A few Cowboys staffers scattered about midfield. This was 11 days ago, and hour before kickoff in Santa Clara. They were watching the Niners warm up, trying to pick up the little things football people can in these quick glimpses. Colin Kaepernick didn’t look exactly like the cyborg he was when he took the NFL by storm four years ago. But skinny as he was, he threw the ball well and Dallas knew what he could do with his feet.
All of which could only lead to one conclusion.
“He didn’t look his best, but he did look like their best quarterback,” said one Cowboy coach. “We were happy to play against [Blaine] Gabbert instead of him.”
Maybe that was a fear of the unknown. Maybe it was the idea that, somewhere deep in there, the guy who terrorized NFL defenses for a season-and-a-half could once again be summoned. (Maybe it was just that facing the previous three weeks of Gabbert would be preferable to most anything else the Niners rolled out there.)
Whatever it was, and whatever it is, that’s what Rex Ryan and his red-hot Bills will be facing this week.
But there’s nothing as intriguing as the mystery that will unfold in Orchard Park, N.Y. on Sunday. If you let yourself get swept away in it, it’s easy to forget that Kaepernick was the league’s 30th-ranked passer over the 2014 and ’15 seasons, and that the 49ers are 3-10 in his last 13 starts. Still, while coaches will tell you that the chances Kaepernick will reprise the 2012 version of himself are slim, that sliver of a chance of it happening is frightening, given that he’s now playing in an offense tailor-made for his talents.
Upon the hiring of Chip Kelly last year, one rival defensive coordinator explained it to me like this: “I think he’s a good enough passer, but obviously what’ll be a nightmare is his ability to run. That offense is straight Freddy Krueger when you have a QB that can pull the ball and run.” Another defensive coach added that combining him with spread-friendly tailback Carlos Hyde “could be scary.”
The operative word, could. I think we should all be pretty pumped to see what actually is once Kaepernick is out there. And with that in mind, here’s how I see this situation, and what’s on the line, for the four main characters in this special brand of horror flick (though it’s unclear who will be most frightened): Kaepernick, Kelly, Gabbert and general manager Trent Baalke.
Kaepernick. Last year, at least two teams who did research on Kaepernick had serious questions about whether he even wanted to play football anymore. On the field, Kaepernick’s issues as a passer manifested soon after defenses found ways to corral the Nevada-inspired pistol package former 49ers OC Greg Roman installed to establish a comfort level for the raw signal-caller.
Now, Kaepernick gets to play in a scheme that has made superstars of fleet-of-foot QBs like Marcus Mariota at the college level, and seems to be built for him. Conversely, he’ll have to be a better chain-mover—it’s a requirement of Kelly’s tempo offense, because failure to pick up first downs puts the defense in an impossible spot. Improvement week-to-week would show he is, in fact, engaged as a football player. If he fails in a system so suited for him—“This offense gives him the best chance, no doubt,” said one Niners source—the idea that he isn’t an NFL quarterback will be bolstered. So yes, his career is on the line, particularly with free agency beckoning as a result of his new reworked deal.
One other interesting aspect is that even his coaches don’t know what to expect. Because he was so limited by injury in spring and summer, they went into the season without a clear picture of who he was. The first month of the season, as the backup, he was getting about two reps out of every 10 the offense took in practice. So this is the first week they’ll even get a decent look at him.
Kelly. Two days after Kaepernick’s national anthem protest came to light, Kelly, Baalke and those in football ops set up a 7 a.m. meeting between the Niners’ player engagement staff and squad leaders Gabbert, Hyde, Antoine Bethea, Joe Staley, Phil Dawson, Torrey Smith, Glenn Dorsey, NaVorro Bowman, and Ahmad Brooks. A couple hours later, the squad leaders led a players-only meeting to discuss things.
This is why Kelly was an enormous beneficiary of Kaepernick taking a stand. In Philly, Kelly was dogged by accusations of racism, something those who know him best felt was way off-base. But those questions lingered. And maybe they’d have lingered longer if this situation didn’t arise organically, giving the coach the chance to, as one Niner put it, “show who he really is.”
So I think Kelly has already won with his handling of the quarterbacks over the last six weeks, even if it hasn’t added up to many wins for the rebuilding Niners. On the football side of it, he’s now gotten a pretty thorough look at Gabbert, and now will get one of Kaepernick.
Gabbert. This one has been, to say the least, frustrating for the Niners. Gabbert has clearly grown up since his time in Jacksonville, and evolved into one of the hardest workers on the team and a leader. He looks great in practice. He has the physical skills required in Kelly’s offense.
It’s all there. And it just hasn’t carried over to the game field.
Just as the Niners are hoping Kaepernick, who hasn’t been overly impressive in practice, finds another gear under the stadium lights, they now have an idea that those game conditions reveal a different Gabbert than they were hoping for.
In the end, because of his physical ability, work ethic, and the value of the position, Gabbert will probably make a lot of money as a backup in the coming years. But it’s hard to envision him ever being more than a fill-in starter somewhere down the line.
Baalke. Kaepernick has always viewed himself as a Jim Harbaugh draft pick who the GM didn’t really want, and the trust issues that have always been there only metastasized with time. One source said that after last season, with the quarterback rehabbing his shoulder and his injury guarantee up in the air, “the relationship couldn’t have been worse.”
What I can say is that people around Kaepernick have viewed the issues there as irreparable for a few years now, and I’m not sure his return to the lineup will change that.
Either way, the state of the roster—“It’s one of the three worst in the league, along with Cleveland and Chicago,” is how one rival exec assessed it—has Baalke in the crosshairs. And his relationships with others in the building could certainly swing whether or not ownership decides to stay the course with Baalke, or turn to assistant GM Tom Gamble or someone on the outside to replace him after the season.
I love this stock response, "So, if someone says on Twitter it makes it true?"
Kaep missed him
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