Forty Niners Forever

Good news? Brock Purdy is out of the elbow brace he was wearing on his surgically repaired elbow.

In listening to the reports about his elbow surgery though, John Lynch said Purdy should be fully ready to go by training camp.

Kyle Shanahan said it’s possible Purdy won’t be ready till week 4.

Purdy himself dropped this bomb, saying he’s “not really sure” if he will be ready to play in 2023.

Someone’s story is way off here, but I’m sure this is yet another attempt by Click-Bait Cohn to stir the shit, but Purdy DID say it. Does it really mean anything? Probably not.

Best case scenario is training camp. A longer recovery would be somewhere between week 2 and week 6. Missing the whole season? Doubtful. But who knows? These kinds of surgeries have been successful for pitchers for decades, and some have even gone through the process twice.

That being said, only Mike Clevinger has been even remotely effective as a pitcher after the 2nd TJ surgery. But most of the other guys were on the far side of 30 anyway. But the impetus here being, Purdy had better be fully functional by the time he gets back on the field. Whether training camp, or week 14, or 2024.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Purdy is young and strong and should be able to fully recover from this. The timeframe IS the main issue, but as I said, he likely will be on the field by week 4 at the latest, I’d think.

. . . Trey lance was spotted hanging out (and throwing) with 2x Super Bowl champ Patrick Mahomes and his gaggle of wide receivers. This of course was not sanctioned by the Chiefs or the NFL as that would be verboten, but Lance decided to crash the party and do some throwing of his own.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1644085449755877380

Interesting to note, the one pass they show him throw he uses a higher arm angle and quicker release. As noted by Dave Lombardi. Even Mahomes is at a slightly lower arm angle, but his release is quick.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1644072784664952833

This type of workout would of course be some sort of violation of the CBA so this is all done on their own. Not sure how Lance got invited, but if anything, just watching and learning from Mahomes is a good thing. And the fact that he appears to be altering his motion is a also good thing. His mechanics are pretty scatter-shot, so building a better platform to throw from will be a welcome sight. If he can build consistency, he should be on his way.

Looks like the talking heads have run out of shit to post about our quarterback situation and are rehashing the oldies. Apparently there is ‘chatter among people in the league’ that the 49ers are interested in trading for Kirk Cousins. The ‘people in the league’ being the tackling dummies, apparently. What next? Nate Davis?

All this happened at the combine. You know, a month ago. Naturally, a huge story like this was sat on till now and is now a hot topic.

Mindless blather? Trial balloons floated out by the Whisper Machine inside 49er headquarters to gather info for Lance’s worth? Monkeys throwing darts at buzzwords? No fucking idea, but why in God’s name would we take on Cousins when we have TWO quarterbacks on rookie deals? Lance is far from proven to be a bust. He isn’t proven to be anything but snakebit by injuries at this point, but we aren’t gonna give Lance ‘a fresh start’ somewhere else without giving him a legit shot here.

Purdy is Purdy. Sure, he’s young and coming off a pretty significant injury, but we aren’t gonna throw down on a 34 year old QB with an abysmal playoff record just because some drunk team exec was talking to a potted plant.

Purdy already has more playoff wins than Cousins and Prescott to name a couple, and Purdy should be fine by October at the latest so, the hamster wheel of stupidity coming out of the national media is gonna spin like mad. I said the grist mill around the 49ers is gonna be a full-tilt-boogie and here we go.

Simply an excuse to throw on some Hendrix? Sure. Always down for that. Anyhow, John (I’m not simply Kyle’s mouthpiece) Lynch gave a ringing endorsement to Brock Purdy as the starter once healthy.

Really? No shit? The guy goes 5-0 in the regular season, and goes 2-0 in the playoffs before getting hurt, taking down Seattle and Dallas in convincing fashion? And thus equalling Dak Prescott for playoff wins his Brock’s one abbreviated season?

Hah! Bold shit there, John.

This feels a little like the scenario when Colin Kaepernick took the league by storm when Alex Smith got hurt. Two very good QBs who both are nominal starters. I said sort of. We still have to find out what we have in Trey Lance. And, of course Brock has to recover, and recover fully, from his ligament damage, but this kind of surgery has been done millions ot times and it shouldn’t be a problem.

Sooooooo, the ideal situation is for Lance to come in and play to his projected level as Purdy heals up. Lance can only enhance his value should he come out and not fall flat on his face. And we would have the scenario where our backup becomes a coveted starter for the 2024 season.

I mean, even if his performance isn’t spectacular, there are enough teams willing to take a shot and give us something in return. The wasted draft picks? Pffft. Don’t really give a fuck at this point as Lynch and Co have wasted plenty of first-day picks themselves.

Thing is, the Niners will have a decision to make regarding Lance and his 5th year option. This will be his 4th season, and he will finally get his shot. Unless Kyle goes the stupid route and runs him up the middle repeatedly, but that’s a different story. A solid season from him and we would be in position to do a sign and trade. A mediocre season, would we simply cut our losses? With Purdy becoming Joe Jr. the possibility exists. I still think we would try to sign and trade him, but the prudent thing may be to just walk away if lance is still struggling. Truth is, he’s very green even 3 years into his NFL career. He’s started 5 games in the last 3 years, and one of those was the in the 2020 BCS.

As usual, the Niners are coming into the season with a truckload of offseason dilemmas. Through all the weirdness we have become ESPN/Internet fodder for massive speculation and endless blather.

As Hunter Thompson said, when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Football fans share a universal language that cuts across many cultures and many personality types. A serious football fan is never alone. We are legion, and football is often the only thing we have in common.

– HST

To San Dawg as his San Dawg State Aztecs hit the Elite 8 and try for a Final 4 appearance tomorrow against the Creighton B Jays. Gotta say, I’m actually getting psyched for these games as it is a bunch of teams that haven’t gotten this far. As I’m typing this, the Florida Atlantic Owls just knocked off perennial powerhouse K-State. In fact, all of the #1’s were ousted by the Elite 8 games. A first since the 64 team seeding in 1979.

All we need now is for the Zags to take down UConn. Texas/Miami sounds more like the BCS National Championship football game. Hey, we’ll see.

And baseball is 5 days away! The rotation actually looks pretty strong. The pen has settled down the closer we get to the real thing. Hitting? Defense? That is the question, and that is the question.

Not really watching this, although it is kinda funny people are up in arms because guys major leaguers like Trayce Thompson get to play for different countries (in his case Great Britain since his dad was born in the Bahamas) and it is such a farce. Whatevs.

The only thing noteworthy to come out of this is Edwin Diaz tearing his patellar tendon celebrating his win as part of Team Puerto Rico in their win over the DR. As stupid baseball celebrations go, it wasn’t as dumb as your usual major league strip off the jersey and douse the guy with water, but . . . .

Oooops.

At least he wasn’t separating frozen hamburger patties with a knife or playing with his kids a la Jeremy Affeldt. Still and all, I’m not really paying much attention to this as it is filled with guys who will never see the light of the majors scattered around the various major leaguers who snuck onto some of these squads. But, the Mets are screwed as their closer hits the shelf for the entire season. Not sure why they decided to play this tourney right in the middle of spring training, but that ain’t my call.

Than again, baseball runs from March to November so, when else? Maybe do it in Australia in December.

Other than that, love the Javon Hargrave signing. Bummed we lost Moseley and Ebukam, but we have so many free agents that we were bound to lose a few.

The Giants are hitting the IR in mid-season form as Mitch Haniger, Brandon Crawford, Luis Gonzalez, David Villar, Ronald Guzman, Marco Luciano, and Thomas Szapucki are all dealing with injuries. Haven’t seen much of spring training from the Giants, but they have 16 days to get healthy.

I think these are all fairly mundane, except for Mitch Haniger. Oblique injuries are hard to gauge, but we will see.

In other news, Jimmy Garoppolo is taking his football and rowing his boat across the Bay to Oakland, uh, Vegas, as the love, hate, love relationship is finally over. At least on this side of the Bay. The Raiders are essentially trading out of Carr’s $37 million and saving $15 mill as they pay Jimmy $22 mill. Even with Jimmy G instead of Carr, offense shouldn’t be their problem. They will win or (probably) lose because of their defense. Lack thereof.

Aaron Rodgers is apparently serious about the Jets so we will see how that works out. That would be something different anyway. And the Niners signed Sam Darnold.

Here’s to hoping he never sees the field.

Brock Purdy underwent successful intern brace UCL surgery earlier today according to Dr. Meister-brau of the Texas Rangers. According to Meister, Purdy can start throwing in 3 months, and be game-ready in 6 months.

Which would be June-September if all goes well.

Still want to see Lance get his reps in some meaningful games, but here we go.

https://www.49erswebzone.com/articles/167537-49ers-brock-purdy-undergoes-successful-surgery-6-month-recovery/

Not much to see so far in spring training given the fact that little is televised, and we aren’t the Yanks, Boston, or El Lay, but we are something like 3-7 and have lost 5 in a row or some shit. Normally I don’t pay attention to spring much, but hey, here we are.

My glancing at the Giants stories so far seem to be of the variety that the starters are doing fine but the relievers are crashing and burning late. So I decided to take a look. Our nominal starters are doing the following:

Logan Webb – 2 starts, 5 IP, 4 hits, 2 runs – 3.60 era – 3 k’s, 2 walks
Sean Manaea – 2 starts, 4.2 IP, 7 hits, 4 runs – 7.71 era – 6 k’s, 0 walks
Alex Cobb – 2 starts, 7 IP, 8 hits, 4 runs – 9.00 era – 8 k’s, 2 walks
DeScaffolding – 1 start, 2 IP, 1 hit, 0 runs – 0.00 era – 3 k’s, 0 walks
Alex Wood – 1 start, 2 IP, 0 hits, 0 runs – 0.00 era – 5 k’s, 0 walks
_______

Tristan Beck – 2 starts, 7 IP, 8 hits, 4 runs, 5.14 era – 7 k’s, 2 walks
K Harrison – 1 starts, 2.2 IP, 8 hits, 7 runs, 23.63 era – 3 k’s, 2 walks
Jakob Junis – 1 start, 4 IP, 3 hits, 1 run, 2.25 era – 4 k’s, 0 walks
Ross Stripling – 0 starts, 5 IP, 8 hits, 4 runs – 7.20 era – 3 k’s, 0 walks

Yeah, it’s early, but nothing super-alarming, other than Harrison’s flail in a couple games. But he’s young and a bit overwhelmed I’m sure. There are other random starters on the board but they won’t make the team and I’m tired of typing.

Encouraging is the number of k’s to walks. 42 k’s to 8 walks is nice for these guys.

Well, the first domino in the quarterback relocation program of 2023 got off to a rousing start with the New Orleans Saints giving Derek Carr a 4 year/$150 million deal with a reported $100 mill in total guarantees. Great for the Saints. Pretty fucking stupid for Prince Valiant and the Raydurs. Carr is pretty much the best guy available in these QB sweepstakes, and of course the Durs are the team jettisoning him. The Saints go back to being a legit threat in the NFC South while the Durs look to sink further into the sludge at the bottom of the AFC West with the hapless Denver Broncos.

Which means the Raiders will most likely throw a shit-ton of money at Jimmy Garoppolo. Jimmy is pretty much Derek Carr without the deep ball. So, a step down. But the rest are a step off the cliff. Wentz, Bridgewater, Mayfield, Darnold, Mariota, Keenum, D Jones, Brissett, etc. are all hot garbage.

It will be VERY interesting to see what Seattle has to say about their future re: their QB. Geno Smith had a solid season, but was quickly dispatched in the playoffs. By us. The players for Jimmy, who looks to get a deal equal to or better than Carr’s are the Texans, the Raiders, the Jets, the Seattles, and the Buccos.

Houston has DeMeco Ryans and some other familiar faces.

The Raiders have some strong offensive pieces (but a dogshit defense).

The Jets have a bunch of familiar faces in Robert Saleh, Nate Hackett, and Taylor Embree and a decent team that Saleh is building into something solid.

Seattle would just love to sign him and try to rub that shit on our faces.

TB just lost TB so they are looking for someone to fill his shoes. Like he did 7 years ago.

Miami is also a possibility as the health and well-being of Tua Tagovailoa is a major concern and their head coach is of course our old RB coach Mike McDaniel.

Where will Jimmy go? I’m not sure of anything at this point, but this is exactly what Jimmy wanted. He wanted unfettered free agency, and he got it.

16 TDs, 4 picks, 2435 yards, and a very solid 7.91 yards/attempt.

He also got a huge boost directing the 49ers to 7 wins in 10 starts before suffering his ankle injury. so he is in the driver’s seat regarding where he goes. He’ll get a big payday from someone. Given that he can call his deal, I think he goes to Houston. A team that appears to be on the rebound where things are looking up.

What do you think? I mean Jimmy’s the only QB worth a damn at this point in the QB sweepstakes. All the rest, including our future 3rd string QB is on the list of FA has-beens.