Forty Niners Forever

That’s the battle cry now. I guess the days of Kittle Bosa, Williams, and CMC being a part of the playoff picture is now a gone deal. I get that they had to cut payroll after spending a fortune last year, entrusting the defense to a green unprepared minion, and not canning the special teams coach after week 4 was just stupidity in in-action, but it looks like Elon Musk is running (ruining) this team now.

You can even give Collins a thought though. He got a lot of pressure up the middle, but the interior run defense was atrocious. Ward was on his way out due to his tragedy, Juice got the squeeze, Hargrave was a nothing-burger, Deebo got the heave-ho, so they took a lot of money off the books. So, they could have kept at a minimum Banks and Greenlaw. Fuck the risk with Dre. His 1.5 quarters on the field made the 49ers look like contenders.

Without them we are fucked. Yay! We have 20 picks in the next 2 drafts! The Rams and Seahawks have more than likely passed us in the talent level, and we look to be in rebuild mode amd battling for the cellar with the Cards.

I guess if they nail this draft, they can rebuild the O line, the D line, the thin LB corps, and the thin CB position. But hey we’ll draft a TW and WR in the 1st and 2nd rounds. I have little to no faith that we are gonna improve much over last year. And that was WITH a lot more talent.

Huzzah!

Welcome to the new “we are just trying to break even” 49ers. That famous utterance came from the mouth of Greggie Johnson, resident coke-head and heir apparent to the billions in the Franklin Templeton investment firm. You know, those poor little rich boys who watch other teams spend while they cry poverty and small market blues.

Now we have the 49ers doing the same thing. They have jettisoned all the free agents they have recently signed and are jettisoning guys whose deals are coming up, and now want to play hardball with Brock Purdy. Yay! Go Niners! Straight to hell!

Still and all, the only one that really pisses me off is Greenlaw. Even with our pussy defense that we played last season, the short time Greenlaw was on the field, the defense was great. Natch, throw him to the wind.

Cutting Juice pisses me off as well, mainly because he’s the ultimate team guy, and we are showing our true colors by shafting everyone. else. Up to and including Brok Purdy. Mr. Irrelevant is gonna become Mr. Silver and Black. There are plenty of teams that would willingly take a shot and throw $55 mill Purdy’s way.

This team was it stands is CMC, Kittle, Warner, Williams, Bosa, and Lenoir. The rest is gonna be untested rookies and taxi squad fodder. But hey, we signed a special teams guy today! Yeah, we need it. But we also need O line and D line talent. And hey, we may need a quarterback! One injury and we are fucked. 0 injuries and we may be fucked if we piss away yet another draft.

I guess Jed figured out he wants to pinch his pennies again and revisit the Colin Kaepernick days. Those grand old days where Jed got Colin to sign a team-friendly deal as he promised to keep the team together, only to see Michael Crabtree, Vernon Davis, Frank Gore, and many other get their walking papers and the team cratered badly.

Yippee.

While teams line Chicago build their O line, and Tampa Bay solidifies their defense, the 49ers are busy diddling around with their prospective future QB, ignoring their very explosive LB, and losing guys.

Granted, Moore and Mitchell are afterthoughts, but we have a laundry list of free agents to let loose. Seattle is dumping their high salary old guys, and I guess we will see what their plan is as they find a QB, but should follow suit and make some FA signings and draft with an actual plan.

Here’s our list of free agents:

QB Brandon Allen
OL Aaron Banks
LB De’Vondre Campbell
WR Chris Conley
QB Joshua Dobbs
DT Khalil Davis
S Tashaun Gipson
DT Kevin Givens
LB Dre Greenlaw
OL Charlie Heck
S Talanoa Hufanga
CB Nick McCloud
P Pat O’Donnell
TE Eric Saubert
RB Patrick Taylor
CB Charvarius Ward
CB Rock Ya-Sin

Of those guys, the only priority is Greenlaw. Hufanga is expendable, Ward has his tragedy to deal with, Banks will be too expensive. Gipson too old, Campbell wrote his ticket out. The rest, like Dobbs, K Davis, Conley, Saubert, Taylor, Ya-Sin, and Taylor can be signed on the cheap.

But the 49ers RIGHT NOW need to figure out a weakness to address. OT Mecki Becton is available. G Daniels from the Steelers as well. Point being, focus on the O line in free agency so you can focus on the D line in the draft. Or vice versa.

But have a fucking plan other than shooting your feet repeatedly.
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Meanwhile, word comes out of the Blake Snell camp that the Giants didn’t even bother to talk to him after his season here last year. Brillinat strategy by the Giants front office to be fucking morons.

It isn’t about knowing you’re likely out of the running, but give the guy the courtesy of at least acknowledging his time with your fucking team.

Candy-ass operation. I’m getting the same vibe from the Niners front office.

Word from Mike Silver (one of the scribes who is usually sopt-on) is that the 49ers are gonna play hardball with Brock Purdy. In other words their dithering around for the last 3 seasons with the likes of Bosa, Deebo, and Aiyuk didn’t teach them a fucking thing. And they are gonna piss off the nice guy Purdy.

Say what you will about the $45 mill starting offer, but it is very low. Thing is, the 49er have no control over what other front offices have done to sign their QBs. But they signed their QBs. Dak ain’t worth $60 mill per, but Purdy has 2 more playoff wins in SIX less seasons. Trevor Lawrence isn’t worth $57 million, but Brock has 3 more playoff wins in one less season.

In other words, the 49ers cannot reset the market down to sign Purdy. Sorry, but they have to bite the bullet and sign him to something around $55 mill. No ifs, ands, or buts. Regardless of last season’s debacle, one that was partly on Purdy, but more importantly on our awful defense, terrible pass protection, sloppy special teams, and shit red zone offense, they have ZERO choice other than to pony up or royally piss him off by franchising him for a couple seasons or trading him. .

Purdy is 25. Dak got his deal at 31.

Hopefully this is nothing but dead-time preseason hype, but with these guys, you never know. They very well once again could be their own worst enemy.

. . . and the chicks are free. Pretty unreal the Niners bent over backwards a couple times for Deebo, including acquiescing to his demands to get the ball more, and he promptly dropped a game-winning pass. So, to show him, they trade him to a young exciting team and we get a 5th round pick.

And take a $31.5 million cap hit. Oh well.

Strange, but a friend of mine used to call cigarettes bartches. As in “Lemme have a bartch.” Dude was bumming all the time. I guess as a sign that we like the guy, the Niners signed Ben Bartch, a left guard who was playing pretty well for a couple games before getting IRed early last season. It would be nice to build SOME depth before wading into the draft pool in a couple months, so there’s that.

Other than that, there’s just the wild speculation around who we pick. If we trade up. If we add Deebo into a trade-up and such. Not much unless we make more signings before April 24th.

Aaaaand baseball is back! Well, spring training has started. Spring is springing eternal and we will see if the Giants have something with their young pitchers, Verlander, a solid left side of the infield, and a whole lot of the same-o same-o.

Yaz, Wade, Hicks, Flores, and the usual bunch of retreads doesn’t thrill me, but Lee healthy should be fun, Adames seems like a legit guy who is a solid character, Chappie should be good as well. I think the rotation really comes down to how well Rachel Ray does. We need to get solid numbers from him. Verlander? Man, who knows? But Webb should be his usual bulldog self.

After Webb, Ray, and Justin, we have Birdsong and Dirty Harry rounding out the rotation. I haven’t heard if we are going with a 6-masn rotation like some other teams have brought up, but this pitching by committee and opener type shit needs to stop. To that end we have Beck, Black, Roupp, Hicks (back to the pen), and Winn (and a few others) waiting in Sacto. With the A’s!

So, we are playing for 3rd place? Our division is rough, let alone the rest of the NL. Gonna be a weird year I’m afraid. The Dodgers signed FOUR of the top 25 free agents. After winning it all of course. AZ got Corbin Burnes (Goddamnit!) and the Pads haven’t been nearly as splashy, but they aren’t gonna be soft either.

A lot (Bryce Eldridge?) has to go right for this teams to be competitive all year. We will see.

Not much going on but rampant speculation. One whack job named Craig Carton has the 49ers trading Brock Purdy to the Cleveland Browns for Myles Garrett. And then of course we finally sign Aaron Rodgers!

Yeah, and monkeys will fly out of my butt.

Yeah, let’s trade the 24 year old phenom for a totally over the hill Rodgers, and resume our search for a QB. Makes perfect sense. Even with Garrett, a game-changing guy, we’d still need to score. Now and in the next few seasons.

There’s even warbling that Maxx Crosby would love to return to the Bay Area after Crosby wrote a long and loving twitter post about being in the Bay Area for the NBA All-Star game and what a great time he had. He’s been waxing about wanting to hit the playoffs and get a shot at a ring, and that doesn’t look very promising for the Raiders for the next few years.

So, yeah, yet another trade idea that would cost us dearly in the draft department. But really, this team blows 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round picks like Monica Lewinsky blows presidents. So, the cost for a bona fide stud like either Garrett or Crosby would be at least worth the chatter.

Not that I really dug Philly winning, but it sure was fun seeing the Fat Walrus blubbering on the sidelines at Mahomes was pressured into mistake after sack all game. Mahomes never got going until garbage time, and Philly just coasted on their defense and took advantage of the early KC turnovers.

I thought it was odd that KC didn’t even bother trying to run, and Philly stressed the run too much to not very much success. The difference maker, Saquon Barkley, made most of his impact catching swing passes and the one wheel route for a nice gain.

But this game was dominated by the Philly D line. In Nick Sorensen’s wet dream, Philly didn’t blitz until it was garbage time in the 4th quarter. Philly’s base pass rush got into Mahomes just about every pass play, and KC didn’t cross the 50 until 5 minutes were left in the 3rd quarter. Telling to me was the fact that Philly’s interior line rarely gave up their gaps, and Mahomes had no room to step up and throw, or scramble for yards.

Say what you want about Philly, but they remade their defense last offseason and it paid off in spades. Hiring Fangio turned out pretty well, too. Zack Baun went from a special teams guy to an All-Pro linebacker under Fangio. They drafted very well as well with Cooper DeJean and Quinyon Mitchell manning the slot and outside CBspots next to Darius Slay.

This gives me some hope that Saleh and heir-apparent DC Gus Bradley can turn out D around our defense this year.

Nothing to report about the game other than I hope Saquon Barkley makes the difference for the Iggles. Fuck KC. Fuck Kelce. Fuck mahomes. Fuck the refs.

Other than that, there’s tons of speculation around a bunch of possible players to get, up to and including Myles Garrett. Yeah, he’d be great but I don’t see this team trading any more #1 picks in the next 10 years, so there’s that. Cooper Kupp threw his hat into the trade ring, and he would be fun, but unless we plan on trading Deebo, I don’t see that either.

Greenlaw is heading to the Rams if you believe the BS, and Mooney Ward is heading out as well. Actually I think Ward is gonna go, given his recent tragedy, so that’s understandable. Other than that, it’s just speculate speculate rosterbate.

The draft is still a little less than 2 months away, so here’s to hoping the Iggles (urk) pull out the win.

Rumor still I guess, but hey, sign Kittle. Haven’t seen anything official, but if you do that sign Greenlaw to a incentive-laden one year deal worth his while. Say what you will about his injury problem of late, he’s absolute mayhem when out there. He and Warner are the Willis and Bowman of the previous generation.

Don’t even know what the pro bowl even means anymore, and I watch more obscure shit than most folks, but hey, Jolly Roger is trying to squeeze blood out of yet another unsqueezed turnip.

As far as Super Fux LIX dicks, wll, the media frenzy is coming. Along with the allegations of favoritism among the NFL refs. Say what you will about this shit, but the fix, if that’s what it is, wouldn’t be that hard to do. The cadre of refs involved in games is a pretty small crowd, so juicing just a couple guys would go a long way.

Case in point, the ‘meaningless’ safety that the Chiefs took at the end of the Texans game. KC was up 10, and the lead went down to 9. The spread was 9.5.

Hah!!

Can anyone say Tim Donaghy?