5 Reasons Why the 49ers Will be Worse than You Think in 2016
Chaos at Quarterback
You don’t necessarily need an All-Pro future Hall of Fame player at the quarterback position to succeed in the NFL, but your need a little bit of consistency at the most important position in football if you hope to do well. The 49ers quarterback situation can be charitably described as full of question marks, and uncharitably described as a disaster.
The 49ers are debating between Blaine Gabbert and Colin Kaepernick as their starters in 2016. Kaepernick has declined in each of the last three seasons, and that has historically not been a good thing. Football Perspective listed every quarterback to decline in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt in three years in a row, and Kaepernick’s an outlier even among that group.
The only quarterback who had a sharper dropoff was Aaron Brooks, and he never got a chance to play again. Only six quarterbacks were as young as Kaepernick was when they started their downward trend—this is something you usually see out of players when they enter their early 30s and begin the downside of their careers, not someone who should be in his prime.
While there’s still some hope that Kaepernick will bounce back, he would be bucking significant historic trends if he became a solid NFL starter again.
Blaine Gabbert, on the other hand, has the worst on-field performance of the past 15 years. His time as a starter in Jacksonville featured the longest extended period of terrible quarterback play in the 21st century, with a quarterback rating of 66.4 and an adjusted net yards per attempt of 5.6.
Both would be the worst numbers for any quarterback with 500 attempts since the year 2000. He’s also the all-time leader in negative DYAR over at Football Outsiders, meaning his on-field career was worse than that of Ryan Leaf, JaMarcus Russell, Akili Smith or any other major bust you care to mention.
Yes, Gabbert was young, and yes, Jacksonville was absolutely terrible when Gabbert was there. But other young quarterbacks have come in to other terrible teams, and none of them have performed as poorly as Gabbert has.
Gabbert was actually better than Kaepernick last season, too—that shouldn’t be confused with Gabbert actually being successful or even league average, but he provided a boost over Kaepernick’s performance. That’s not exactly inspiring.
Could either quarterback bounce back? Well, yes—a new system could help both of them; Kaepernick won’t be injured this time around and Gabbert has a few more years of maturity under his belt then he did when playing in Jacksonville. It’s just more likely than not for both players that they will continue to play poorly in 2016.
The 49ers strategy at the position seems to be that either one of the two plays well enough to improve the 49ers in 2016, or they’ll be in a bad enough position to draft a Chad Kelly or C.J. Beathard or someone of that description next year. That’s not a terrible strategy, in all honesty, but it doesn’t bode well for the 2016 season.
Next: Free Agent Silence