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I was in the process of typing the wrap-up of the boring, putrid crapfest that was the Thursday Night Football game between the 49ers and Cardinals and the San Francisco Giants playing playoff baseball. (Don’t worry; I’m typing my thoughts about that as well) and my focus was on that. But why bother, it was going to be the same rinse and repeat of what I wrote the previous week, just worded differently, but with more anger going towards how bad everyone played from top to bottom. So to save you the trouble of reading that; let’s talk about what the big news coming out of Niners practice this week.
Roles have been switched between quarterback’s Blaine Gabbert and Colin Kaepernick. Head coach Chip Kelly made an announcement that Kaepernick is now the starting QB and Blaine Gabbert has been regulated to clipboard duty once again since the end of the 2014 season.
Now I must admit, I am one of those people who wanted to see Colin Kaepernick to be the started before the season started. When Chip Kelly was hired to be the head coach of the team, I said, like many other who have said this, that they would like to see just one season what would Colin Kaepernick would look like if he played under Chip’s high-octane, fast pace offense. Now that we are getting our wish, we all need to set realist expectations. Not even the sarcastic “GUYS WE’RE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL NOW!!!” expectations are going to be taken in account, the “Kaepernick is basically at the same skill level as Blain Gabbert” are what you, me and everyone else should set for themselves.
Now the time in which Kaepernick was named the start is quite quintessential. He just so happened to restructure his deal into a one-year deal with a player option. If he doesn’t choose to stay with the team for another year, he will become an unrestricted free agent. As much as I want to see Kap revert to some of what made him a dangerous threat, he is going to struggle big time when he goes under center on Sunday against the Bills. He doesn’t have the same speed as before. Even two years ago when Levis Stadium first opened, he had trouble going to full speed even when he got past the defense that was schemed to contain him. Another is that opposing defenses are going to do what Dom Capers did to him in the third preseason game, blitz the hell out of him. If Kaepernick really is quickly going through his progressions, he would make that quick throw to the open receiver and defenses will actually respect him as a QB. Don’t be surprised if Kaepernick can’t make the deep throws or is completing a large amount of check down throws or becomes easily uncomfortable in the pocket because that’s what Gabbert has done so far this season. I’m not expecting much from Colin, I just want to see if he can live up to everyone’s “what if” expectations and if not, it will shut up everyone and another year of rebuilding will go on.
