San Francisco 49ers Forever

Well, excuse me for not being thrilled about the Kwon Alexander signing, but I am totally down with the Dee Ford signing. The dude put up nice numbers last year. 13 sacks, 13 tackles for a loss among the 55 tackles last season. He’s young at 27 and he is the proud owner of a huge 5 year, $87 million contract. And we only lose next year’s 2nd round pick. Nice. Got to give Lynch kudos for this deal. It addresses a huge need.

We need pass rush help, and Ford is the real deal. If Kwon can come back from his knee injury, and Kentavius Street can, and we draft Williams/Bosa, we will have fixed a lot of defensive issues we have had. I would still like to see us get safety Earl Thomas as the big money players (Honey Badger, Collins, Weddell) are off the board and we still need secondary help across the board. Depth is fine, but we need guys that can actually hold on to interceptions.

This stinks. Cedrick Hardman was one of the first draft picks whose career I followed from start to finish. He of course came on to the team during the heyday of our 3 -year stretch of playoff football. Our defense back then was outstanding. And he brought pass rushing skill to an already solid defense. He was a pro-bowler by his second year and is the all-time sack leader for the 49ers with 112.5. Amazingly he played with Mean Joe Greene at North Texas State U. That must have been a hell of a defense.

I was a little shocked to see he was 70 years old. It seems that the players of my youth are all getting up there, but Hardman was such a fun player to watch. When we got Fred Dean, Hardman had split for the Oakland Raiders, and Dean picked right up where Cedrick left. It was kind of a shame that Hardman ended up on such terrible offensive teams through the 70s, and in typical Bill Walsh tradition, he didn’t re-sign him after the 1979 season. Hardman did however, win a Super Bowl with the Raiders in 1980.

RIP, Cedrick. You were on of the 49er greats. Should be in the Hall.

Hey, it’s slow. And I’m tired of flip-flopping between Bosa and QWilliams besides. And I’m tired of scrolling past the 10,000 handles of the resident scumfucking shitbag troll.

The 49ers announced some roster moves, and none are very shocking. They announced yesterday that they have tendered one-year contracts to restricted free agent RB Raheem Mostert and exclusive rights free agents LB Elijah Lee and DB Greg Mabin. They also picked up the 2019 contract options for FB Kyle Juszczyk, DL Cassius Marsh, LB Dekoda Watson and CB K’Waun Williams, and declined the contract option for WR Pierre Garçon.

Garçon is certainly no surprise, as are the keeping of the other guys. They’ve all done good things and will be needed for depth. Throw in franchising Robbie Gould and you have a team that still needs a pass rush, a CB, some O line help, a couple solid WRs, a couple OLBs, and there you have it. Your 2019 San Francisco 49ers.

Tell ya one thing, QWilliams solidified his spot as a stud in the draft in the combine. Likely a top-3 stud. His combine was very successful (4.83 40 time at 303 lb) and it already added to his draft stock. I figured that since we re-upped Arik Armstead, we would simply go for Josh Allen and be done with it.

BUT (there’s always a big but) there are three teams right behind us that might want to trade up and get their quarterback. The Giants, who say they are fine with Eli Manning (?!?), the Redskins, who have to cover for the loss of young Sir Alex, and the Raiders, whose head coach is frustrated with Derek Carr.

The quarterbacks in question are the mercurial Kyler Murray, the consensus #1 qb in this draft ion Dwayne Haskins, and the most polished guy, Daniel Jones. Rumors around the combine had Jones being the fridst QB picked in this draft. Another scenario presented comes from Walter football, who has us trading down with the Giants and taking their 1st round pick, 6th overall. In their scenario, the Giants get Haskins, and we still get QWilliams, as the Raiders take Murray, the Jets take Josh Allen, and the Redskins take Jones.

I could live with that as we’d get some additional picks from the NYGs and still get Williams.

With Kyler Murray fully committing to football, and dissing the Oakland A’s in the process, his announcement has thrown the draft board mavens into a tizzy. Throw in the fact that Murray has committed to meeting with the AZ Cardinals during the combine, you get even more rampant speculation. Murray has flown up the board all the way to the top possibly.

Given the fact that we just re-upped on Arik Armstead (much to Berger’s delight), the door has just been propped open for the 49ers to get the guy who has been called a generational pass rusher who is better  than his brother Joey. Nick Bosa of course. And given the fact that I said this could very well happen once Murray announced a month ago, the question remains:

Do we take Nick Bosa?

He is, in his words, fully healthy and ready to do al the drills in the combine in the next couple days. It would be a nice thing to see him sail through the combine with no setbacks or problems as this team desperately needs a pass rusher.

I know some of you have reservations about signing Bosa, but I’m about 90% sure they do this as I think Kliff Klavin drafts his guy in Kyler Murray. They can trade Josh Rosen and be on their merry way. And I don’t see the 49ers getting Quinnen Williams what with the AA signing.

Apparently we are in the running for Rams OLB Dante Fowler. This works for me. We need all the help we can get at LB and pass rush. Getting Fowler would pave the way for QWIlliams at #2. Sure, we are currently 4th in carrying around dead money, but that comes with the actions of one Trent Baalke, who was shitting in the sandbox for 10 years and signing shit players to long deals. Dumping a bunch of shit players gets one in this spot, and John Lynch isn’t completely rosy in this sense as we have (or will) jettisoned Pierre Garcon, the WR who waited on no one but the bench. But it could be worse, that’s for sure. Paraage the spreadsheet whiz has kept the damage manageable at least.

We are still among the top 8 or so teams with $66 – $70  mill available in cap space. It could be even more as they decide the fate of Arik Armstead, the unlikely guy to stay on the team and cash in on his $9 million option year, Jimmie Ward, the on-again and off-again CB FS SS who needs to stop breaking his arms, and Ronald Blair, the D lineman who has played himself into a bigger role and possibly a big raise.

These are the bigger FA decisions that are coming up, as we avoided dealing with Robbie Gould by franchising him (and thus pissing him off I’m sure) but we get one more year of his accuracy, and he gets one less shitty Chicago winter. His family? Sorry, start shovelling.

Not much going on out there in Ninerland, or football land for that matter. Unless the Antonio Bryant headlong rush into the looney-tunes-diva-wide-receiver-head-case-whack-job Hall of Fame is your style (TO is president and Ocho Cinco is treasurer). It’s good comedy anyway. Call me Mr. Puffy Chest? Really? Call me a Lyft. I’m getting out of Crazy-town.

Speaking of disgruntled Steelers, the guy who is much more appealing to me is Le’Veon Bell. He will not get the franchise tag from the Steelers, and will hit the free agency market soon.  Sure, we have Jared McKinnon, but look how well the run game did without him last year. Brieda, Wilson, Mostert (the free agent brigade), and even the forgotten Albert Morris led the Niners to the 6th ranked run offense in the NFC.

McKinnon has also proven to be a bit fragile, but I’d take the 5 mill cap hit to get Bell and the backups out there. We have a ton of cap space and he is a dominant RB who catches passes very well, and would fit into our system like a glove.

Another FA bandied about is Earl Thomas. Hey, we can re-create the legion of boom south. This move makes sense on just about every way you look at it. Our safeties have been fair to poor these last few seasons with Tartt, Ward, Harris, Reid, Exum, et al playing good, bad, and indifferent at various times these past few years.

I’m sure there are a lot more FAs out there who would fit (Golden Tate, Donte Moncrief at WR) but I think we address WR in the draft. No one is really floating my boat in free agency.

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And, in more fun news, Patriots owner Robert Kraft was busted for solicitation of prostitution for twice getting a happy ending at the local rub-and-tug massage parlor (Oriental Orchid) in Palm Beach, Fla.  I mean, really, Bob. Do out-call only. More control over the situation.