Hot takes and pre season kick off
The offensive line shuffle continues: in the first ten practices of training camp rookie Joshua Garnett and recently returned Anthony Davis have worked their way into first team reps. The coaching staff has been pleased with Davis’s conditioning and work ethic after a one year break from football. Garnett meanwhile could be in line to start at left guard over recently acquired Zane Beadles, or at right guard lining up next to the aforementioned Davis. Either case would be great news for the team and offer something they were sorely missing last year – depth on the front line.
Meanwhile, it’s bad news for Eric Rogers – despite the hype and excitement surrounding this opportunity, it was clearly not meant to be this season. Early in training camp Rogers suffered an ACL injury that will cause him to miss the entire season. He is still under contract for the 2017 season, if the team decides to hold onto him, so hopefully he can get his shot at the NFL level next year.
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The wide receiver spots will be the second most interesting camp battle throughout pre-season. The receiver group is split between veterans Bruce Ellington, Quinton Patton, and Jerome Simpson, and the not so familiar faces of DeAndre Smelter, DeAndrew White, Bryce Treggs, and Aaron Burbridge. As it stands right now the more experienced Ellington and Patton are holding off the eager young players, but the gap between them doesn’t appear to be large.
Both DeForest Buckener and Arik Armstead have been making their presence felt so far in camp. Whether it is against the run or the pass, they have continued to impress the media and coaching staff. This is great news on a team desperate for play makers in a division that has quickly become unequal in terms of talent level per team.
The quarterback competition remains open with Gabbert and Kaepernick splitting first team reps down the middle. Chip Kelly listed them as “co-1st team” in the first depth chart released to the media. Clearly the pre-season in game reps will provide Kelly with the final fragments of information to make his decision on the regular season starter.
Similar to practice reps, the media has also been split on who they believe will be the regular season starter. While I feel that a healthy Kaepernick will win the job over Gabbert, I am naturally concerned about how things went last season. If Kaepernick is continually looking over his shoulder I feel that it will negatively impact his play on the field, which could spell the end for his time as a starter. Conversely, if Gabbert is the starter and eventually hits his ceiling it could free up Kaepernick to come in and not be concerned about a short leash on his game.
For the first pre-season game I’m going to be looking at which quarterback shows command of the new offense. I’m also going to watch out for which receivers show chemistry with either quarterback. In pre-season it is always interesting to see how the offensive and defensive lines perform as well. Stay tuned for next week where I’ll have my takeaways from the game.
Without further adieu…Welcome back football!
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