San Francisco 49ers: How Will Colin Kaepernick Develop in 2016?

Colin Kaepernick has regressed in each of the past three seasons.  Is there any hope for his NFL future and with the San Francisco 49ers?

Nothing is new under the sun.

It’s extraordinarily rare that anyone has a truly unique career in the NFL. Running backs don’t fire to a new level past age 30, quarterbacks don’t suddenly go from being a 55-percent passer to a 65-percent passer overnight and wide receivers don’t suddenly switch from being possession receivers to deep threats overnight.

One of the best ways, then, to predict future performance of a player is to look at how similar players in the past continued to develop.

To do that, we use something known as “similarity scores.” You take a player’s statistics, adjust them for the era they’re playing in, and compare them to players in the past. My version is loosely based on Football Outsiders’ similarity score formula.

For quarterbacks, it takes into account not only yards, completion percentage and touchdowns, but also age, sacks absorbed and experience to determine who the most similar quarterbacks of all time are.  When you have several years of solid data, you can get a pretty clear snapshot of where a player’s potential falls.

This is an exercise I’ve done in each of the last two offseasons with Colin Kaepernick, and it serves as a bit of a record of how his potential has fallen.

After his great 2013 season, Kaepernick’s similarity scores were absolutely spectacular, with MVP and arguable Hall of Fame candidate Steve McNair popping up early and often in Kaepernick’s comparables, as did Pro Bowlers like Donovan McNabb and Philip Rivers.

After a more up-and-down 2014 season, Kaepernick’s comparables dropped accordingly, but still were fairly solid. Kaepernick’s increased sack numbers were worrisome, but they compared well to Ben Roethlisberger just before the light really clicked on for him.

His comparables included a large number of good quarterbacks, including Russell Wilson, Joe Flacco and Cam Newton, as well as a couple truly elite names like John Elway and McNair. Yes, there were some Kyle Orton and Jason Campbell-esque warning signs, but things still looked fairly positive for the young quarterback.

Then, the bottom fell out of the 2015 season.

Kaepernick was benched halfway through the year, though there was an argument back and forth about how much of it was poor performance, how much of it was injuries, and how much of it was poor performance due to injuries.

Even before he was pulled, however, he was on pace for career lows in touchdowns, yards per attempt and quarterback rating, and a career high in sacks taken.  2014 might have been something of a poor season compared to his great 2013 run, but he was still hovering right around average. He was terrible in 2015, and now, his career both with the team in the NFL in general hangs in the balance.

As you might expect, this has harmed his list of comparable quarterbacks somewhat significantly.  Quarterbacks who drop off in production three years in a row do not generally bounce back to have thrilling superstar careers.

Is there any hope left in Kaepernick’s comparables, or is it time to write off Kaepernick as a failed prospect and get fully on board the Blaine Gabbert train?

Here are Colin Kaepernick’s top 15 comparable players over the past three seasons. A score of 1000 would mean a player with an exact identical career path over the last three years, while the stats are for the last season in the comparison, or the equivalent to Kaepernick’s 2015 year.

That’s a motley crew if I’ve ever seen one.  There’s a lot to unpack there, so let’s get at it.

First of all, none of those quarterbacks started 16 games. That makes sense; since Kaepernick was pulled after starting just eight games in 2015, it would be very odd if his biggest comparison was someone who had played for a full year; you have to go down to Kaepernick’s 98^th-closest comparable to find someone who was so bad in a full season that their overall statistics match.

There are a few players from 1982 who pop up near the top like Jim Zorn, Richard Todd and Steve Bartkowski, because 1982 had a players’ strike which limited the season to just nine games; they may not be as solid of comparables as some of the more recent names on the list.

Some of the quarterbacks listed were injured. Matt Cassel injured his hand in Week 10 and had to sit out the rest of the season. Chris Miller tore his ACL halfway through the 1992 season. Trent Dilfer broke his collarbone halfway through the 1999 season and never got his job back in Tampa Bay.

With Kaepernick undergoing surgery on his non-throwing shoulder and suffering a hand injury in 2015 as well, it’s possible that these are his best comparables.

Some of the quarterbacks were benched for poor performance. Kyle Orton was sat after starting the year 1-4, and replaced by the great Tim Tebow experiment in Denver. Jim Zorn was actually benched before the season started in favor of Dave Krieg, but regained the job when Krieg suffered a thumb injury. Jeff Blake was benched in favor of an elderly Boomer Esiason.

None of these are great comparisons to have on a resume, even if the Tebow and Esiason experiments proved to be bad choices by their coaching staffs. Kaepernick was still active when the 49ers went to Blaine Gabbert last season, so it’s possible that these are his best comparables.

Whether the players were benched for injury or poor performance, what we’re looking for is which players bounced back to have good careers after this point.

Perhaps surprisingly, most of Kaepernick’s comparables had a couple seasons left in them. The top 25 names on the list averaged 39 more starts over the course of their career. That number should go up, as well, as Jay Cutler is expected to start for the Bears again this season. However, that number’s artificially dragged up by a few major names towards the back-end of the top 25; Kaepernick’s closest comparables all were pretty much winding down:

• After being waived by the Denver Broncos and picked up by the Kansas City Chiefs, Kyle Orton’s career as a starting quarterback was essentially done. The Dallas Cowboys picked him up to be Tony Romo’s backup for two years, and then he took over after E.J. Manuel was benched in Buffalo in 2014—he was a bench-warmer who came in when the starter simply couldn’t go.  He had just 13 more NFL starts left in him.
• Like Kaepernick, Jim Zorn was an exciting mobile quarterback who really wasn’t the most accurate passer in the world. He had a solid NFL career, but his time as a starter was ending at this point of comparison.  Halfway through the next year, he was replaced as the Seahawks’ starter by Dave Kreig, who took the team to the playoffs. From there on out, he was a backup, in Seattle, Green Bay and the CFL’s Winnapeg Blue Bombers. He had just 14 more NFL starts left in him.
• Matt Cassel’s still around! After his 2011 season was cut short by an injury to his hand, Cassel re-gained the Chiefs’ starting job the next year. His play inspired Chiefs fans to fly a banner over the stadium asking for Cassel to be benched, so that’s not ideal. He was eventually replaced by Brady Quinn and released. He popped up in Minnesota, where he served as the bridge until Teddy Bridgewater was ready to be a full-time starter, then again in Dallas after Tony Romo broke his collarbone. He’s now a backup in Tennessee, so while his career’s not done, it’s doubtful he’ll get anything but injury-related starts from now on.  He’s started 25 games since his comparable season.
• Richard Todd actually led the Jets to the playoffs and an AFC Championship Game in his comparable season to Kaepernick, but things went downhill from there for him. A coaching change dampened his success some, and he was traded after the season, much like the 49ers tried to trade Kaepernick this  Todd was the starter in New Orleans for one year after the trade, but was quickly replaced by USFL star Bobby Hebert before eventually being released. Todd had just 30 starts left in him after his comparable season.

The list goes on like that. Names like Tim Couch, Jason Campbell and Bubby Brister pop up with disturbing regularity, and that’s not the caliber of player you want to be associated with. It’s pretty clear that the odds are against Kaepernick turning things around to become the player it looked like he could be earlier on his career.

That’s backed up by this post from Football Perspective about quarterbacks who declined in average net yards per attempt in three consecutive years. Only Aaron Brooks saw a more rapid drop-off than Kaepernick has; Brooks ends up 25^th on Kaepernick’s similarity score list and never played another snap.

Most quarterbacks who see that consistent level of decline are players in their mid-to-late 30s who are approaching the ends of their careers, not someone who should be approaching his prime. History is against Kaepernick bouncing back.

That is not to say, however, that there are no signs of life in Kaepernick’s comparables. You have to drop out of the top 10, but there are a few examples of players who, after suffering early career struggles, bounced back to be constant Pro Bowlers. These are the players Kaepernick fans can look to if they’re looking for positive signs of life.

Donovan McNabb made the Pro Bowl in his comparable 2002 season, but it’s highly debatable as to whether or not he actually earned it. A broken ankle suffered mid-way through the season kept him on the bench for the last six weeks of the regular season, and he rushed back and wasn’t the same player in the playoffs that year. The injury forced McNabb to adjust his playing style significantly, becoming far less of a willing rusher than he was in years past.  After a year of tinkering, his completion percentage went up, as did his yards per attempt. He was more accurate and smarter with the football, and he replaced a significant portion of his rushing value with passing value. He may never again have been quite the dynamic player he was as sophomore in 2000, but he made three more Pro Bowls after his comparable season, starting 113 more games in a great career with Philadelphia.

Steve McNair may have dropped on Kaepernick’s comparable chart over the past two years, but he’s still hanging around. Like Kaepernick, McNair looked to carry the ball nearly as often as he threw it early in his career, leading the Oilers in rushing touchdowns on multiple occasions. In 1999, McNair missed significant time with an inflamed disk that required surgery; he was clearly not the same player that year as he was in the previous few seasons in Tennessee. Once he had his surgery and was able to recover, however, his career really took off. He made the Pro Bowl three times, won a co-MVP in 2003, and started 104 more games after the comparable season.

Ken Anderson might be the best football player not in the Hall of Fame. He had made the Pro Bowl in 1975 and 1976, but in 1977—his comparable year to Kaepernick—he struggled. His quarterback mentor, Bill Walsh, had left to go become the head coach at Stanford, and new head coach Bill Johnson really didn’t get how to use Anderson; his short-range, high-accuracy style wasn’t in vogue in the late ‘70s. It took him another coaching change, and some more development as a player, but he eventually re-gained his Pro Bowl status, and even won the MVP award in 1981. 49ers fans will remember him most losing the Super Bowl that year, but Anderson had a great career, albeit with a notable dip in the middle. You can draw the coaching change parallel between Anderson and Kaepernick if you hope that Chip Kelly can be the one to re-sync with Kaepernick’s playstyle, like Forest Gregg’s staff was with Anderson in the early ‘80s.

It’s worth noting that McNabb, McNair and Anderson all started their bounce-back points from a higher starting position than Kaepernick is at, so it’s logical to assume that their high points will be higher than what Kaepernick can reasonably expect to approach. Still, it’s not all doom-and-gloom in Kaepernick’s future.

History tells us that Kaepernick has a significant uphill climb if he wants to regain the form that made him one of the NFL’s up-and-coming stars in 2012 and 2013. A coaching change and the chance to recover from 2015’s injuries gives some reason for hope, but it should be considered anything but a sure thing at this point.

Next: Predicting the 53-Man Roster

More from Niner Noise

• 49ers 2023 NFL Draft tracker: Pick-by-pick news and analysis
• Predicting 49ers NFL Draft picks by looking at final mocks
• DraftKings NFL Draft Promo – Win $150 Guaranteed on Any $5 Bet 
• 2023 NFL Draft: EDGE Byron Young could be impact player for 49ers
• 5 low-key NFL Draft options for 49ers who are flying under the radar

Going from Steve McNair to Ben Roethlisberger to Kyle Orton in three seasons is, shall we say, less than ideal.