San Francisco 49ers Forever

Here they are, your 2018 draft class.

Round 1,Pick 9: Mike McGlinchey, OT, Notre Dame
Round 2, Pick 12 (No. 44 overall): Dante Pettis, WR, Washington
Round 3, Pick 6 (No. 70 overall): Fred Warner, OLB, BYU
Round 3, Pick 31 (No. 95 overall): Tarvarius Moore, S, Southern Mississippi
Round 4, Pick 28 (No. 128 overall): Kentavius Street, DE, North Carolina State
Round 5, Pick 5 (No. 142 overall): D.J. Reed, DB, Kansas State
Round 6, Pick 10 (No. 184 overall): Marcell Harris, DB, Florida
Round 7, Pick 5 (No. 223 overall): Jullian Taylor, DT, Temple
Round 7, Pick 22 (No. 240 overall): Richie James, WR, Middle Tennessee State

Well, kind of a mixed bag of nuts in this the 2nd iteration of the Lynch/Shanahan draft. We started the draft with 9 picks, and we ended with 9 picks, but there were a few machinations around these picks.

I’m down with the first 4.  All these guys bring superior speed to their respective positions.

We traded Trent Brown after getting our future tackle in Mike McGlinchey, a much better match for our outside running game and zone blocking scheme (and new speed back Jerick Mckinnon).

We traded up to get Dante Pettis, son of Gary Pettis, outfielder for the California Angels among other teams. A versatile and fast WR that can play the slot, out wide, and is a great return guy to boot.

Fred Warner is a hard-hitting, fast edge linebacker who either complements Reuben Foster or replaces him for a little while.

Tarvarious Moors is a lanky safety who is very fast and who more than likely will be a slot CB in the mold of Jimmie Ward.

The most intriguing (and risky) pick is Kentavius Street. A high 2nd round projection pick until he tore his knee up in his pro day or some shit. He’s on the shelf this year, but for a DE that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. His numbers are an eye-popping 4.87 40 yard time at 280 lb, he squatted 700 lb, He needs the seasoning of an NFL camp, adn he should be able to ad strength to his quickness. Yeah, it’s in the ilk of a Trent Baalke special, but hey, as a late 4th rounder, we’ll see.

The rest round out to be special teamers and backups, but as we saw last year, some of our later picks turned into gems. Reed is a scrappy undersized corner who went to my wife’s community college, Cerritos College.

Marcell Harris is a strong safety type who is also coming off an injury, an achilles tear. Another risk/reward scenario with Harris. He was cleared to practice prior to the combine, so he looks to be healed up from his injury.

Julian Taylor DT, is another quick big man who ran a sub-5 second 40 at 294 lb. He is also coming off injury but ran this time after healing up, so he adds depth and quickness to the D line.

Ritchie James is (yet another) injury guy who is (yet another) slot WR. He had close to 3,000 yards his first 2 college seasons till injuries slowed him down last year.  We seem to have a lot of slot guys now as he is of the 5’20, 183 lb size that Trent Taylor is.

A solid B (maybe B- with all the hope picks at the back end) when you look at this draft, but when you throw in the addition of Jimmy Garoppolo, center Weston Richberg, RB Jerick McKinnon, and CB Richard Sherman, the team looks a lot different (and better) than last year, I give them an A.

Bring it on!

Or is it one hundred and eleven?

Round 1: Ninth Overall – Mike McGlinchey, T, Notre Dame
Round 2: 44th Overall (from Washington) – Dante Pettis, WR, Washington
Round 3: 70th Overall (from Chicago) – Fred Warner, LB, BYU
Round 3: 95th Overall (from New England) – Tarvarious Moore, DB, Southern Miss

Speed is the overriding factor. A nimble big man at tackle to help the outside run game, a quick WR a quick ILB, and a quick DB.

Still not seeing a pass rusher, but this wasn’t the draft for it. I’d think CB and WR and a flier at OLB.

Today is . . .

Round 4: 128th Overall (from Pittsburgh)

Round 5: 142nd Overall (from Washington)

Round 6: 184th Overall

Round 7: 223rd Overall (from Miami)

Well, I don’t think too many people saw that coming. Mike McGlinchey, OT out of Notre Dame, and teammate of the first offensive lineman to go in the draft, Quentin Nelson, was our pick at the 9 spot. Early yesterday morning, Joe Lo and Dibbs were saying that the Raiders were very high on McGlinchey and that he was their guy after weeks of linebacker/corner talk for them.

And, seeing as the Raiders traded down once he was off the board lends creedence to that thought. And the Raiders still took an OT in Kolton Miller out of UCLA.

John Lynch apparently had this guy on his radar the whole time, and said he wouldn’t have taken Roquan Smith even of he was available. Lynch ha this to say about McGlinchey.

“He’s got a special presence to him,” Lynch said. “He’s real, he’s authentic and he’s a bad-ass. And we like that.”

Sounds good to me. But not to Trent Brown. If I had a guess, I’d say that Brown, a very good tackle, but not the most nimble guy, isn’t a fit in Kyle Shanahan’s zone blocking scheme. And, given that we signed Jerick McKinnon, we are looking at faster tackles to run outside, and pass to the flat.

Day 2? We don’t pick until 59 so i have no clue what we do, but WR, CB, and LB  wouldn’t surprise me. Then we get right back on the horse at 70 and 74 so there will be some excitement today.

Be still my beating heart.  So, the weekend draftapalooza begins at 5:00 pm sharp PT. Which means I’ll be stuck on a Bart train underneath the icy waters of San Francisco Bay. The pisser is, for that stretch of the route, internet coverage is gone, so I’ll prolly miss a few. Actually, I might be in a bar, but I digress.

• The bad news? They streeeeeetch this shit out for THREE fricking days
• The good news? It’s FINALLY here.
• The better news? On Sunday, Mel Kiper Jr. will soon be re-entombed in has hard shell of hair gel and buried under the ESPN parking lot in Bristol, Connecticut.

For those that need the entire rundown of dates, times, and rounds, Here ya go:

Live coverage of the 2018 NFL Draft starts at 8 p.m. ET on April 26 for Round 1. The draft resumes at 7 p.m. on April 27 for Rounds 2-3, and then again at noon on April 28.

This year’s draft will be covered by two broadcast networks (Fox and ABC) and four cable outlets (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes, NFL Network). For the first time, all seven rounds of the three-day event will air live on broadcast TV.

• Round 1 on April 26 (8 p.m. ET): NFL Network, Fox, ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes. Troy Aikman, Fox’s lead NFL analyst, will join NFL Network’s Rich Eisen and Mike Mayock at the analyst desk.

• Rounds 2 and 3 on April 27 (7 p.m. ET): NFL Network, Fox, ESPN and ESPN2. Joel Klatt, Fox’s lead college football analyst, and Charles Davis will join NFL Network’s Peter Schrager and Chris Rose on the coverage.

• Rounds 4-7 on April 28 (noon ET): ESPN, ABC, NFL Network. This is the first time ABC will simulcast ESPN’s coverage. Fans also can also stream the action through NFL, Fox Sports and ESPN apps.

Still think Tremaine Edmunds is the guy. After that, I got nothing.

Well, As the Football Turns throws another giant twist into the already strange and terrible saga of the dark underbelly of football.  Reuben Foster, who was teetering in the vere iog being cut by the 49ers, had his ex-girlfriend,  Elissa Ennis completely recant the story that Foster was the one who busted her eardrum and bonked her in the head 8-10 times.

The kicker is she apparently has video to prove that she got into a catfight with another woman over lasagna recipes or some shit. I don’t really know what the fight was about, or if there even was a fight, but the police showed, she went to the hospital, and there are records of the day’s activities, so I don’t really know if or how or what happens with the case against Foster.

Ennis’s attorney, Stephanie Rickard, said that the injuries, including a ruptured eardrum, that sent the 28-year-old woman to the hospital were suffered in a fight with another woman and there is a video of that confrontation.

“(Foster) did not strike her, injure her or threaten her,” said Rickard. She said Foster tried to end the relationship with her after learning of the fight.“She was extremely upset and told him if he broke up with her she would ‘trash his career,’”

Curiouser and curiouser. Needless to say, I guess they were well served to wait this thing out.

Either that or Ennis got a huge fucking payday to change her story.

. . .and I still have no idea which way they go with this draft. The Foster situation muddies the creek even more, so I got no idea. Thing is, the BPA at 9 very well may be Tremaine Edmunds, a guy who can play ILB or OLB. Seemingly a good fit. I guess. A bunch of prognosticators have him coming to us, anyway.

With Foster’s freeze out at this point, the Niners may still have to cut bait with him, but the thing is, they won’t know anything about Foster until way after the draft, so do they pick Edmunds anyway? Fitzpatrick?  Beyond that, Edmunds hasn’t raised any of the red flags that Foster did so he’s clean in that respect. Plus, the Raiders want him, so maybe we could work out a deal with them.

But we need help at CB and guard. As I said before though, with all the QBs flying up the board, Nelson could possibly fall to us. Denzel Ward stands a better chance of reaching us, but Roquan Smith feels like a bust to me. Too small and unable to disengage. Chubb is my most wanted piece, but I think we’d need to deal up to get him. Again, though it depends on all these QBs and when they go. Barkley is a solid lock to go in the top 6, and there are teams like the Bills and Dolphins that want in to get a QB, so the trades could be fast and furious.

Darnold, Barkley, Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, Josh Rosen for all intents and purposes are the top 5.  Then you have Nelson and Chubb. I think that’s the top 7 on Thursday.

The guys we likely have a shot at are Edmunds, Fitzpatrick, D James, R Smith, or D Ward.

Since we nominally addressed CB with Richard Sherman, I’d go with Tremaine Edmunds. Get guard hel later in the draft. Then get a CB.

There you have it.   Clear as the LA basin on a Friday afternoon.

Yes! The 2018 draft is only one week away! Sure, the NFL has turned it into a corporate clusterfuck travelling circus that spans 6 weeks, or 3 days, or whatever, but it IS actually important. Teams are built and sustained through solid drafting. Just look at Pittsburgh and New England.  They usually draft near the bottom of the 1st round yet remain relevant. To see how not to do it, look at the Jets and Browns. They’ve both been near the top of the draft for years, if not decades, yet trip over their dicks just about every time.

Thing is, the Niners were dick-trippers as well under Trent Baalke. His predecessor however, the irrepressible Scotty McCloughan, has parked himself in Cleveland at his latest stop to resurrect a franchise. He dragged the Niners from the depths of hell with his drafts from 2006 to 2010. 2007 (Patrick Willis, Joe Staley among others) has been rated one of the best drafts in  NFL history for the past 25 years. He then took his services to Seattle, where he turned them into a Super Bowl champion by drafting Russell Wilson and Richard Sherman.

We have our new braintrust in John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan, and while the Reuben Foster pick looks like a trainwreck, well, we got something out of him. Hard as it is to believe, it isn’t especially easy to know when or if one of your draftees is going to snap and end up being convicted of murder (Rae Carruth, Aaron Hernandez), getting away with murder (Ray Lewis), kill by car (Dontae Stallworth, Leonard Little), or be your garden variety wife-beater (Ray Rice, Ray McDonald, Reuben Foster) or sexual abuser (Ezekiel Elliott, Darren Sharper). But I digress.

Salomon Thomas is still a work in progress, and there are solid contributors on the team from last year’s draft, but we do need more. Still have no idea where we go in the first 2 rounds.

Well, sort of. The NFL in its infinite hype-grinding death machine of hyperbole only releases the preseason schedule and gives out the teams we play. But not the order. So, they dice up every little move coming out of the league office with a hint of anticipation. So, we got:

The teams we play are –>

Home opponents:

• Arizona Cardinals
• Los Angeles Rams
• Seattle Seahawks
• Chicago Bears
• Denver Broncos
• Detroit Lions
• New York Giants
• Oakland Raiders

Away opponents:

• Arizona Cardinals
• Los Angeles Rams
• Seattle Seahawks
• Green Bay Packers
• Kansas City Chiefs
• Los Angeles Chargers
• Minnesota Vikings
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Our home schedule looks like what? 6-2? 7-1? We could conceivably run the table. Shit, that’s a fairly creampuff home schedule.

The away schedule looks like a much tougher row to hoe. Lambeau and Arrowhead (I don’t know what the fuck they call it now, but it’s Arrowhead to me, OK?)  are tough houses to win in. Chargers and Vikes? Not clear on what either are, but Minn is a very tough defense, and the Bolts can play very well at times. TB looks to be the only fairly easy game.

Away very well could be 3-5 if we do what is expected. 4-4 would be about as good as possible. Granted, even with a draft coming up, it’s hard to say what we will have and what the team will look like going forward into the season, but the wildcard certainly is in play. This season.

Since the draft is still a few days away, I might as well write some nonsense. As in why the fuck are people still railing on Colin Kaepernick for his non-violent passive protest? Eric Reid is now in the cross-fire as one of his first supporters, I guess, as he is not exactly jumping to anyone else’s team as a free agent.

Sure, guys like Miami WR Kenny Stills have received little blowback from kneeling, but he got grief during the anthems he kneeled for. His position is as follows:

People always want to make it about Kap. It’s not about Colin. It’s what you’re doing to him.

Frankly, he’s right. This country was founded on protests. Taxation without representation didn’t get anywhere until the protests were greater and more frequent. Michael Thomas, at the time a safety for the Dolphins (now a Giant), is still employed. Shit, the entire Dallas Cowboys team kneeled for an anthem. Malcolm Jenkins, Eli Harold, Olivier Vernon, and plenty of others have done the pernicious deed and still remain employed. What is the tipping point? Certainly Eli Harold is not anyone’s idea of an indispensible player> Eric Reid on the other hand has played very well at times, and one would think would gather interest.

Neither has come to pass as Colin remains on the sideline with his first disciple.

Funny thing is, as NFL attendance falls, both sides blame the other for the reasons why. For every guy that says the kneeling is disrespectful and driving people away, you have another guy saying the reaction of Trump and the blind eye the NFL turns to social issues has driven them away (hello Reuben Foster) from the game. Who knows? Who cares?

In reality it’s the incessant reviews, endless commercials, play stoppages, and the fucking endless stream of penalties on any given game. If you want to fix the game you do 2 things:

• Targeting (helmet to helmet)  is an immediate suspension and game-check fine for that game. Something needs to be done to protect the players that actually has meaning.
• Get rid of kickoffs.

Sorry bout the last one, but I’d say 75% of the penalties come on kickoffs and punts. One has to go, let it be that. They could eventually just say the ball goes 45 yards from the 4th down spot instead of punting, but I’m not crazy about that idea.

Go ahead, NoCheer. Gimme both barrels.