San Francisco 49ers: Expectations for the 5 Best Players in 2016 Season
By Peter Panacy
The San Francisco 49ers don’t necessarily have a ton of talent across the board as the 2016 NFL season draws near. But there are more than a few good players who are expected to make a notable impact. Niner Noise takes a look at the five best players on the team’s roster and breaks down expectations for each over the upcoming year.
2016 will be a very difficult year to accurately assess what will happen for the San Francisco 49ers.
The team is coming off a 5-11 finish, is still reeling from the mass exodus of talent prior to the 2015 season, has a completely new coaching staff and is going through an influx of young and yet-to-be proven talent rising up through the ranks.
Almost every team, no matter how bereft of talent it may be, has its best players. And the Niners are no exception. There are some guys around which San Francisco can, and should, build moving forward.
Fans can expect players like linebacker NaVorro Bowman, defensive end Arik Armstead, defensive back Jimmie Ward and pass-rushing linebacker Aaron Lynch to be key figureheads and cornerstones moving forward. There’s no surprise in that. But what are the expectations of San Francisco’s best players?
In this slideshow, we break down the five most-important and best players on the Niners roster. To formulate the top five, we’ll use Pro Football Focus‘ (subscription required) 2015 overall grades to accumulate the list.
PFF may not be perfect, but it still is a pretty good tool to evaluate a player’s impact — both the good and the bad.
This will negate the 49ers’ new class of rookies. We won’t try to blend collegiate- and pro-level PFF rankings. Let’s stick with the carryover from 2015 instead.
According to PFF, San Francisco’s best players were as follows:
- DT Ian Williams, plus-24.4 overall
- OT Joe Staley, plus-21.5 overall
- DE Arik Armstead, plus-15.1 overall
- OLB Aaron Lynch, plus-14.6 overall
- DE Tank Carradine, plus-7.5 overall
Defensive end, turned EDGE Tank Carradine may be a bit of a surprise here. And everyone knows Bowman’s role is far more important than Carradine’s, right?
True, so let’s swap out Carradine for Bowman on this list (even though Bowman finished 2015 with a minus-2.5 overall grade.
Who knows, maybe Carradine will be the talk of the Niners defense after switching from DE to more of an edge-rusher this season.
Next: ILB NaVorro Bowman