San Francisco 49ers Forever

Glad we didn’t re-up him I guess. There was even talk of Sherman getting hired by the Dallas Cowboys as a coach. Something that makes sense. But then there’s this. Sherman was arrested in Seattle at 2 am for trying to force his way into a Redmond, WA house, and an ensuing scuffle with the police. The big things here are he was denied bail and he is being charged with a felony.

Don’t know the story around this, but Sherman certainly doesn’t fit the profile of out-of-control whack-job. Guess we will hear more in a little while, but denying bail is a pretty big deal. Sounds like shit got crazy.

Free agent indeed.

Nothing much to report in Ninerland, or even NFL land. Wearing my official NJ49er t-shirt (thanks again!) and wearing it proud. We of course were fined for some sort of practice violation that cost the team $150 K and the league was going to cancel their additional OTAs. We were also docked rookie development days due to an earlier violation. The Niners, being ahead of the game, had already cancelled their OTAs due to their injuries sustained by Jeff Wilson, Justin Skule, and Tarvarius Moore.

So there. Fuck off Jolly Roger. In other news, Trevor Lawrence signed his rookie deal of 4 years and $36.8 million. We haven’t signed Trey yet but there’s nothing out there to indicate we won’t get a deal done.

We HAVE signed offensive lineman Aaron Banks, a second-round draft pick, to his four-year rookie deal. The team has also signed offensive lineman Jaylon Moore, CB Deommodore Lenoir, safety Talanoa Hufanga, and RB Elijah Mitchell. That leaves Treys Lance and Sermon, and CB Ambry Thomas.

On the same day we have Oakland Raider defensive end Carl Nassib come out of the locker room as the first openly gay player in a major sport, Kansas City Chief defensive end Frank Clark gets arrested for packing a loaded UZI in his car while driving through LA. Zaven Collins, AZ’s 1st round pick at linebacker gave a new meaning to his 40 time by getting popped for going 76 in a 35 MPH zone. Amazingly, no weapons were found. And finally, Minnesota’s rookie DE Jalen Twyman was shot 4 times while being a passenger in a car in Washington DC. They were all superficial through and through wounds so he’s pretty lucky. I guess boys just wanna have fun.

Aaron Rodgers is still holding out, and with mini-camp starting on Tuesday, the consensus is that he will not show up and will face fines. The front office is clucking that they want to make Rodgers happy, but Rodgers is ‘not happy’ with the direction of the team, and he has pretty much carried the team by himself (well, DaVante Adams was a big help) these last couple years. Years where he dragged them to the NFC Championship game, only to lose both times. Last season to the eventual SB winners, Tampa, and the year before of course was our stomping of the Pack.

Fun? Sure. It’s pretty amazing that a guy with such a successful past as Rodgers does holding out because of irreconcilable differences. But he has a fairly solid case against the front office for not giving him more weapons to utilize, and drafting his replacement a couple drafts ago. Russell Wilson apparently patched things up with the Seahawks, to my dismay, but hey, not much else going on unless the Zach Ertz holdout floats your boat.

This is some of the funniest shit I have ever read from a nationally known sports ‘writer’. Mike Florio, a self-avowed and widely known 49er trasher, posted an article about how the 49ers ‘botched’ the rumors around who the 49ers were gonna pick in the draft. Botched. The Rumors.

https://www.ninersnation.com/2021/6/15/22534088/49ers-pft-mike-florio-says-niners-messed-up-qb-position-this-offseason#comments

The gist of the article states that, while the pick is the pick, the way the didn’t disavow the Mac Jones rumor was needless and unnecessary. In other words, the 49ers should have addressed the speculation started and fueled by the media involving what they would do with the pick they traded up for.

Again, the 49ers front office was negligent in not addressing the media hype around their supposed set-in-stone decision to pick Jones. The Jones speculation that the media drove into the ground for weeks on end. To the point that Vegas had us taking Jones as the odds-on favorite. The article is also full of speculation around Shanny ‘freaking out’ because he passed on Mahomes, Watson, and Brady. How he overreached by trading the farm to get Lance. How the organization talked Shanahan out of taking Jones.

Thing is, that ONE point has merit. The overreach. Whether it works out or not will not be known for years. And this stands true for all the teams that took QBs in the 1st round. But to diss an organization because they didn’t clear up a media-fueled hype-fest regarding their choice in the draft is absolutely laughable. And if we know one thing about Shanny, it is that he’s not talked out of things lightly, if at all. The blather was simply blather.

I thought Grant (ice cream) Cohn was the biggest hack in sports writing. Nope. The new champ is Mike Florio.

And hello WR Andy Jones. Yeah, I know, he’s likely a depth/special teamer/camp fodder guy, but there’s nothing much happening in the football landscape these days. And Josh Johnson was cut. Johnson has seemingly been on and off the team about 6 times, but has yet to throw a pass for us, and likely won’t. This leaves us with only 3 QBs. Nate Sudfeld, Josh Rosen and Jimmy Garoppolo.

Trey Lance of course is unsigned, but Nate the Great looks like the odd man out once that deal is done.

Intriguing to me is the Chandler Jones info out of AZ. They are far apart on a contract, and AZ losing him will seriously hurt their defense. I’m sure we would be among the last teams they would trade him to, butI would love to get a deal for him done a la DeAndre Hopkins. Although there are few GMs as dumb as Bill O’Brien so that is simply a dream.

Nothing much going on with the NFL or the 49ers these dog days of almost summer, but hey, the Giants are in 1st place, and they just took 3 of 4 from the Dodgers. Not bad. We’ll see where they are in September, but for the time being, the Giants are holding up their end of the deal.

We are supposedly looking at Julio Jones. Which would be great, depending on the cost. This team has already given up a bunch of draft picks, so I don’t think we go that route. Plus we have a decent set of WRs now, so the need isn’t that great for what Jones would cost.

Let’s hope we have some new good old days coming up.

Well, I’m sure this had something to do with the drafting of two running backs, but Jeff Wilson ‘recently underwent knee surgery’ for a torn meniscus. Don’t know when the injury happened, or even how, but now he’s out for 4-6 months, so it looks like the rookies just got bumped up a spot in the RB rotation. And whether the team knew about this leads me to think they did due to 2 guys coming off the board for a position we had somewhat covered.

Raheem the dream Mostert better stay healthy as the next guy not a rookie is Wayne Gallman. Then again, seeing Trey Sermon out there would be pretty cool. He’s a bad-ass hard hitting runner who catches passes well. He should be able to fit in pretty quickly, but as they say, we shall see.

Speaking of injuries, Nick Bosa, Dee Ford, and Jalen Hurd are all expected to be ready for camp. Commence the covering them in bubble-wrap till the season starts.

Or, OTAers. Whatever the fuck. The rookies landed last Friday, and of course the big news is Trey Lance. Even head coach Kyle Shanahan got in on the fun, saying he thought that Lance could win the starting job outright, as it is an open competition, saying:

“Yeah, there’s a chance for that at every single position on our team. I think that would be very hard. Jimmy is a really good quarterback. (Lance is) not just coming in and trying to take out some bridge quarterback or something. Jimmy is a guy who we brought here to be our franchise quarterback, and it really worked out for one year. That doesn’t mean it can’t work out. We just hope he stays healthy. But Trey has that ability too. But he has only played one year of college football. He missed last season. So it’s not coming in at all with me expecting that. I don’t know what I expect. I expect him to be a real good player.”

I’m sure the story is much different behind the scenes. As in “Jimmy, you have to fuck up really hard to lose the starting spot.” The last thing the team wants to do is to load the immediate fortunes of the franchise on his shoulders. Yes, this is a strong team that came off an insanely horrible injury-plagued year, but the future could be very much the same in these new rules of little hitting in practice, and reduced practice time in general. it seems that all the major sports have seen a big rise in player injuries. Just look at the NBA for the slew of top talent that has hit the injury list.

That being said, Trey does need to be ready. Jimmy G could very well go down again. I don’t think Josh Rosen is going to beat out Lance. Then again, Alex Smith was the 3rd string QB for the 49ers back in 2005, and the two QBs in front of him (Tim Rattay and Ken Dorsey) were injured/proven ineffective by week 7.

But, speaking of the VOTAs, a bunch of the vets also came in yesterday to be with the rookies (who arrived Friday) for the first scheduled OTAs. Including Jimmy G and George Kittle. A total of 80 players are in camp. However, full team practices don’t start until next week.

Hoping for an uneventful camp.

Should Sherm stay or should Sherm go now? If he stays there will be trouble, if he goes it will be double.

Anyhow, I thought we had made this decision, but with the COVID season being what it is, a seemingly strange time when front offices are leery of throwing big money contracts around due to the staggering drop of the salary cap, we were at least able to keep our backfield relatively intact. Minus Ahkello Witherspoon. Who, is his own conundrum of spectacular pay followed by begging out with the smallest of injuries and getting toasted.

Richard Sherman is a different matter entirely however. he is a 1st ballot Hall of Famer, and still plays pretty well, sort of. That is, when he was on the field. In his 3 seasons here, he’s missed 15 games. Mostly last year with 11 games missed due to his calf strain. I don’t think he’ll be getting stronger as his years pile up, but 33 is getting long in the tooth for a CB.

I would LOVE to see him switch to SS a la Ronnie Lott. I think he’s a perfect fit at safety. Sure he would take a pay cut. I just don’t see him as an elite cover guy anymore. Press man is not his style anymore, and he was toasted on deep routes. His knowledge is invaluable, and his positioning of himself and the other DBs is impeccable, but unless he wants to take a healthy pay cut and switch positions, I don’t think we need him as bad as he needs us. He isn’t gonna get the big deal he wants, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

And I don’t see Seattle bringing him back into the fold either.