the more important. Injuries still hamper the backup WRs Mario Manningham and Kyle Williams although they are supposedly close to resuming full practice mode, though they are both on the injured list as of now. Still, what was seen as a strong pair of wideouts with a couple solid backups has become a work in progress yet again. Crabs at best won’t see the field until early December, so one or two of the cast of rookies, castoffs, and underachievers has to step up. This includes Seattle castoff Chad Hall, Kappy Kaepernick’s offseason roommate, speedster Ricardo Lockette, doghouse dweller AJ Jenkins, 4th round pick Quintin Patton, and local guy Marlon Moore. TE will be manned by Vernon Davis and draftee Vance McDonald. VM will be tasked with coming up to speed as far as his blocking goes to really make his mark with the team. Fail there, and it’s Garrett Celek as the backup.

Defensively, it’s all about keeping the D line fresh. The Niners added Tank Carradine and Quinton Dial through the draft, and picked up Glen Dorsey. That being said, both Carradine and Dial have injuries to overcome. An ACL tear for Tank, and turf toe for Dial.  They also drafted LB help by getting Cory Lemonier in the 3rd dound. The defensive backfield is in a bit of flux as well. After getting torched late in the season, and in the playoffs, Dashon Goldson and his huge salary demands were sent packing. The Niners obviously weren’t fine with the way things ended up as they have signed Nnamdi Asomugha and Craig Dahl, drafted safety Eric Reid, and will lean on the guys they have in Carlos Rogers, Tarrell Brown, Tremaine Brock, and Donte Whitner.

The failure of getting Eric Wright did nothing more than shed light on the fact that the Niners are looking to replace Rogers, whose $8.1 mill deal is the largest on the team. Truth be told, they may just go ahead and sign Wright once he’s cut by the Bucs and the dust settles.

Other than that, Kap’t Kappy Kaepernick comes in as the starting quarterback for the first time in his young career. He’s been putting in the hard work, but he’s also reaping the rewards of instant celebrity. Jaguar deals, breakout player of the year awards, and ESPN face time, along with all the hype that comes along with all this, will focus the spotlight on him much more than at any time in his life. He seems to have a fairly level head regarding his sudden cult of personality, but greater men have crumbled under the intense scrutiny of a fickle and demanding public. That being said, the battle rages on to back up Kappy. Scott Tolzien has pushed back successive waves of contenders, but now he has Colt McCoy gunning for his spot, and now 7th round pick BJ Daniels, the QB/RB?KR guy whose versatility may land him a spot on the roster.

All in all, the season couldn’t happen any faster, as the Giants appear to be slowly sinking in the NL West. Bring it on!

Christ, talk about blowing your chance. Eric Wright’s failed physical costs him a pretty penny to say the least. He looks at losing out on his $7.15 mill deal and signing a league-minimum one year $710,000 deal. Ouch. The speculation is that the Niners didn’t know about the recent DUI arrest in El Lay on the 10th, and just said pfffffffffft, do not pass go, do not collect $200.00. Either way, the guy is being pretty stupid. Either way, this seems to be the year of being stupid in the NFL.

Last year was the thrill of Peyton Manning’s free-agent flirtings with NFL suitors. The Andrew Luck / RG III stories, the never ending saga of Tim Tebow and his signing by the Jets, and various other stories to keep the wolves, uh press, at bay. We had our own Alex Smith saga still in full swing, and this was seen as his full blown charge to the Super Bowl.

This year? Murder, aggravated mayhem, DUIs up the wazoo, and in general, a big black eye (and stitches to the head) for Roger Goodell and his vast and unholy empire. He’s been strangely mum during all these legal snafoos, but he is of the same mind as the fans. It’s offseason! This doesn’t count!! The Niners had Ahmad Brooks trying to rearrange Lamar Divens’ head, and Divens trying to extort a cool mill from Brooks for his troubles, and nearly signing a recently busted Eric Wright. Aldon Smith has stayed out ot trouble this year. This can be seen as a plus.  And the fans don’t give two shits about it anyway. For the most part the fans are ‘who cares?’ in the overall scheme of who did what to whom (murder excepted, I think), and just want the season to start.

Frankly (Gorely), so do I. Here’s to the squeaky clean start to the 2013 season. One rife with possibilities. The 49ers are poised to make another Super Bowl run. Peyton Manning will try to keep his head attached to his body one more year, the Packers are trying to overcome their recent playoff failings, and the usual drama around the Chokeland Traitors will continue it’s death spiral as Prince Valiant tries and fails to channel his father for some meaningful direction to the team as they search once again for a home. New England has another gasp as they try to wring one more Super Bowl out of Tom Brady. Pittsburgh and the Ravens renew their rivalry as Pitts looks to stave off their imminent decline into mediocrity. The Jets and Cowboys resume their laughable offseasons, hoping they don’t turn into laughable seasons. Sanchez and Romo look to be highly scrutinized once again as their recent failings haven’t led to the kinds of coaching changes that usually happen around this sort of foul play. Jason Garrett and Rex Ryan both share the unblinking spotlight as their seasons are already teetering on the edge of doom.

Oh yeah, Denver star and erstwhile defensive stud Von Miller was suspended for 4 games for suspected PED use. He’s appealing the suspension. The new season has already lost a little squeaky cleanness. 

UPDATE: The Niners turned back the clock to 1981 by trading a conditional low-round pick for CB Eric Wright. He of the Browns, the Lions, and most recently the Bucs. Carlos Rogers, step up your game or . . .

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This is the official beginning of the 2013 season, and it couldn’t come any sooner. The natives are getting restless, the players are busy trying to stay out of trouble, and the fashion police will be in full force once all the players return to camp.

In some good news, depending on your viewpoint, no charges will be brought against Ahmad Brooks and his braining of his teammate, whose name escapes me at this point, as the DA dropped the charges due to the unnamed teammate dropping HIS charges against Brooks. I doubt the team does anything, as I don’t think they’ll do anything regarding hat-gate. This shall be handled inside the locker room, not in the outside world. As it should be I suppose.

Let the season begin!!!

Fairly busy offseason for the NFL. Unfortunately for Goodie Goodell, it involves murder, assault, and the entire Denver Bronco coaching staff going out on a bender and getting caught driving while blind. New England Patriots cornerback Alfonzo Dennard was arrested for DUI, Raiders linebacker Kaluka Maiava was charged with assault for an incident in Hawaii.  This brings the total arrests for NFL personnel since the Super Bowl to an even 30. And the hat gets all the talk. We have pot arrests, assault, breaking and entering, street racing, public drunkenness, illegal weapons possession, failure to appear, criminal mischief, even casino fraud.

You’d think Goodell would come down hard on this behavior, and you’d think the fans would want to hold these guys accountable, but  no one really cares. It’s like the steroid issue in baseball. Bug Selig plays the ‘look how good we’re doing’ card while another bogus lab gets busted with a list of a ton on players who are juicing. The fans? Ho hum. They don’t give a shit. Ahmad Brooks busts up a teammate with a beer bottle, and it’s zzzzzzzz. Colin Kaepernick puts on a hat, and the fan base comes unglued. Like all the good things he has done in his short career has been undone by his choice of chapeau.

It makes me wonder what y’all think about this. Goodell talks a good game, and has levied some serious suspensions on some players for some serious things, but the Denver coaches likely won’t face repercussions. Guys are getting busted at an alarming rate, and the NFL offices can’t keep up. The NFL steroid testing is fairly murky and unknown to me, so I don’t know if it’s wink wink, we’re clean, or it actually has some deterrence factor to it. For as rampant I’d think it is, you rarely hear about PED suspensions. All this other shit though? Crazy. At least no animals were harmed recently.

Granted, these guys fall prey to the same things us regular folks do, but the DUI thing has to be a bit stupid as hell. You go clubbing, hire a damned driver. Assault and murder? Hey, some things you have to take care of yourself. The point being, these guys should be able to at least stay of of jail for DUIs. Weapons and shit are also stupid in the extreme. If you are hanging in places where you need a gun, you may want to rethink what you are doing. The rest? Criminy, who knows?

The blog world is all atwitter regarding our ascendant quarterback Colin Kaepernick, and his gall for wearing a Miami Dolphins hat in public last week. After feeling the slings and arrows from Niner fans on twitter (I guess) and of course, the media frenzy on a slow news day, he replied with this:

“This the hat y’all mad at? I’m goin wear what I want regardless of what you think, all you need to worry about is the fact that I grind for my teammates and the 49ers! I plan on doin this until they won’t let me in the building!”

Excuse me if I don’t feel the need to throw him under the bus quite yet. Some folks question his commitment to the team (really?), some think he’s a thug and a punk (whatever. Old ground), some think he’s simply immature (possible). My take? Get a grip. It’s a hat, for God’s sake. Is it juvenile wear another football team’s hat? Sure. Is it wrong  to call out the media for dogging his attire? No. last time I checked, people are free to wear what they choose. Is it misguided to wear another team’s colors? Well, yeah. I suppose, but you see players wear other team’s hats all the time. However, it mostly is guys wearing hats from a different sport. As in Alan Iverson wearing a Boston Red Sox hat, or Bron Bron wearing a Yankee hat. Kappy himself last year was sporting a Milwaukee Brewers hat for some interviews.  It makes sense as he was born in Wisconsin, and a baseball cap doesn’t conflict with football. If he was wearing a Packers hat, I could imagine the hooraw around something like that. Bitter rivals and all.

The Dolphins? Ehhh. Is it bad form? Sure. Does it bother me? Not in the least. Kappy has shown himself to be a true professional who works as hard as anyone else in the game, and is constantly pushing himself to be a better player. Plus, it’s the offseason. If this was 3 days before a Miami game, I’d be questioning his sanity, let alone his allegiance, but in July? Who cares? Will this be an issue in 3 months? No.

Just think, 237 years ago, we declared our freedom from the tyranny of a distant and uncaring government. Nowadays, we are run by even more distant and uncaring corporations. Jon-a-than! Jon-a-than! Jon-a-than!

In football news, one of the 49ers had to jump into the let’s-do-something-stupid-and-headline-grabbing sweepstakes with Ahmad Brooks going all fight-club on one of his teammates. Brooks was apparently pissed off that NT Lamar Divens pretended to throw his keys into the bushes. Brooks was apparently too drunk to drive at 2:30 am, so Ahmad should be thanking Lamar Divens for trying to keep him out of jail instead of busting him in the head 3 times with a beer bottle. Divens got a couple stitches for his efforts, and nothng else happened, except for the fact that Divens went to the cops.

Now of course Divens is thinking, hmmm, maybe I shouldn’t press charges. This could bite me in the ass, let alone my teammate. Problem is, the DA has the case now and can press charges without the cooperation of the victim, although this is usually only done in more heinous crimes. Your murders, your kidnappings, your rapes, and such. So, unless the DA has a real bug up his (or her) ass regarding Brooks, this’ll likely get swept under the rug and called a non-issue. Brooks, who isn’t a stranger to scrapes with the law, should take this to heed and thank his friends for trying to keep him out of trouble instead of kicking their asses. If you can’t handle the booze, stop drinking. Next time your friends are gonna let you go, and what then? Pull a Leonard Little? Josh Brent? A James Dean?

I’m out til Sunday to Tahoe to escape the heat. May or may not check in. Play nice. Be safe. If your friends think you are too drunk to drive, chances are, they are right.

The 2013 football season may be a couple months off, but the internet trash-talking season is in fine form. In the recent past, Jim Harbaugh called the ‘Hawks cheaters by saying, about the recent rash of ‘Hawk PED suspensions, “If you cheat to win, you’ve already lost.” This was followed by Seahawk CB Brandon Browner, he of a 4-game suspension for PED use last year, replying with “He’s never gonna be out there lined up against me. I wish he would. I’d put my hands around his neck.” Short and sweet. You have to wonder at some point during a game if a Seahawk spies Harbaugh on the sidelines, if he’ll take a cheap shot on the hyper one. Interesting to say the least. Kinda like Woody Hayes in reverse.

Golden Tate, ‘Hawk WR, also jumped into the mix with his comment that “I would try and give him the Sean Lee treatment.” To see what that is, click the following link http://thebiglead.fantasysportsven.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/golden-delivered-9-16-12.gif. Dude throws a blind-side block on a guy, and he deserves to weigh in, I suppose.

Someone had to be the voice of something other than stupidity, so that fell to Vernon Davis. He took the Bill Walsh route, and effusively praised the Seahawks, saying “They’re building a dynasty over there. They’ve got some good players over there. I mean, these guys are starving. So we have to really keep that in mind because these guys are coming to take us out. I respect them, just like I respect my team, but we want to win, too. We’re in it to win it. So we have to really make it upon our responsibility and put it all out there and play each game like it’s our last game.”

Sure, he’s a little over the top in his praise. The Niners have won the West the last 2 years, and while Seattle is improving greatly in a short amount of time, the word Dynasty is usually reserved for Super Bowl champions, not up-and-comers, no matter how good they look. Recent history would say the Niners are closer to dynasty status, but that matters not as well. Still, it’s better to try and calm the rhetoric down rather than stoke the flames. The good news is, these guys won’t have to wait long once the season starts. They face off in game 2 of the 2013 season. Unfortunately, it’s in Seattle. A tough place to play, regardless of the word-games these guys are playing.

The thing is, Harbaugh has put the team in an uncomfortable position with his choice of words. No one on the Niners better get caught using PEDs, or the shit-storm of hypocrisy cries will be never-ending. Surely Harbaugh can’t think that his team is clean, but the can of worms is open, and they are itching to slither out. I’d prefer Harbaugh just keep his mouth shut, but that isn’t his nature I suppose. Walsh’s way was to let his opponents choke on their words, and kick their ass on the field. The Walsh/Ditka feud springs to mind. Mike Ditka crowed on and on about how the Bears would ‘Chicago’ the warm-weather west-coast finesse team pussies that the Niners were back in 1988. Walsh said, yeah, it’ll be tough to win on the road in that weather. Tough for Chicago to score, anyway, as they Niners beat them 28-3 on their way to their Super Bowl XXIII victory.

The point being, talk is cheap. Stupid talk is even cheaper. Let the Seahawks prattle on about revenge, disrespect, and all that. Go kick their ass on their turf and be done with it. The Niners should be fired up to beat on them after the ungodly shellacking they laid on us last year.

Crazy doings by Aaron Hernandez, the former $41 million dollar tight end of the New England Patriots.  He and Gronk were supposed to be the twin TE terrors in the AFC this year, but Gronk is still nursing his broken and infected arm, and, well, Hernandez is looking down the barrel of a murder charge. The evidence is apparently overwhelming, and the lastest I’ve heard comes from (!) Rotowire:

Ex-Patriot Aaron Hernandez has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Odin Lloyd, and is facing five additional gun charges. Hernandez has pled not guilty, but is being held without bail. We are not legal scholars — it’s surreal for a fantasy football site to have to cover such a senseless and macabre event — but the evidence the Attleboro District Court has collected against Hernandez over the past week appears damning bordering on overwhelming. Hernandez is alleged to have erased 6-8 hours of video footage from his home-security system, and was reportedly caught on tape saying “you can’t trust anyone anymore” before picking Lloyd up on the night of the murder. He was also caught on film walking through his home with a gun after the murder is alleged to have taken place, and reportedly left behind a shell-casing in a rental car. The prosecution believes Hernandez “orchestrated” the “execution.” This is just the first day of what is going to be a long and drawn out legal process, but the odds are remarkably high that Hernandez has played his last down of NFL football.

Here’s the contract he signed last year:

Sven-years $41.115 million. $16.4 million guaranteed, including a $12.5 million signing bonus. An annual  $500,000 roster bonus is due in years four through seven. An annual $500,000  workout bonus is available in years three through seven.
2013: $1.323 million,
2014: $1.2 million,
2015: $2.3 million,
2016: $5 million,
2017: $6 million,
2018: $6 million,
2019: Free Agent

Yikes. can’t say what drove him to murder, but yowza, he’s lost it all . . .