Draftables: Zach Wilson
Soon-to-be the one that got away?
A few weeks into the season I started texting some friends to take a look at this kid from BYU who was creeping into first-round consideration. He was a projected mid-rounder entering the year, but I thought he could be a major value play at the end of the first round (we were only somewhat RAVAGED by injuries at this point so I was still thinking we’d be picking there) and secure the position for the future. I should have known better than to put that out in the world. Wilson is now the consensus No.2 pick to the Jets.
But hey, we’ll take a look at him anyway.
Ht: 6-2
Wt: 214 lbs.
Age: 21
School: BYU
Unofficially nicknamed “The Mormon Manziel”—despite those two concepts being inherently incongruent—the junior signal caller out of BYU earned his moniker due to his exciting free-wheeling style and improvisational abilities.
While his pure arm talent has always been intriguing, Wilson put everything together as a junior after spending the off-season commuting 10 hours from Provo, Utah to Southern California to get coached by former Cougar and QB guru John Beck. The result was 3,692 yards passing, 33TD-3 INT, and a 73.5% completion percentage while leading the Cougars to an 11-1 record and 11th-place finish in the AP Poll.
Stats
Build: Size was a question going into the pre-draft process, but those concerns have largely been alleviated after Wilson measured in at 6-2 214 pounds during his pro day. While he’s a bit slimmer than ideal, he’s plenty big and tall enough to not have his game hindered by his frame.
Experience: Despite entering the draft a year early, Wilson has more starting experience than any of this year’s top-billed quarterbacks not named Trevor Lawrence. A three-year starter with (I think) 28 starts under his belt, Wilson benefits from playing in a creative hybrid offense that employs tons of play action, RPOs, and a nice mix of downfield passes and quick-game. This year—with zero games against Power 5 competitors—Wilson benefited from an incredible offensive line and a talented stable of wideouts with BYU-specific names (Dax Milne, Gunner Romney, Isaac Rex). While some of his wideouts may see NFL rosters, they’re far from elite athletes. So while Wilson’s experience may make him more pro-ready than most, the change in competition level will be drastic.
Injuries: Avert your eyes. Wilson’s been dinged up enough to warrant a legitimate medical eval. He had shoulder surgery after his freshman year, which led to him missing spring ball, then his sophomore year was cut short after 9 games due to an injury to his hand. That said, people don’t seem all that worried, and neither the shoulder nor the hand were of any concern last year, but Wilson will need to protect his body better as he transitions to the NFL.
Scouting Report
Arm Talent: The first thing that pops off Wilson’s film is that he can put the ball anywhere on the field from any location on the field. He’s got an absolute cannon, and his ability to throw off-script from odd angles, different body positions, and a variety of arm slots is unparalleled—besting not only Trevor Lawrence but comparing favorably to the best in the NFL in that category. The ball comes out of his hand with ease, and the improvisational nature of his game pays dividends both on the little plays...
…and massive, Sportscenter-worthy splash plays.
Naturally, that loose and improvisational style of play can come with the occasional drawback. There are times when Wilson can be too cute with the ball (before this year, some would say reckless), but the math is certainly in his favor. He’s gonna hit way more often than he’s gonna miss. It’s also worth noting that the last guy to play this way and get the “reckless” tag was Patrick Mahomes out of Texas Tech. And while Mahomes will have the occasional play like this…
The benefits far outweigh the drawbacks. The same can be said for Wilson. The coaching staff may need to rein him in every once and a while, but they’d much rather have that problem than the other way around.
Accuracy: When Wilson’s on, he’s VERY on, and his best throws are dimes fit into difficult NFL windows. However, the ball gets away from him at times, leading to the occasional whiffs that dot his game tape. It’s not on the deepest throws, nor the most difficult ones, and these misses often seem to be a result of him relying a bit too much on his arm and not enough on his base. His incredible arm talent allows him to throw from all kinds of off-platform positions, but there are times when he’s forced to move in the pocket or simply when his feet aren’t moving with his progressions that the ball comes out funky and inaccurate.
There are lots of different types of accuracy concerns, but if you have to have one, this is one of the better ones to have. There’s nothing foundationally wrong with his stroke that’s holding him back, and it seems like increased attention to detail and some tweaks to his base could smooth out the bumps in a hurry.
Decision Making: Known as a diligent studier of film, Wilson is calm in the pocket and typically diagnoses the defense quickly before hitting the right man. However, you sometimes wonder how he got there (even if the end result works out). It’s always hard to tell when a player is freelancing or making the wrong read without knowing how they’re being coached and because he’s not always moving his feet with his progressions it can be harder to tell what he’s eyeing, but the same relaxed manner that permeates his throwing ability can—at times—make his play look a bit lackadaisical or unstructured. You want some of that “sandlot” style mentality when you’re improvising and extending plays, but a play that’s schemed open—especially from our staff—will be open at a much higher clip than one you have to work off-script to create. There are benefits to your QB being chill. You just don’t want them to be too chill.
To be clear, Wilson’s decision-making is far from a weakness, and a one-on-one film session alongside coaches breaking down his tape would quickly shed light on his thought process. Unless he presents himself in a manner that would make you doubt his ability to continue to improve in this regard, it’s not something I’d worry about.
Processing Speed/Anticipation: One of the greatest differentiators between good college quarterbacks and good pro quarterbacks is their ability to anticipate throws and let go of the ball before receivers are open. Wilson has this ability in spades—regularly releasing the ball before his receivers uncover. This is displayed most regularly in BYU’s healthy dose of back-shoulder fades, but inside and outside the hashes in the quick game as well.
A lot of quarterbacks have flamed out in the NFL because they didn’t anticipate throws in college and were never able to develop that skillset in the pros as the game sped up. The fact that Wilson is already seeing (and trusting) windows before they’re open greatly raises his floor as a player.
Athleticism: Wilson is an underrated athlete, likely falling around the Sam Darnold realm in terms of mobility. He doesn’t seem particularly explosive when moving laterally, but he’s got quick feet climbing the pocket and when he plants his foot in the ground and cuts upfield, he’s got surprising top-end speed (and even some wiggle in the open field).
You’re not gonna pound the rock with him—especially given his smaller frame—but he’s got more than enough athleticism to extend plays with his legs, run for first downs when guys are covered on third-and-short, or pull a handful of read options to keep defenses honest.
Versus Pressure: Wilson had the benefit of playing behind one of the nation’s top offensive lines while facing subpar competition, so there are naturally questions about his ability to slide in the pocket and deliver throws under pressure. However, those questions are based more on the lack of an ideal sample size than any troubling trends. According to PFF, Wilson was sacked only 12.7% of the time when pressured and had the third-highest passing grade under pressure across the entire FBS (with zero turnovers). According to ESPN, his total QBR when pressured (44.0) and when blitzed (94.5) were second in this class—only to Mac Jones. So his performance under pressure has actually been quite strong; he just needs more reps.
There are times when his fundamentals get sloppy under pressure, and as a good athlete but not a great one, Wilson will need to figure out when to bail and when to slide into the pocket against NFL pass rushes. He’ll also learn quickly that he won’t have the speed to routinely break front-shoulder out of the pocket. But his pocket awareness and movement skills already seem strong so there’s no reason to believe he won’t get there with further experience.
Leadership: It’s that time of the year again, where we have to figure out whether rumors of “personality concerns” are a case of boomer scouts not liking “the Hip Hop” or a prospect being too much of a turd to lead a team of grown men. Wilson is the only player in the top five quarterbacks who has even an inkling of “personality concerns,” but they seem much more likely to be nothing than the other way around.
The questions surrounding Wilson revolve around two things: (1) BYU named four offensive captains entering the 2020 season but Wilson was NOT one of them; and (2) this scathing Walter Football write-up from an “anonymous director of scouting from an NFL team”:
"Johnny Manziel comp without the [drugs]. [Wilson] is fun to watch, but is he a 1-year flash in the pan? He's a backyard baller who is fun to watch."
"Someone will grab him in the first [round]. I doubt he gets to the second [round] because once the third quarterback goes, after Lawrence and Fields, there will be a run on them. [Wilson] has character concerns, rich kid who is an entitled brat - uncle owns Jet Blue -, parents are a pain, not a leader, selfish, and he's a know-it-all.
"His positives are that he's super competitive, not to get scared and won't back down, extremely confident, very smart with keen recall and teammates will play for him."
Let’s chat about the captain situation first. People forget that Wilson couldn’t finish his sophomore year due to injury so BYU had an open quarterback competition entering the fall. When the captains were announced, Wilson was excluded, but he was one of eight players selected to the team’s “leadership council.” You can imagine the BYU staff may not have wanted to tip their hand on their starting quarterback—thus ending the competition—by naming Wilson a captain over his competition. Additionally, each of the four players who were chosen as offensive captains were (1) entrenched multi-year starters and (2) guys who had already completed missionary work. I won’t pretend to know how BYU’s captain selection process operates or whether that plays a part, but that means those are like grown men. To me, this is not a red flag.
As for the character bashing, Wilson’s former and current teammates and coaches quickly came to his defense after the Walter Football article was published. When presented with the character concerns, Adam Schefter himself said he was shocked as he’d been calling around and had heard nothing but great things about Wilson. Even local journalists stepped forward, saying that—despite Wilson being the nephew of the founder of Jet Blue—he picked up shifts driving Door Dash to help pay for his QB coaching and—while staying in Southern California with a teammate—he’d show up with ramen noodles, bread, and peanut butter because he didn't want to be a burden on his host family’s food bill.
In short, the character concerns seem more like an old man bitching about avocado toast and less like a real problem. And if there was any inkling that Wilson wasn’t the right personality fit with the Niners, we’d be in a perfect situation to know. Despite any personnel moves that haven’t worked out, Shanahan and Lynch have done a great job of filtering out players who they didn’t think would mesh with the locker room. They’ll get to meet Wilson in person and—if that’s not enough—they have a connect with Wilson’s QB tutor—Beck played for a handful of years under Shanahan in Washington—and Fred Warner’s little brother—who was a defensive captain at BYU this past season. All this to say, the Niners should have a very very complete picture of Wilson as a person by the time the draft rolls around.
Summary
NFL Comp: Mini Mahomes
I’ve yet to dive into the All-22 film of the other dudes in our draft range, but at the moment Wilson is definitely my favorite quarterback in this class. His arm talent and off-schedule ability give him a tremendously high ceiling—with glimpses of Rodgers and Mahomes in his game—while his anticipation and work ethic raises his floor. His strengths are all things you can’t teach while his weaknesses seem imminently fixable with time and good coaching. He may be a tad less consistent than some would expect and the leap from BYU to the NFL will be a big one, but his skill set fits perfectly within Shanahan’s offense and he’d immediately allow us to open things up down the field while creating plus value off of broken plays.
In all likelihood, we won’t get the chance to draft him even if we wanted to. The tea leaves are all pointing to the Jets selecting him No.2 overall, where he’ll join Robert Saleh and Matt LaFleur in New York. But in case they don’t…
Go Niners 👍🏈
The Hunt Begins
It’s gonna be a long month…
It’s gonna be one of these guys (or maybe Mac Jones)
After the absolutely massive trade that sent three first-round picks and a 2022 third rounder to the Dolphins in exchange for the No.3 pick in this month’s draft, the Niners seem dead set on drafting their quarterback of the future. While Jimmy G could still be the dude in 2021 (more on that later), this is the big swing that could define John Lynch and Kyle Shanahan’s tenure with the 49ers. Although drafting Solomon Thomas instead of Patrick Mahomes will likely wind up the biggest net-loss in terms of value during the ShanaLynch era, we at least netted three mid-round picks that year from the trade down. We gained draft capital that would be spent on additional players. Obviously, that’s not the case with this deal.
So… should we have done this?
While I am typically in favor of trading down, I’m not against trading up if it’s for the right player at the right position. Franchise quarterbacks certainly fit that bill. Much has been written about NFL scouts (or scouts in any sports league for that matter) wildly overestimating their ability to judge and evaluate talent and value—thus feeding the argument that you shouldn’t package picks to trade up. While Tom Brady is the obvious example of a missed evaluation, even in today’s age (yes, Brady is old enough that we should be considering the current age different than the era he was drafted in) experts get stuff wrong all the time.
Take this 2014 excerpt from NFL.com’s official scouting report on a defensive tackle out of Pittsburgh:
They thought so little of him, they didn’t even get the aspect ratio of his photo right…
All this seems to point to the idea that batting averages are low, no one knows as much as they think, and the best way to mitigate risk is to accumulate picks and simply take more swings. But while history is littered with failed attempts to trade up for franchise quarterbacks (Jared Goff, Mitch Trubisky, Carson Wentz, RG3), three of the best young quarterbacks in the NFL (Patrick Mahomes, Deshaun Watson, Josh Allen) were also acquired through similarly aggressive draft day maneuvers. Ultimately, you have to take your swings at some point, and while this Niners regime has been critiqued at times for being too aggressive in pursuit of “their dudes,” a combination of factors means this could be the right time to make this particular move.
Unless we run into a string of injuries that is even more historically bad than last year’s, we shouldn’t expect to be drafting as high as No.12 in the near future. And certainly not while facing down a quarterback class that has at least four QBs who I’d actually be cool with taking in the first round. For reference, I typically only like somewhere between two and zero quarterbacks in the first round of any given draft class (in fact, from 2013 through 2016 I only really liked two, and neither are currently NFL starters). There have been some talking heads who have critiqued the Niners’ trade as positioning them to pick “the draft’s third-best quarterback,” but I don’t think that argument’s valid. As stated above, quarterback draft talent fluctuates wildly from year-to-year and it doesn’t matter how many good quarterbacks there are in any given draft, it matters that the quarterbacks are good in the first place. According to Peter King of SI, the Niners were encouraged to make this move because they both recognized the talent in this class and saw the slim pickins next year (Sam Howell? Kedan Slovis?). So if the Niners like three (or more) of the top QBs in this draft—which this trade basically confirms—that’s all the more reason to move up in a rare year where draft capital, positional talent, and need at a priority position all coincide with one another.
In summary, I like the move. IF we pick the right guy. Because if we don’t get that right, we’ve screwed ourselves for the foreseeable future. Given the stakes, everything I post for the next month will be about who we pick at No.3, starting with a breakdown of what we’ll likely be looking for in the position.
A new(ish) game
The game has changed dramatically since Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch took over the Niners four years ago, with the shifts the most noticeable (and undeniable) over this past season. As proof that I’m not just an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn, here’s a five-year breakdown of total accepted penalties, sorted by type.
NFL penalties by season
A 14.1% increase in defensive PI calls over the previous four-year average is a legitimate uptick but nothing compared to the 26.6% decrease in defensive holding or the astronomical 33.4% decrease in offensive holding over that same time period. It’s pretty easy to see why the NFL made these changes: (1) They want to encourage more scoring; and (2) it’s way harder for people to bitch about a missed holding call than the more-obviously-apparent missed PI. But despite not changing the definition of any of these rules in the past year, the NFL’s choice to drastically change how said rules are implemented and officiated has had massive gameplay ramifications.
I’d like to take this time to point out that both these stats and the result of the Chiefs-Bucs Super Bowl have 100% validated my bitching and moaning about the piss-poor officiating from our Super Bowl a year ago. The NFL made a conscious effort to shift away from calling holding of any kind starting in that 2019 Super Bowl and running through this past season, and the Chiefs—who led the league in defensive holding in 2019 and were top 3 in both offensive and defensive holding last year—were the primary benefactor. While the Chiefs likely would have lost the championship this year regardless, the fact that—unlike last year—they were actually called for defensive holding when they committed it, led to a boring blowout of a Super Bowl. While Kansas City was missing their starting tackles this February, the Bucs didn’t have our epic pass rush from two years ago, and if the 2019 Super Bowl was officiated like the 2020 Super Bowl was, I believe we’d have won the game by a similar margin that the Bucs just did.
I’m not bitter, you are.
Anyways, enough stick shaking. While the NFL’s rule changes mean they’re clearly playing favorites in terms of play-style, it’s something we need to take into account moving forward. You gotta play with what you’re dealt with and these officiating decisions force a trickle down effect to both our offensive scheme, and—in turn—what we’re looking for in a young quarterback.
Defensive PI: Up
This obviously benefits an offense that passes more often, but more specifically—as pass interference is a spot foul—it encourages deep ball passing. That means getting a quarterback with the arm strength and touch to be comfortable with down-the-field throws.
Defensive Holding: Down
I’m not sure if allowing defenses to hold specifically benefits one style of offense over another, but—if I were to guess—I’d say it benefits the deep ball. Holding is a penalty that probably (maybe?) is called against short-to-intermediate routes more often because if the call isn’t made on a receiver’s release it’s typically made on their break. On short routes those breaks are harder, with less time for separation, which can elicit a hold-worthy grab. On deep routes you’re looking at speed cuts (or no cuts at all) and the ball is often released before a wideout is open. Any holds at this point become pass interference. The line is murkier on shorter throws.
It’s a theory. It may not be legit.
Offensive Holding: WAY Down
A drop in offensive holding greatly helps the vertical passing game (seeing a trend here?). More time to pass means more time for wideouts to get open. That part’s simple. But it also helps mobile quarterbacks in a way that is a bit less apparent. A QB who can scramble in and out of the pocket and buy time with his feet presents a lot of advantages, but one of the inherent drawbacks with that style of play is that it’s much harder for offensive linemen to pass protect when the strike zone (pocket) keeps moving. By backing up deeper than expected or sprinting out of the pocket, a mobile quarterback changes the rush angles of the defensive line, and—since the OL has no idea what the QB is doing behind them—naturally leads to more holding calls.
Or it did. With holding calls down a third from last year, that drawback is greatly mitigated.
Hitting the Quarterback: WAY Down
While there’s no easy way to determine how many late hit and unnecessary roughness calls are directed towards breathing on quarterbacks on scrambling plays nor how those numbers have increased in recent seasons, our direct experience playing against Kyler and Russ twice a year should give us more than enough anecdotal evidence to the fact that dual-threat quarterbacks are protected more so than ever. That mitigates the second biggest drawback of a dual-threat quarterback: durability concerns.
In recent years there’s been a lot of talk about a study that shows that the rate of injury to a quarterback on scrambling plays (1 in every 91.7 plays) is comparable to the rate of injury when a QB is sacked (1 in every 92.5 plays) and that knockdowns—due in part to the awkwardness of attempting a throw while being hit—actually cause the most quarterback injuries. While those figures are intriguing, that doesn’t change the fact that scrambling inherently creates more total plays—thus increasing injury chances based on volume—and that the rate of being exposed to a hit on a scramble is considerably higher than the rate of being exposed to a hit on a common dropback. That said, the data implies that while dual-threat quarterbacks will still be injured more often than pocket passers, as long as a team is being smart about it, working to protect their quarterback through scheme, and said quarterback is actively trying to preserve their body, the difference in injury risk is lower than traditionally thought.
The league’s emphasis on protecting quarterbacks on these kinds of plays only lessens that risk.
In summary, the way the league is calling the game incentivizes throwing the ball down the field and mitigates the drawbacks—while accenting the benefits—of a quarterback who can scramble and make plays off-schedule. That doesn’t mean we need someone as electric as Lamar Jackson or Kyler Murray—throwing ability will always be the more important trait as long as Shanahan is calling the offense—but having good mobility and the arm talent to throw from outside a clean pocket is more important than ever.
It’s also worth noting that the big-play benefits that we get from Shanahan’s system can also lead to the occasional negative play. We know that increased variance is inherent in a zone/stretch scheme, but we can also see it in the passing game. We accept that variance because when the offense is humming it’s near-unstoppable and the average output per play and per game is greater than we’d see if Shanahan chose to play it safe. But with a quarterback who can extend plays and create off-schedule, we’d not only give ourselves the chance at more explosive gains but—perhaps as importantly—lessen the damage of our negative plays. Turning five-yard losses into one-yard losses and three-yard losses into throwaways adds up in a hurry. A quarterback who can extend plays could help raise the floor of our offense as well as the ceiling.
What hasn’t changed
What Shanahan’s looking for in a signal caller has certainly evolved since he took over in 2017 and had his eyes set on Kirk Cousins, but there are a few mainstays of his offense—and the type of quarterback he seems likely to pursue—that remain constant.
Intelligence: The Niners really prioritize intelligence when building their roster and this is especially the case on offense. Shanahan’s scheme is notoriously complicated and difficult to learn—with complex blocking rules and countless minute details that separate his scheme from others’. In the past two years, we’ve seen the Niners grab offensive linemen (Skule, McKivitz) higher than many expected because they emphasized their smarts over pure athletic traits. Those same rules apply to the quarterback position. If a prospect fails on the whiteboard or the staff has any hesitation that he’ll be able to soak up the entirety of the playbook, the Niners will not be taking them.
Accuracy: Even if we start throwing deep more often, we’ll always prioritize accuracy over raw arm strength. Shanahan’s offense requires precise timing and pinpoint passes, and a pass on time and in stride is all the difference when it comes to maximizing the YAC potential of our many offensive weapons. Shanahan would surely like to be able to open the passing attack up more, but not at the expense of our efficiency in creating chunk plays underneath.
Personnel: With Kittle and Juice both on multi-year deals, it’s clear that the Niners are committed to heavy doses of 21 personnel and an emphasis on running the ball effectively to set up play action. While a strong-armed quarterback could lead to more deep shots and a mobile one could present some nice wrinkles running option pulls opposite a Raheem Mostert stretch the other way, the foundation of our offense will remain unchanged—regardless of who we draft. The new addition will be tasked with helping open up and elevate our offense, not force wholesale changes in what we’re doing schematically.
What happens with Jimmy G?
While Jimmy G’s days in San Francisco appear numbered, that doesn’t mean he’ll be gone right away. The idea of Garoppolo starting in 2021 may seem counterintuitive to the move the Niners just made, but when taken in the context of the rest of the off-season, it actually makes a lot of sense.
The Trent Williams and Juice deals are multi-year pacts with high price tags, but the return of guys like Jeff Wilson, DJ Jones, Jason Verrett, Jaquiski Tartt, and K’Waun Williams on one-year deals means the Niners clearly believe they can compete at a high level in 2021. Entrusting a rookie quarterback to run Shanahan’s complex scheme in a year when OTAs and training camp could still be greatly impacted by COVID restrictions would be quite the leap of faith. While there are enough similarities in BYU’s offense and ours that you could see a three-year starter like Zach Wilson starting right away, Justin Fields is moving from an air raid scheme and Trey Lance has only 17 career starts on the D-1AA level. The Niners made their free agent decisions knowing that they could make this blockbuster trade. They didn’t bring so many guys back on one-year deals just to go through the ups and downs of a starting rookie quarterback.
We also have to think about market value. By bringing so many guys back on one-year deals, the Niners are banking on many of them playing their way into bigger and better contracts—whether that’s with the Niners or elsewhere. Jimmy G is basically in the same boat. He’ll want to have a good year to secure a starting role and sizable contract from wherever he winds up next, while the Niners want him to have a good year so that they can take advantage of their current window and maximize his return in any future trade. If Jimmy G absolutely goes off this season then the Niners could be in for a Drew Brees/Philip Rivers-like decision a year from now. If he plays well enough to net a good draft return, then we could be looking at something similar to the Chiefs with Alex Smith/Patrick Mahomes. While I’m not saying whoever we draft will be the next Rivers or Mahomes, both of those situations wound up pretty beneficial for all parties involved. It never hurts to have more than one capable quarterback. One of the overlooked factors in evaluating our trade up to No.3 is figuring out what we’re getting for Jimmy G when we move him. Starting him this season would give us the best chance to win and the best chance of increasing that return.
Creating cap space is one of the primary reasons people give for moving Jimmy before the season. While there’s little to no reason to do that this year—as we’re likely done with free agency for the spring—cap space rolls over, we’ve got a lot of backloaded deals, and a net gain of $23.6M in 2022 looks nice as we start extension talks with guys like Warner, Bosa, Samuel, and McGlinchey. There’s validity to this argument, but if the rookie isn’t ready to start or gets injured, how comfortable are you with one of the Joshes (Rosen or Johnson) taking the reins for 2022?
Additional arguments that have been floated include the likes of “you don’t draft someone at No.3 just to sit them for a year” or “the best way for a young quarterback to gain experience is in playing time.” But there are major flaws in both of these claims. None of the three quarterbacks to receive MVP votes this year were starters at the beginning of their rookie seasons and two—Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes—didn’t play a single meaningful snap their first year in the league. The two most successful quarterbacks of the 2018 class—Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson—were meant for the bench but were basically forced onto the field due to necessity midway through their rookie seasons. If the Niners do move on from Garoppolo before the year, it’s because they’ve been offered a handsome package in return and believe they can compete with a rookie starter, not because they feel the need to get Jimmy out of town.
All that said, I still believe that Jimmy G is our most likely starting quarterback to open the 2021 season. Whether he finishes the season as the starter—either due to injury or play by a rookie—is a much harder question. But rest assured, the Niners’ blockbuster trade was done both with the future in mind and the belief that we have a team that can compete in the present.
Next up, we’ll take a deep dive on each of the three (or four) quarterbacks who we could be drafting at No.3.
Go Niners 👍🏈
Running it Back (Again)
this time with feeling
LFG
With the first wave of free agency all but wrapped up, the 49ers have made clear their plan for 2021: run it back, but this time without historically bad injury luck. After a season in which they lost the second-most adjusted games to injury of any team over the past twenty years, Niners brass has doubled down on the idea that their scheme, roster core, and locker room are strong enough that their main priority is retaining its pieces and going for another run.
That kind of thinking often leads to a “pushing the chips in” mentality that aims to win as much as possible during a tight championship window, and—when those championships don’t cascade as expected—often leads to the salary cap hell situations that both the Eagles and the Saints are currently digging themselves out of. It’s a way of thinking that innately prioritizes the short-term over the long-term. That said, the Niners’ situation is considerably different than that of the above-mentioned teams, and the multitude of factors surrounding this roster, its many free agents, and the effect of COVID and a new television deal on the current and future salary cap, make the moves seem poised to help us both in the short- and the long-run.
Contract Restructures
Let’s talk first about something that I’d hinted at in the free agency preview, and that’s the restructuring of the contracts of two big-name players that are coming off injuries who were expected to be cut this off-season.
First off, the Niners restructured the contract of Weston Richburg, knocking his base salary down to the league minimum and creating $6.9M in cap space in the process. As of now, this is not expected to be a Jerick McKinnon situation—where he gives it another shot to get healthy. Richburg is expected to retire, which would add an additional $3.5M in dead money to this year’s cap unless his retirement happens after June 1st (or designated as such)—in which case we can spread that charge over two years.
Unlike Richburg, the Niners seem hopeful that Dee Ford will make it back to the field and play this season. While Ford’s $11.6M injury guarantee as of April 1st made any contract negotiations more complicated, the Niners essentially restructured his deal to spread that $11.6M over two years. Ford’s contract is now a 2- rather than a 3-year deal, with base salaries of $4M and $2.4M, respectively, in 2021 and 2022 and approximately $10M worth of possible incentives during that time. By doing this, the Niners opened up $11.2M in cap space for the 2021 season.
It’s worth noting how the Niners’ approach to contract negotiations differs from other teams. Yes, Richburg doesn’t gain or lose any money in his contract restructure, so as long as he enjoyed his time in SF it makes sense for him to accept a new deal to help out the team’s salary cap. The same can’t be said for Ford. If he wanted to keep his base salary high and had declined a contract restructuring, he’d walk away with the same $11.6M this year that he’s going to make over the next two but would then be free to search out another team to supplement that with a new contract. On the Niners’ side, they could have taken Ford’s contract to salary arbitration, where they likely would have been able to shave off millions from what was owed.
Compare this to how the Raiders have seemingly gone about an off-season in which they’ve attempted to strong-arm guys into taking pay cuts or getting cut—a move which would have sent their best offensive lineman packing for nothing until the Cardinals jumped the free agent line with a last-minute trade offer—and has seemingly left a number of ex-players disgruntled. Instead, the Niners chose to approach Ford with the restructure and he chose to stick in SF and try to get healthy to hit incentives, rather than take the money and search for greener pastures.
While the Niners’ attempts to approach contract negotiations and roster moves in a more transparent and respectful way than some of the more “old school” franchises presents the obvious benefit of rooting for a team that seemingly treats its employees a bit better than most, I truly think it pays dividends on and off the field as well. We see that in how the team competes every week. We saw that with Ford’s restructure this year. We saw that with Raheem Mostert’s restructure last year—where he signed on the dotted line for a new contract after having a heart-to-heart with Kyle Shanahan in which they talked about life and family. And we saw that—in part—with the last-minute deal given to our biggest priority free agent.
Multi-Year Re-Signings
It’s safe to say we did NOT get a discount on Trent Williams’ new contract—which included a last-second call to Shanahan and a record-breaking 6-year/$138M deal that was finalized in the eleventh hour to outbid the Kansas City Chiefs.
That said, Williams’ contract is not as overbearing as it may seem. His initial cap hits are $8.2M (2021) and $14.1M (2022)—meaning his next two years on the books are cheaper than his last one—and the contract has outs after the 2023 and 2025 seasons. If you were to combine his annual salary with the accelerated dead cap figure that would accompany him if cut between 2023 and 2025, the contract is basically a 3-5 year deal @ $20M/year.
As for the sixth year in this extension, it’s really just for show. With a $33M cap hit, zero guaranteed money, and no signing bonus proration, it’s hard to imagine it going through as structured. The entire purpose of that hefty final year is to make Williams’ annual average value (AAV) equal $23.01M, which narrowly edges the Green Bay Packers’ David Bakhtiari ($23.00M) for the highest AAV for any offensive lineman, a hilariously petty addition that Bakhtiari himself has certainly appreciated.
Juice also reset his positional market with his new deal, increasing his already league-best fullback contract by a whopping $0.1M AAV. While he’s basically on a repeat contract four years later, he’ll only be making the veteran minimum in both 2021 and 2022 with cap hits of $2.3M and $3.0M, respectively, and while Juice’s cap hits hover between $6.6 and $7.6M over the last three years of his deal, the Niners—as they did with Williams—have built in a potential out following the 2023 season. After that year (in which he’ll be 32 years old), they can release him and only bite $2.7M in dead cap, with that number declining in each subsequent year.
So why did Juice take this deal? I’m sure familiarity and fit within the Shanahan scheme and the Niners’ locker room were big selling points, but the most tangible financial benefit Juice got from this contract versus the last one (or probably any deal given out to a fullback), is that while last time he had guarantees through his first two seasons, this time he has guarantees through his first three. As a man entering his thirties at a high-impact position, it’s not surprising that the extra year of guaranteed cash was appealing.
The last on the list of returning players to get multi-year extensions, but the first whom the Niners locked up, Emmanuel Moseley secured a two-year/$9.4M deal. A restricted free agent, the Niners could have kept Moseley on a one-year tender but decided he was important enough that they wanted to make him the only corner signed to a multi-year contract. His ability to play either out wide or in the slot likely has something to do with that, as does the fact that the way his contract is structured, his cap hit will be less than that of a second-round RFA tender, which is likely what we would have had to give him to keep him from getting poached.
One-year Deals
In addition to the one-year deals signed by restricted free agents Jeff Wilson, Marcell Harris, and Ross Dwelley, the Niners locked up considerably more veterans than we reasonably could have expected, securing the services of various returning starters who were expected to be out the door. This was likely due to a combination of each of these players’ recent injury history and the depressed COVID cap. Every name below will be looking to have a healthy and productive season in 2021 before departing for a bigger payday somewhere else in 2022.
Jason Verrett is the biggest name returning on one of these deals, as he’s our undisputed No.1 cornerback. A $5.5M contract with $4.5M guaranteed at signing is more than fair if he can stay healthy and produce anything like he did last year.
DJ Jones is back as our starting nose tackle, which means I can play this clip for at least one more season.
While he’s been a bit more durable in every season, Jones’ potential breakout season never really came to fruition last year. It’s hard for nose tackles to get paid, especially when they’re not putting up eye-popping stats. He’s hoping his unique blend of size and quickness will result in a bit more pass rush production to go along with a fully healthy season. His return means that we won’t have to address nose tackle early in the draft and/or throw Darrion Daniels into the fire before he’s ready.
K’Waun Williams tested the waters and took some visits, but ultimately re-signed as well, bringing back our third starting corner from last year’s unit (Sherman technically started, but due to injury it’s hard to say he was one of our core three in 2020). The salaries haven’t caught up to the importance of nickel corners in modern-day defenses, and whenever the cornerback market is down—like due to a COVID cap—the nickel market plummets. K’Waun played 13 or more games in five of his past six seasons before injuries limited him to eight in 2020. Like the others, he’s looking to leverage a healthy year into one last multi-year contract in 2022.
On the depth side of things, Jordan Willis was brought back on a one-year deal. He flashed a bit after the trade from the Bengals last year and while he was far from a showstopper, he certainly has enough promise to bring back for another go-around. They’ll be hoping that a year in their off-season program will help him.
Finally—and most surprisingly—Jaquiski Tartt was brought back for another go as well. With Tarvarius Moore having one year left on his rookie deal, the Niners bringing safety Tavon Wilson in from the Colts, and Jimmie Ward playing better last year in a role that saw him closer to the LOS as more of a versatile nickel/box safety, it’s hard to see where Tartt fits in. In particular, what does this mean for Moore and his future on the team beyond this season? All that said, we won’t turn down defensive versatility, and Tartt is clearly a hell of a player when he’s healthy.
While retaining so many of our aging veterans is certainly a testament to Shanahan and Lynch’s faith in and emphasis on locker room dynamics, retaining this many players who are either injury prone, on the wrong side of thirty, or both, is often a troubling sign of a team showing too much loyalty in players who are presenting diminishing returns. That said, this is a very unique case.
The COVID cap has depreciated the value of many of the Niners’ free agents, meaning the team had the choice of either letting them walk for pennies at the bottom of their value or retain them in hopes that their stocks will rebound in time for a massive spike in the cap in 2022. The main benefit for a franchise of having nearly 40 free agents is that we expected to be due for some compensation picks when some of those free agents signed elsewhere. With the league’s sunken cap preventing those contracts from breaching the threshold required for comp picks, there would have been no compensation if any of these players had walked. So if the alternative is having veteran players who have performed well signing one-year deals somewhere else—giving their new team either a chance at a massive bargain or a chance to let the player walk the next year and accrue comp picks in return—then why not bring them back to the Niners? While there’s marginal risk that these players either can’t stay on the field, that their play dips, or that their presence stunts the growth of younger players behind them, the potential benefits far outweigh those concerns. In simplest terms, it’s the Niners following the buy-low, sell-high train of thought.
New Faces
While the Niners weren’t overflowing with cap space, the restructuring of Richburg and Ford’s contracts gave them some wiggle room to bring in a few moderately priced additions—some of whom could have major roles in 2021.
Samson Ebukam comes over from the Rams, and—as evidenced by the percentile marks of his pre-draft testing results—he absolutely fits the bill as an athletic freak on the edge.
Ebukam’s incredible pro day really launched him up draft boards and eventually got him selected in the fourth round by the Rams. From the same Eastern Washington class that had Cooper Kupp and Kendrick Bourne, Ebukam was mostly a rotational linebacker for the Rams and played most-often in a two-point stance. That will change with the Niners.
With his 4.50 speed and an insane 1.53 10-yard split, the Niners will put Ebukam on the edge with his hand on the ground and hope that he can emulate some of the speed rush that Dee Ford brought opposite a (hopefully) healthy Bosa. In what may have been their first-ever call, Kocurek already told him to work on his first-step get-off (it often doesn’t match his athleticism, but out of a two-point it’s hard to judge how much of that is him and how much is schematic fit), and he will—at least—be expected to be a primary player in the Niners’ turbo packages. If he can be more than that, then that’s icing on the cake.
It’s worth noting that Ebukam is far from a super athletic dude with no production. Despite playing mostly as a rotational player with the Rams, he ranked 36th out of 111 edge rushers in PFF’s pass rush productivity metric and the Niners hope Ebukam can become their Shaq Barrett—a talented edge rusher who was buried behind elder players in a scheme fit that wasn’t perfect and emerges as a plus performer on a new squad.
On the offensive side, Alex Mack was brought in to shore up the interior line. Long one of—if not the singular—best center in football, Mack played under Shanahan in Cleveland and then—after Shanahan’s endorsement—was brought in to the Falcons with a hefty contract. Now he is 35 and his play has dipped, but he’ll surely be motivated/look better playing under Shanahan than with the dregs of the Falcons offense, and our hope is that he still has some top-10 play left in him. The Niners seem to be banking heavily on that because Mack’s deal—which was originally believed to be a one-year contract—is actually a three-year pact that averages nearly $5M/year. While the Niners have dialed his cap figure appropriately ($3M in 2021) and can save $4.3M off the cap by releasing him in 2022 if age has taken its toll, this isn’t a “ghost year” deal. They’d be taking on some dead cap even with the savings.
While Mack’s age and recent dip in production may cause some worry, the Niners have had interior pass protection issues for the majority of the past year and a half and there’s a very valid argument that if we were better in that regard we would have won the Super Bowl in 2019. At the very least, Mack will improve those issues dramatically and allow Daniel Brunskill to commit to learning right guard. Mack will get the protection calls down and get people in the right position, and if the Niners still tap an interior lineman in the middle rounds of the draft, he can be an excellent tutor for them.
Getting much less pub but a very exciting pickup in his own right is interior lineman Zach Kerr. A nose tackle in the “too quick to be this big” DJ Jones mold, Kerr was a rotational piece for the Panthers last year but his thirteen pressures, six QB knockdowns and two sacks are pretty impressive numbers given his role. Over nearly 400 snaps, he was actually graded by PFF as the 10th best interior lineman in the league (out of 125 qualifiers). I can’t say I’ve watched him play a ton, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Kerr—on a cheap one-year contract—is next season’s Kerry Hyder.
On the back end of the roster, the Niners picked up Tavon Wilson, a multi-year starter for the Lions and—most previously—a reserve for the Colts. With Ward, Tartt, and Moore, Wilson is certainly a depth addition who will likely see a lot of run on special teams. The same goes for wide receiver Trent Sherfield from the Cardinals. Long-time special teams standout Mark Nzeocha was let go, and those new additions are likely expected to step into his place.
What does it mean for 2021?
While we’re relying heavily on one-year deals at crucial positions, locking up so many of our own and bringing in key additions means that we can enter the draft without our hand being forced. If we’d lost Trent Williams we’d likely need to go with an offensive lineman early. If we hadn’t locked up Verrett, the same could easily be said for cornerback. Patching up those holes, even if some of the patches are short-term, means that we have draft flexibility. We’d certainly be smart to still address those two positions (McGlinchey’s contract is ending shortly and Verrett is on a one-year deal) as well as others, but we are no longer forced into zeroing in on a single position and reaching for need over value.
But the many deals we gave out—and in particular Trent Williams’—point to a major change in the future and one that has basically been confirmed with the Niners trading up to the No.3 pick in the draft just this morning. The Niners have backloaded their contracts to coincide with the expected spike in cap space in 2022 and on, but they’ll still need to save somewhere in order to retain their young core for the foreseeable future. Those savings are almost certainly to happen at quarterback. We should expect the Niners to be starting a QB on a rookie contract by 2022 (at the latest). After the trade this morning, we’re likely to find out who that quarterback will be by the end of April.
More on that next time.
Go Niners 👍🏈
QB Carousel 2021
the twittersphere has opinions
![TLDR; here’s your likely starting QB in 2021 [Kyle Terada / USA Today]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1616044058601-MZM65INQI5BDQ94GATFT/jimmy+g.jpeg)
TLDR; here’s your likely starting QB in 2021 [Kyle Terada / USA Today]
Despite it being a COVID cap year with a draft class that is loaded at the position, this off-season has seen more quarterback movement than any in recent memory. With so much of our fanbase clamoring for change at QB, and John Lynch himself admitting that—while Jimmy will be our starter in 2021—they’ll at least try and shore up the backup spot to insulate themselves from injury, I figured it would be a good time to take a look at the moves made this off-season, the prices that were paid to obtain new quarterbacks, and a few potential routes the Niners could go to add talent to the position group.
Market-Setters
![Gangly -> Stocky [Getty Images]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1616042842372-AMSYSY14IHAMYXS6WY9C/Stafford+Goff.jpeg)
Gangly -> Stocky [Getty Images]
As discussed ad nauseam, changes in rules and advances in offensive schemes have made the quarterback position more important than ever before and—unsurprisingly—the price tag that comes with obtaining a top-flight QB has mirrored that shift. If we’re excluding the draft—which we’ll get to later—there is no reliably cheap way of obtaining an above-replacement level quarterback in the NFL, and many teams have already learned that this spring.
Jared Goff to the Lions
Traded: Matthew Stafford
Received: 2021 third-round pick, 2022 and 2023 first-round picks
It’s hard to imagine Goff doing all that well in Detroit, whose sixty-year rebuild continues under the guidance of a new coach already internet famous for his likeness to The Dude and his cannibalistic introductory press conference. But while Dan Campbell’s track record is short enough that it’s hard to tell what will come of his tenure, it’ll be interesting to see what they do offensively. Seeing as he was the former tight ends coach for New Orleans and brought along one of their defensive assistants to become the DC, the clear hope is that the Lions become “The Saints Midwest,” but a quick passing game based on lightning-fast progressions isn’t exactly where Goff has excelled on the NFL level.
Realistically, this trade wasn’t about Goff though. Taking on a massive contract from a franchise who seemingly hates first-round picks was the only way the Lions could net two first rounders for their former prodigal son, and this move points even clearer to a rebuild. In terms of draft capital, this was absolutely as good as they could do. But in committing to an additional first-round pick they’ve also committed to locking up salary space that could be going to other foundational positions. His 2021 salary is fully guaranteed as of tomorrow, and cutting him would create massive cap hits of $43.5M in 2021 or $15.5M in 2022. Even if the Lions draft a quarterback in the top ten of this April’s draft, they’ll be paying Goff’s salary through 2022 at least—which could wind up meaning they’ll be doling out cash for two years of a lame duck quarterback.
Matthew Stafford to the Rams
Traded: Goff, 2021 third round-pick, 2022 and 2023 first-round picks
Received: Stafford
On the flip side is a Rams team that’s going all-in on chasing their current championship window. I’m a Stafford fan, and the fact that the Rams were ditching Goff’s contract in this trade made compensation nearly impossible to predict, but this seemed like an overpay. However, if Stafford actually puts the Rams over the top, the price will obviously be worth it. While on paper they now seem comparable to the Bucs as the team-to-beat in the NFC, a few legitimate questions remain.
First off, can they repeat their defensive success from 2020? In the NFL, elite-level defense is much harder to replicate year-to-year than offense, and the Rams have lost both their whiz kid DC to the team across town and their unoriginally-named-but-underrated safety John Johnson to the Browns this off-season. Secondly, there was always a lazy narrative that any time the Rams offense did poorly it was Goff’s fault and any successes were because of McVay. With Stafford in the fold, it’ll be tough for McVay to continue skirting the criticism that has mostly been heaped on his former quarterback the past four years. I’ve regularly stated that I believe the Rams’ more-simplistic version of our offense gives it a solid floor but limits their high-end against strong defenses, especially those who have time to prepare. Perhaps Stafford will allow them to break through that ceiling. Perhaps it’s just the deal that they’re comfortable with, hoping instead to win on the back of a more balanced squad.
Carson Wentz to the Colts
Traded: 2021 third-round pick, 2022 conditional second-round pick (likely first-rounder)
Received: Wentz
I’d also consider this an overpay, in part because of how little leverage the Eagles possessed. Despite making a head coaching change in part with hopes of salvaging Wentz’s Eagles tenure, it was made abundantly clear early-on in this offseason that the former signal-caller still wanted out. With that information out in the open and Wentz’s contract bonus schedule including $59M(!) in dead cap money if the Eagles couldn’t move him by tomorrow (March 19th) but wanted to let him go, they should have had little-to-no bargaining power in trade negotiations. Sure, the Eagles could have dug in and refused to move Wentz, but with one of the worst cap situations in the league and Wentz holding nearly $35M in cap space, the Eagles never would have risked gutting their team to keep a player who didn’t want to be there and who could sit out the season and just demand a trade again the year after.
There’s also the incestual coaching connections that make this an even weirder deal. The Colts’ former OC just went to the Eagles in hopes of retaining Wentz with the exact same scheme that the Colts run, but now the Eagles are willing to part with Wentz? Sure, as discussed above, he was demanding a trade, but… you have to get at least a sense that you’re buying rotten goods here. Wentz is leaving a system to go to the same system and the Colts are trading with a guy who knows their team just as well as they do. It’s all a little weird.
All that said, while the compensation was too much in my mind, I actually think this is the best fit for both Wentz and the Colts—who are ripe with cap money and teetering on the edge of true contender status. If anyone can salvage Wentz its Frank Reich, who has done a marvelous job with quarterbacks since taking over in Indy and was the primary coach behind Wentz’s near-MVP season. If you’re the Colts you can tell yourself that Wentz can become that same player and that he’s the missing piece that they’ve been looking for while overlooking the fact that his MVP season included a lot of unrepeatable off-schedule metrics, that he’s clearly digressed since then, and that the Eagles as a team always played much better and harder when anyone else was under center. The fit is great, the player-coach combo does have a real shot, but I wouldn’t have parted with more than a second-rounder for Wentz given the circumstances.
Dak Prescott re-signed with Cowboys
Traded: Cap space
Received: Jerry Jones’ bragging rights
The Cowboys’ injured signal-caller signed a four-year $160M deal with a league-record $95M guaranteed at-signing. Needless to say, the sticker shock’s pretty unreal here, especially for a quarterback coming off a major leg injury. While I’m not sure Dak is a truly elite quarterback, he was playing the best ball of his life (other than turnovers) in the first four games of the season and the Cowboys’ offense fell-off dramatically once he was injured. Some knock him for failing to win more games, but we’ve heard that before with (checks notes) literally every single Cowboys quarterback since Troy Aikman. Despite the tremendous amount of talent on offense, winning big with the Cowboys has proven to be very difficult over the past two decades and I’m not sure that equating Prescott with that losing is any fairer than doing the same with Stafford and the Lions. Ultimately, the Cowboys gonna Cowboys until further notice.
Dak seems like a good dude and a strong locker room presence on a team that likely needs one. I’m probably higher on him than most, but would I pay this much money for his services? Absolutely not, especially since he’s a mobile player coming off a gruesome leg injury. But the longer this contract saga went on, the more a big-ass deal became apparent. This was a Jerry Jones special. At some point, the narrative around their negotiations became a personal challenge of contract chicken and a threat to Jones’ perceived image of himself as someone who treats his players right. The best way to get the super rich—especially those like Jerry Jones—to do exactly what you want them to do is to say that they won’t do exactly that. It was almost comical how clearly and cleanly that unfolded here. Good for Dak for getting paid.
Trade Candidates
Watson, every time he hears Cal McNair talk
If we’re giving up genuine draft capital for a veteran signal-caller, I would hope it’s for someone who we believe is our starter as soon as this year. I won’t spend a lot of time on this category because none of the options seem all that likely (but we can sure as hell hope for one of them in particular to come to fruition).
Teddy Bridgewater: We apparently kicked the tires here, but not sure where this gets us. I don’t actually think Bridgewater is better than Jimmy G and—despite playing all of last season—he’s just as injury-prone. The idea of giving up draft capital for him is questionable at best.
Sam Darnold: I don’t hate Darnold and think he could be in line for the patented post-Adam Gase leap, wherever he winds up. That said, there are two major red flags to acquiring him: (A) he’s just been poorly coached for too long and has too many bad habits to fix at this point or (B) he’s not yet beyond repair but that’s in part because he’s missed so many games due to injury that he hasn’t had the playing time to cement those issues. Obviously, if either (or both) of those red flags prove legitimate, obtaining Darnold would be a terrible move despite his mobility, improvisational skills, and youth (23).
It’s also worth noting that—although Darnold is very young—the idea of saving on a “rookie contract” depreciates greatly over time. People like to pretend like we’d still be saving a ton of money rolling out Darnold instead of Jimmy G, but the money we’d save would be minimal. In 2021, the Jets will absorb his signing bonus so he’d cost a meager $4.7M against the cap, but in 2022—his fifth-year option year—he’d cost $18.9M, and after that he is either a big enough upgrade that we dime him out or things didn’t work out and we gave up draft capital.
There’d also be some Carson Wentz-Colts vibes that would make this a bit tricky. If the Jets staff—who have largely come over from the Niners and that includes our former passing game coordinator—gets a close look at Darnold but don’t like him as a fit, then why should we? In a world where we’re much more desperate and Jimmy G was NOT returning in 2021, I’d be more interested in a trade for the potential of Darnold. But in this world, where Darnold would come over as a backup tasked with winning the job this year or walking/becoming the NFL’s most expensive backup (other than Nick Foles) in 2022, it’s hard to come to a compensation amount that would seem intriguing for both parties.
Russell Wilson: Not happening. Even if he gets traded there’s no way it’s in-division.
Deshaun Watson: Clearly the best candidate on the board, there has arguably never been a quarterback this young, proven, and talented who has been available for trade. And to this point that remains true because the Texans have—at least publicly—nixed any and all thought of trading their franchise quarterback.
Deshaun has teased us with social media movements and—most recently—leaked reports that his desired destination is either the 49ers or Broncos. While a move will seem unlikely until it actually happens, there are a few factors that give Watson some leverage here. He’s young and well-compensated enough that he can afford to sit out this season if he wishes, the amount of punishment he’s taken throughout the years could actually help lengthen his career with time off, and the trade clause in his contract means that he won’t be going anywhere he doesn’t want to. If shit were to truly hit the fan and Houston’s recent missteps and longstanding record of old white dudes being old white dudes has led Watson to force their hand into a trade, a move could happen anytime between the days leading up to the draft and after the 2021 season. Or, it might not happen at all.
For now, we can only dream.
UPDATE: And now there are multiple lawsuits pending against Watson, so… 😬
Veteran Backups
![Not gonna happen but at least I get to post this photo [Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Photo]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1616043867689-RF35HI4GLEH91GGNACFK/alex+smith+TD.jpg)
Not gonna happen but at least I get to post this photo [Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Photo]
There is almost zero chance we don’t make a change at the backup position this off-season and John Lynch has basically said as much publicly. We could draft someone high to sit for a year, draft someone lower to sit for (at least) a year, and/or pickup a veteran backup option. We’ve all seen how we falter with sketchy play behind center and how even replacement-level QB play can make a drastic difference (and almost certainly would have gotten us into the playoffs this year despite all the other injuries).
While we can always add one on the cheap later, if the Niners DO NOT add a veteran backup entering the draft that’s as clear a sign as any that their plan A would be to address the position with a rookie. But if the Niners DO add a veteran QB, I don’t think that shuts the door on them drafting another QB anyways. Many backup QBs get brought in on short-term deals, and unless we’re planning to trade up for a guy who can play significant snaps right away, having a veteran backup in addition to a rookie would provide injury assurance if Jimmy were to go down, add another veteran voice in the QB room to help a rookie, and give the Niners flexibility on taking a “redshirt” quarterback come April. Plus, the Niners like to roster three quarterbacks and make one inactive on gamedays anyways.
NOTE: These names have been flying off the shelves, so almost all of them are no longer available. Regardless, I’ll provide my takes below.
Ryan Fitzpatrick: SIGNED WITH RACIAL SLURS. Fitzmagic is a clear stop-gap/bridge/mentor type for a younger quarterback who still has the juice to start a few games if need be. If we were all-in on drafting someone (like the Slurs clearly are) then this pickup would work nicely, but with a veteran quarterback on roster who would start over him, the pairing doesn’t make a ton of sense for a dude who wants to start a few more games before he retires.
Alex Smith: While nostalgia looms, Smith wouldn’t be a great fit for many of the same reasons his replacement in Washington isn’t. While Smith is known as one of the best locker room presences and veteran tutors for rookie quarterbacks (Patrick Mahomes’ dad has said the lessons his son learned under Smith as a rookie were invaluable to getting him to where he is now), Smith is likely looking for a starting position and not a locker room where he is a second or potentially third option.
Jameis Winston: No.
Mitchell Trubisky: This is a name that’s only been floated around recently and the fit is interesting. As easy as it’s been to poke holes in Trubisky’s game over his first four years in the league, he finished last year (sort of) strong after an early-season benching and certainly has physical tools. Do I think he’s a long-term starter in this league who has just started turning the corner? No, not really. Would I take him on a moderately-priced backup deal? Sure, why not. But the price tag of those two roles varies dramatically and where he believes he falls on that spectrum could write him off as a candidate before any legitimate talks.
Jacoby Brissett: SIGNED WITH DOLPHINS. Believe it or not, Jacoby Brissett and Jimmy G both have the same number of career NFL starts (32) and bringing in Jimmy’s former backup would mean adding a smart, well-liked, and athletic quarterback who can more than hold his own in spot starts if needed. While he’s young and has more high-end potential than Fitzpatrick or Smith, I don’t really see Brissett as a long-term starter in this league, particularly in Shanahan’s offense. This is mainly because—despite playing for two very quarterback friendly offenses in the Patriots and the Colts—Brissett has never been particularly accurate, completing just under 60% of his throws in his career.
Brissett’s physical skillset may align better with a handful of rookie signal callers who we could target (Wilson/Lance/Fields), which makes the idea of signing him more intriguing, but that kind of roster move would make little sense. Next season, the Niners would surely rather start Jimmy G over a veteran or rookie in their first year in the offense, and even if the Niners were to shift to more mobile QB sets, they would have no idea who is available in the draft to fit that mold until after the initial free agency period—when Brissett will surely be signed.
Andy Dalton: SIGNED WITH BEARS (to start?). Probably the most likely of the candidates, Dalton should have more left in the tank than his first snaps with the Cowboys indicated. Once he got his sea legs under him, he was very much a lesser version of what he’s been for the majority of his career. As a guy who’s just old enough (33) and average enough to perhaps be settling into a sustained backup role, a Dalton signing would give a reliable veteran presence behind Jimmy G who could maintain that backup role (whether it’s behind Jimmy G or a younger player) for years to come.
Draft Options
Running over defenders and up draft boards
It’s rare that I’m all that interested in more than one or two quarterbacks in any given draft class. In fact, there was a four-year span in the mid-2010’s where I only liked one or two quarterbacks total. But this year seems like a potentially massive outlier. While I won’t pretend that all of these quarterbacks will be good or that they’ll all be drafted high, we could easily see five or even six signal callers taken in the first round. I’ll try to go in-depth on these guys later (as well as take a look at some potential later-round pickups), but until I can sit down and watch some film, here are my initial thoughts.
Trevor Lawrence: He’s going #1. We’re not getting him and there’s not even a reason to talk about him.
Zach Wilson: I’m a big fan and am bummed that his stock seems to have skyrocketed since I made my interest in him public back in September. He’s got tremendous arm talent, makes plays off-script, throws from an absurd number of arm slots with ease and is said to be a hard worker who is diligent in the film room. While it seems like most people have him as the #2 QB in this draft, there’s still a chance I guess.
Justin Fields: Super productive player with high potential, but I have some concerns. He’s seems to be a really good team leader—which already separates him from former Buckeye Dwayne Haskins—but like Haskins, he plays in a scheme that runs very few concepts and throws to wide open five star wideouts. Fields’ legs may actually be more useful in the NFL—he’s bigger and faster than people think—and he showed great accuracy last year, but his arm talent is a notch below the rest of this tier and he hasn’t yet shown the ability to regularly process quickly and anticipate throws. That can often be a dealbreaker in the NFL.
Trey Lance: Basically a crypto stock, Lance will only be twenty at the time of the draft yet could have the best physical tools of any QB in this draft. However, his experience red flags are basically unheard of. He was insanely productive in just a single redshirt freshman year as a starting quarterback (his sophomore year was COVID canceled except for one game), winning every game he started, scoring 42 touchdowns and throwing zero picks despite hucking the ball down the field a lot, winning the D-1AA Heisman, and being named the MVP of the national championship. The downside? He didn’t play against a single D-1A opponent and has 17 career starts. At 6’4 225 pounds with an absolute cannon for an arm, a GPS-timed top speed comparable to many wideouts, and a reputation as a hard worker, he’s my favorite realistic target in this draft IF the Niners are impressed by him in the interview process. Do I understand the significant bust potential? Yes.
Mac Jones: Even with my reservations with Fields, I’d be totally cool with the Niners drafting any of the above names in the first round. I can’t say the same for Mac Jones. I’ve seen enough Bama quarterbacks to know not to jump on this hype train. While I like Jones more so than any former Tide QB not named Tua, the protection, supporting cast, and scheme he ran in college meant he was rarely pressured or tasked with NFL throws. For instance, in the national championship game I only saw one throw that stuck out based on its NFL traits—where Jones quickly went through his progressions to find an open man in the endzone on a shortened field—yet Jones threw for 464 yards and five scores in that game. There are some empty calories in those stats. I understand that Tom Brady and Joe Montana both came out of college without the best arm talent and have made themselves into first-ballot HOF’ers, but the physical traits alone would make me pass on Jones in the first round and I wouldn’t be shocked if his rising stock is more of a push from “draft pundits” than actual NFL personnel types.
As for now—despite the clamoring of much social media—it’s still incredibly likely that the Niners starting quarterback in 2021 is Jimmy Garoppolo. If he can stay healthy, that’s something I am perfectly fine with. But if he can’t, we should have better options than we did last season.
Go Niners 👍🏈
Free Agency Bonanza 2021
turnover on the horizon
![All un-signed [Michael Zagaris / Getty Images]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1615274694273-9Q2BJOPAGLLJ1OYPRUTA/49ers+secondary.jpg)
All un-signed [Michael Zagaris / Getty Images]
With the NFL’s tampering period just a week away, it’s time to dust off the old blog and jump back into all things Niners. This is a fairly huge off-season for both the immediate future and the Niners’ status in the NFL. The injury woes of last year were truly unprecedented so most knowledgable fans should be willing to give the Niners a mulligan, but truly elite franchises don’t have many down years, and if the Niners want to cement themselves among the NFL’s best they need a rebound year in a big way.
While the past two years have featured nearly identical rosters, this year will feature large-scale turnover. Given our cap space we should NOT be expected to be major players on the open market, but we have 38 free agents to make decisions on and an expected ten draft picks come April. While the majority of our core will remain in place, the Niners’ highly-lauded locker room dynamic will be put to its greatest test in 2021.
After our Super Bowl run in 2019 we all knew what Lynch/Shanahan had built. Now comes the test of whether or not they can maintain it.
COVID Cap
Amazingly enough, the NFL hasn’t actually settled on their 2021 salary cap yet (end-of-year calculations are ongoing), but they announced mid-February that the 2021 salary cap floor will be $180 million—$18M less than last year’s cap but $5M more than the worst-case projection entering the season.
In terms of available cap space, the Niners are technically around the middle-of-the-pack—with Spotrac estimating we have about $27.7M to work with. That said, given our large number of free agents it would be more accurate to put us more in the bottom third/quarter in terms of usable cap space. We’re far from the Eagles—who even after cutting Wentz loose are currently $39M OVER the cap—or the Saints—whose all-in push during Drew Brees’ final years has them $59M OVER—but the purse strings will be tight. Thus, nearly the entirety of this writeup will be focused on our own free agents, NOT outside additions.
Big-Ass Extension Watch
There are mainstays like Laken Tomlinson who may get their contracts restructured to free up more cap space, but there’s only one player expected to get a massive extension this off-season: Fred Warner.
After flashing as a rookie with lots of promise, becoming a team leader and coverage dynamo as a sophomore, and putting the whole package together in his third year in the league, Warner was—by any and all metrics—one of the best linebackers in the country last season. He led the team in tackles, fumble recoveries, and interceptions, was an AP First-Team All-Pro selection and was PFF’s highest-graded off-ball linebacker by a pretty considerable margin.
Since he was a third-round pick in 2018, that means he has one more year on his rookie deal and is now capable of negotiating a big-time extension. As a vocal team leader who was as important as anyone holding the squad together during an injury-ravaged season, he has more than earned it.
At the moment, Warner is set to count $3.4M against the cap, a massive bargain that was made only slightly less egregious based on built-in rookie performance scaling (his 2020 cap was $844K). Like Kittle last year, Warner’s later round bargain-basement salary means it’s near impossible to save cap space in the short term but the deal will certainly be backloaded to account for the massive cap spike next year.
The highest-paid off-ball linebackers in the league are currently Bobby Wagner ($18M/yr), CJ Moseley ($17.5M), and Zach Cunningham ($14.5M/yr). The first two deals were signed in 2019, while Cunningham’s was signed last year. Since Warner won’t turn 25 until midway through next season and already has a First-Team All-Pro nod under his belt, his combination of youth and lack of weaknesses means we shouldn’t be expecting a discount. By the time next season starts, he will more than likely be the highest-paid off-ball linebacker in the NFL.
Potential Cuts
There are two big names rumored to be on the chopping block, so let’s get their names out of the way now. David Lombardi of the The Athletic wrote a great in-depth article about these very two and their salary ramifications, but I’ll try and keep it short here.
Since joining the Niners in 2018, Weston Richburg has played in 28 of 48 possible regular season games. In 2018—when he played 15 games—he was largely ineffective after an early season injury. In 2019, he started out well before going down in week 14. He hasn’t suited up since, missing the entirety of 2020 and leaving a gaping hole along the interior of the OL that we were regularly reminded of throughout the season.
When Richburg was signed, he was given one of the wealthiest deals for a center in league history, but the majority of his guarantees wrapped up last season. He’s currently looking at a $11.5M cap hit in 2021 and a $12.6M hit in 2022, but if we let him go we’d only be on the hook for $7M total—his initial signing bonus prorated over his last two years. So letting him go would result in $4.5M in cap savings.
The second likely cut is Dee Ford, who was electric playing a fraction of snaps last year and a major catalyst to our defensive success in 2019. While he entered the year supposedly healthier than ever, he was shelved for the season with a neck/back injury after only the first week—making his availability in 2021 highly questionable regardless of the Niners’ decision on whether or not to keep him. Ford has a $20.1M cap hit for this upcoming season, and $21.8M hits for the next two. If we cut him, we’d be on the hook for the rest of his signing bonus, thus taking a $14.4M hit and freeing up $7.8M in cap space. But there is one major caveat to that.
This is probably as good a time as ever to break the bad news on Ford’s contract. While his contract—like many that Paraag Marathe and the Niners structure—features team-friendly opt out seasons on the back end of the deal, there’s a very unfortunate catch. Despite Ford’s history of injury concerns, his contract has hefty injury guarantees built-in through 2021.
In short, if Ford CAN pass a physical by April 1st, we can release him for generic non-injury reasons and save $7.8M off our cap. If he CANNOT pass a physical by April 1st, his injury guarantees kick in and we’re on the hook for an additional $11.8M in dead cap. Meaning, in that situation we’d actually be losing $5.9M in cap space by cutting him. While there is always the possibility—with either Richburg or Ford—to designate them as a post-June 1st cut and prorate the dead cap hit over two years, that’s just kicking the can down the road.
While there are lots of fans who have grown frustrated with Ford and would like to see him gone, he’s been highly effective when available. Depending on how the rest of free agency and the draft shakes out, the best route for Ford could be to restructure his contract. You obviously can’t take guaranteed money off of a contract or the cap—you can only move it around. But—if Ford is amenable—converting his injury guarantee to a signing bonus and drastically reducing his base salary (ala Jerick McKinnon) could provide him time to rehab and potentially be a contributor again while lessening the blow on our salary cap.
Regardless of what happens with Richburg and Ford, it’s highly unlikely that either return to the Niners on their current deals. This is an area where the Niners can—and likely will—free up some cap space. The question is how much and what kind of holes would those moves make in our roster.
Already Signed
The Niners have already started re-signing some players, but given the cap situation, they’ve been limited to smaller deals—mostly with guys filling out the backend of the roster. That means a handful of these re-signings have been with Exclusive Rights Free Agents—young guys with zero, one, or two accrued seasons in the league who aren’t really free agents at all because the Niners can lock them up on the league minimum—and Restricted Free Agents—guys with three accrued seasons who can be offered a tender but can negotiate with other teams (if signed, the Niners can receive draft compensation).
Jeff Wilson was given a 1-year deal, which is the biggest move of note so far. I don’t think I’m the only one who believes the Raheem Mostert / Wilson backfield combo is our most productive and dangerous rotation. While both have dealt with injuries in the past, they both run very hard and fit the scheme perfectly. I know we like to believe that the Shanahan/Bobby Turner duo can create running backs out of thin air, but locking up Wilson is a less-publicized but crucial move entering this off-season. He’ll count just over $2 million against the cap—basically, he’s on a slightly discounted version of the lowest possible RFA tender in exchange for some guaranteed cash. That’s less than the second-round tender that we gave Matt Breida last year for a player who is currently much more productive (although we likely had aspirations of trading Breida when we made that tender). It’s a good deal.
The Niners followed that up with similar deals with Ross Dwelley and Marcell Harris just before the weekend. By committing to one-year deals, the Niners lock them into the roster but keep the cost lower than the lowest possible RFA tender—giving them cap flexibility, locking in contributors, and assuring each of them some guaranteed cash.
Dwelley was a crucial sub for us in 2019, playing vital replacement snaps for both George Kittle and Juice while they were out with injury. Harris went from a safety with some coverage concerns to a Will linebacker midway through last year—a brilliant move on Robert Saleh’s part that both allowed Jimmie Ward to roll down near the line of scrimmage and maximize his versatility and let Harris do what he does best—play forward in a physical manner—without getting too overexposed to bigger bodies in the run game. Both were coaching staff favorites and retaining them is a nice move towards maintaining depth.
Elsewhere, River Cracraft returns on an ERFA deal. After his short stint as a starting wideout in the COVID-depleted Packers game, he really established himself on special teams… Safeties Kyle Nacua and Jared Mayden return on ERFA and RFA deals, respectively. With Jaquiski Tartt potentially on his way out, they have depth potential beyond their special teams play (although we’d obviously like to stay healthy and not need to use them). The same can be said with cornerback Ken Webster, who just got a one-year deal… Staying on special teams, long snapper Taybor Pepper received a two-year extension, locking in our trio of specialists from 2020. RB Austin Walter—who you may remember as our undersized kick returner with a fullback’s number who had a single big “who the hell was that guy” catch-and-run against the Saints—was also brought back on an RFA deal. Jauan Jennings, who started his rookie season on the practice squad before a bad hamstring tear—is on a futures contract. Finally, Josh Rosen was signed to a one-year extension—giving the Niners three quarterbacks locked up for 2021—Garoppolo, Rosen, and Josh Johnson. If I had to guess, Rosen/Johnson will be expected to fight it out for the third quarterback role as the dust settles with whatever the hell is going on at that position (to be discussed in a later write-up).
“Free” Agents: ERFAs and RFAs
![Doing his best Spider-man meme impersonation [Allie Goulding / TNS]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1615274855773-6T98HSZZ6E86MCESU5NA/moseley+point.jpg)
Doing his best Spider-man meme impersonation [Allie Goulding / TNS]
The dudes below have NOT been re-signed yet, and they get their own section because of how different ERFA and RFA free agency is compared to Unrestricted Free Agency. The deadline to offer players tenders is this weekend (Saturday, March 13th) so we’ll know right before the legal tampering period starts where we stand with them.
OL, Daniel Brunskill (ERFA): As a likely starter at either center or right guard in 2021, the Niners will be happy to re-sign him on the league minimum. The only reason they haven’t yet is likely because they’re not sure if they want to offer him something longer and lock him up on the cheap for more years. While we had tons of problems along the interior last year, those were largely not the fault of Brunskill. He didn’t emerge as a star by any means, but given the constant movement he was forced into both in training camp and throughout the season, it’s hard to say we know the book on Brunskill quite yet. I’m still bullish and expect him to hold down the starting position at either center or right guard in 2021. Being able to focus on just one of them through the summer and fall could be huge towards his development as a player.
CB, Emmanuel Moseley (RFA): With the RFA deadline coming before free agency actually begins, it will be interesting to see what level tender the Niners offer Moseley. Basically, a team can offer a tender that correlates with the level of compensation they’ll require if the tendered player signs elsewhere. Those tenders are first round ($4.7M), second round ($3.4M), and right of first refusal ($2.1M). The draft compensation amounts aren’t written in stone—Breida was given a second-round tender last year but we traded him for a fifth-rounder—but if I had to guess, Moseley will get a second-round tender. He’s played well for us, has some flexibility to play in the slot if need be, and we currently have none of our top six cornerbacks on contract. I’m an E-Man fan, I think he still has some untapped potential, and if we don’t tender him at a second-round level it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t get swooped up.
QB, Nick Mullens (RFA): Despite rumors that realistically won’t end until Jimmy G wins (at least one) Super Bowl, my money is still on Garoppolo being our starting quarterback at the beginning of 2021. That said, there is next-to-zero chance that the Niners aren’t trying to improve the backup position. While Rosen and Johnson both have contracts for next year, there’s at least a shot that neither make the active roster and Mullens returns. Helping Mullens’ case is the fact that Rich Scangarello—the former-now-current-again 49ers QB coach who liked Mullens out of college—is back on staff. That said, if Mullens comes back I would expect it to be in the form of a late free agency return, not on an RFA tender. The Niners’ goal seems to be to add a brand new backup (potentially one who can be a starter down the road), and Mullens doesn’t seem to fit into that equation.
The Jets Connection
This is an odd year to have a lot of free agents for a number of reasons, but one of them is because of the coaching staff that Robert Saleh has amassed in New York. By bringing both his own defense and Shanahan’s offense to the Jets—who have the second-most cap space in the league at $82M—Saleh has made East Rutherford a natural landing spot for any of our free agents.
This has its benefits and its drawbacks. I’d love to retain Kerry Hyder, but if he leaves for an over-market contract from the Jets that would give us a nice comp pick in return. Likewise for Richard Sherman (although due to his age, that comp pick would be maxed out as a fifth-rounder). Overnight, the rebuilding New York Jets have become a nice landing spot for any free agents who we may not be prioritizing and an opportunity for us to net nice comp picks in return.
But there’s a big flip side to that on the back-end of our roster. In most years, guys like Ronald Blair and (I can’t believe I’m saying this) Dontae Johnson, would be slam-dunk returns in 2021—playing important depth roles on veteran minimums. Now, there’s at least one other potential suitor for their services and that suitor has way more spending power and is much more desperate for known locker room contributors. The Jets connection could give us marginal returns in compensatory picks, but it could also gut (or at least create mini bidding wars for) the back-end depth of our roster.
Tier 1 Free Agents
![Pancakes on the menu, 24/7 [Giantswire]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1615275012587-2IC7YVQOIOUDKG2BR7Y0/trent+williams.jpg)
Pancakes on the menu, 24/7 [Giantswire]
Ranked based on priority to get them re-signed, NOT overall talent (although to get into this tier, you’re gonna really be able to ball at a high level). These are our top priority targets to lock up on new deals. If one of these guys were to depart, it would drastically affect the way we approach free agency and the early rounds of this April’s draft.
LT, Trent Williams
Williams returned from his Washington Racial Slurs-incompetence-based sabbatical in impressive fashion, creating highlight clips that were equal parts frightening and hilarious en route to playing at an All-Pro level. With a 91.9 PFF rating, Williams was Pro Football Focus’ highest-rated offensive tackle (regardless of side) and is sure to be the Niners free agent with the most outside interest. While the off-season began with tons of optimism that Williams would be re-signed before hitting the open market, he now seems interested in testing his market value. While I’d still say we have a better than 50/50 chance of retaining him—he should know as well as anyone the drawbacks of taking more money to join a franchise with issues—there will be teams with more cap space (some of them even good teams) who will be willing to outbid us.
So what would it cost to retain him? The COVID Cap makes free agency salary projections a near-impossible task this year. The only thing we really know is that all but the most cap wealthy teams are going to backload their cap hits out of necessity. But we can try and estimate what retaining Trent Williams could look like.
The three highest-paid tackles in football are David Bakhtiari ($23M/year), Laremy Tunsil ($22M/year), and Ronnie Stanley ($19.75M/year). However, there is reason to believe that Williams—despite his play—will not necessarily be resetting the market. The three players above were age 29, 25, and 25—respectively—at the time that they signed those extensions. Trent Williams will be 33 before the 2021 season starts. That, in addition to his lengthy injury history, should depress his salary just a little bit. Spotrac projects his average annual salary at $18.2M, which would put him just over Lane Johnson as the fourth-highest paid tackle in the league. That would be totally fine by me.
Why He’s So Important: Did you see Justin Skule last year? Williams is an All-Pro at one of the most important positions in football and the depth behind him is one giant, glaring question mark. Even with Shon Coleman’s return from a COVID opt-out, we have zero evidence that the left tackle position has even a serviceable long-term starter without Williams in the fold, and his leaving would immediately change our entire free agency and draft plans.
Williams also presents the rare combination of size and athleticism that makes our running game hum at the tackle position. He’s one of the most athletic tackles in the game and pairing him with Mike McGlinchey in the run game means we always have a shot to pound the rock against anyone.
It’s also worth noting that Williams’ age—like Sherman and Emmanuel Sanders before him—means that his comp pick return would max out as a fifth-rounder, even if his salary would dictate otherwise. In most situations, if a top-tier player left for a massive contract we could at least have consolation in the third-round comp pick we’d be receiving in return. Not so in this case, and that makes retaining Williams even more important.
Potential Replacements: The draft.
There are not a lot of guys who can do what Williams can do and the few big-name tackles who could be available aren’t really what we’re looking for. Taylor Moton will likely be re-signed or franchised by Carolina, and—as a guy who some thought would have to shift to guard due to athletic concerns out of college—he’s likely not a great schematic fit. Daryl Williams is similar—a big guy who is more of a right tackle. With both players under the age of 30, they’ll likely not come cheap, and paying a premium for a downgrade at tackle would be a tough pill to swallow.
Entering the draft with a glaring hole that you need to address early is not a good place to be, but if we are forced to find another tackle, the silver lining is that this is a strong class for them. There could be upwards of a dozen tackles taken in the top 100 picks of the draft and taking one of those guys on the first two days (potentially with the #12 overall pick) would be our best path forward if we miss out on re-signing Williams.
CB, Jason Verrett
Verrett was the unsung star of last year’s defense, not only because of his miraculous return from basically three straight seasons(!) wiped out by injury but because he allowed us to offset our dwindled pass rush with a greater variety of backend coverages: namely, he could play man coverage really well.
Verrett’s versatility was a big part of our continued transition away from the Seattle 3 system—even with what became a rotating door of corners starting opposite him. He finished the season as PFF’s 8th-ranked cornerback and allowed us to play a secondary-down style of defense for large swaths of the year in a way that even a healthy Richard Sherman wouldn’t have allowed us to get away with.
But in terms of guestimating what his next contract will be… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unsurprisingly, there is zero salary precedent for a player at a premier position, who was an All-Pro on his rookie deal, who then got hurt and played in only six games over four years(!), who then returned to Pro Bowl form shortly before his thirtieth birthday.
Verrett’s age helps give him priority over Sherman but isn’t exactly a selling point to other teams. Unsurprisingly the biggest red flag for him—both in terms of what we offer and what others do—is his lengthy injury history. While he looked excellent last year, it’s impossible to tell from the outside looking in whether this is a lucky blip of health or the end of an incredibly unlucky stretch of the opposite.
Verrett has talked publicly about how much he appreciated how the Niners have treated him and handled his rehab—in particular how they convinced him to sit last year to get fully healthy—and how that will be beneficial for the good guys come free agency. In a perfect world, he’d like to retain the training staff who helped build him back to his Pro Bowl level of play and comes back to the bay. And if other teams are scared off by his injury history and are only willing to offer short-term “prove it” deals, why would he leave?
If he re-signs with the Niners I’d be looking at a deal that avoids putting us in the situation where we are now with Dee Ford. Likely something heavily incentive-based with modest guaranteed money. We want to reward the guy when he plays well, but we’re really starting to feel the cap pressure from the big-ticket injury flameouts who we’ve acquired through the years (Malcolm Smith, Pierre Garcon, Richburg, etc.).
Why He’s So Important: Verrett gets the nod over Sherman due to his versatility, age, and (recent) availability. As every color commentary person repeated ad nauseam throughout the back half of last season, we have zero cornerbacks signed for 2021, thus making the position of utmost importance. And while Moseley is likely back, and we could benefit from the returns of guys like Ahkello Witherspoon and Dontae Johnson for depth, letting both Verrett and Sherman walk would make outside cornerback a major roster hole.
Potential Replacements: We’re about to figure out how much the Niners really want to prioritize the cornerback position and whether or not their mindset has changed with the evolution of their defense the past year. Cornerback is like left tackle—a high-paid premium position in a year where we’re strapped for cash—and in some ways Verrett’s FA mirrors that of Williams’.
If Verrett walks, it’s hard to see us pursuing someone in free agency with a contract that will likely be close-to or greater-than Verrett’s asking price. We’d likely prioritize the re-signing of both Witherspoon and Johnson—plus Tim “much-hyped-by-me-but-will-he-ever-play” Harris will (theoretically) see legitimate snaps in 2021—but we’d also have to look to the draft.
Similar to our situation at left tackle, the bright side is that this draft is strong at cornerback, with a number of long and very athletic types populating the middle of the first round of most mock drafts. A year ago I’d say the Niners would NOT draft a first-round cornerback unless they’re the next coming of Jalen Ramsey, but perhaps that thinking has changed. If Verrett leaves, we’ll find out sooner than we would have liked.
Tier 2 Free Agents
![The Harvard Difference [Tony Avelar / AP]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1615275228613-1SEHAJQ0HJD8T9YAD915/juice+stiff+arm.jpg)
The Harvard Difference [Tony Avelar / AP]
These are key contributors who we’re already engaging in talks to re-sign. While losing one of these guys wouldn’t necessarily create massive changes in our early draft plans, their roles would definitely have to be filled with new blood.
Juice / Kendrick Bourne
I’m clustering these two guys together for reasons that will become slightly more clear later
Both Shanahan and new offensive coordinator Mike McDaniels love Juice and the feeling seems mutual.
That said, there was a ripe market for Juice last time he was a free agent (the Niners blew up the fullback market to get him and were supposedly the second-highest offer that he got), and with so many people running some iteration of Shanahan’s offense these days, it’s hard to imagine that interest has waned.
Juice had a few stellar performances last year (see: New England) but was far less consistent than in 2019. While I’m willing to attribute some of those issues—particularly on combo edge blocks—to miscommunication and lack of chemistry with younger players, if you’re paying a fullback 140% of the salary of the league’s second-highest-paid fullback, you want to see the results daily. This is especially the case if the debate is between re-signing Juice or rolling with a replacement-level fullback and re-signing Kendrick Bourne.
KB has steadily improved each year, has slippery length and consistency (even despite drops) that is nice to have in a position group that has seen a lot of turnover over the years, and—like Juice—clearly wants to return to the Niners. The interest is mutual, but it begs the question: how much do you pay a guy who is clearly the third wideout and the fourth receiving option for an offense? If I had to guess, I’d look somewhere in the Cordarrelle Patterson-esque $3M-$4M range?
Why They’re So Important: The major differences between Shanahan’s offense and all of its offshoots are (A) Shanahan’s is more complex (and better), and (B) he commits more to running the ball with an extra blocker (and the play fakes which that unlocks). Clearly, that second part is where Juice comes into play. If we don’t have plus fullback play, the offense needs to shift considerably, and I don’t think we (nor Shanahan) want that to happen.
An alternative option that’s been floated around is that the Niners could go further away from the two-back sets of 21 personnel and invest in another tight end. While the idea of Kittle and someone like Florida’s Kyle Pitts is certainly intriguing, the fullback and tight end are not interchangeable (not even in this offense), and while extra gaps in the running game from double tight has its value, a fullback in the backfield allows for blocking action to both directions of the formation and sucks in defenses more horizontally, thus opening up more space for slants and chunk plays in the quick game outside and in the short alleys. I’m not saying it can’t work (see: Gronk/Hernandez Patriots), but I am saying that it has its limitations (see: 2019 Ertz/Goedert Eagles). And that it doesn’t seem to be what the Niners would prefer.
As for KB, he is both our most steady receiver (in terms of availability) and our best in the red zone. He’s an underrated blocker (yes, it does ACTUALLY matter in the Niners’ scheme) and can play any and all of the different positions out wide. While a No.3/4 option is often a roster slot filled with a journeyman type, due to injury concerns in the position group I’d argue KB is more valuable than your standard No.3 wideout.
Potential Replacements: What becomes of Juice and Bourne also depends largely on what we have behind them. Because while the potential fill-ins have intriguing potential, they are very VERY green.
Juice’s heir apparent is Josh Hokit, a second-year player who was a do-it-all type for Fresno State, but—as a practice squad fullback—someone who we clearly don’t really know anything about. That said, we’d likely be saving at least $5M in cap space starting Hokit on a rookie minimum versus Juice—who is likely going to garner at least slightly more than the $5.2M AAV of his previous deal.
Who would replace KB is equally as complicated, but for slightly different reasons. I may write up something later on Kyle Pitts and how he may be able to fill multiple roles for our offense in the unlikely situation that we select him, but KB’s role would likely be filled by some combination of Richie James and whoever can emerge un-injured between Jalen Hurd and Jauan Jennings. Despite the tantalizing size, versatility, and athleticism of what Hurd could be, it’s hard to put all your eggs in a basket whose missed his first two seasons due to injury. Likewise for Jennings, who hasn’t even played in a preseason game and whom we know isn’t the athlete Hurd is. There’s also Travis Benjamin, who’ll be back on a one-year deal after his COVID opt out, but he’s more of a depth/journeyman type and doesn’t provide the RZ value that we covet. Ultimately, replacing KB would likely involve diving into another deep class of wideouts, even if having a starting lineup of wideouts all on their rookie contracts is far from ideal.
Tier 3 Free Agents
![This could have something to do with those trade requests that aren’t actually requests [Michael Zaggaris / Getty Images]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e40f3a094d5fa3ebbbedb09/1615275422329-RM70UJ29L9P93S076U0W/DJ+jones+sack+wilson.jpg)
This could have something to do with those trade requests that aren’t actually requests [Michael Zaggaris / Getty Images]
We want these guys back, but it’d be a luxury more than a need. Their primary replacements could already be on the roster, with additional players being brought in to back them up.
DE, Kerry Hyder
Hyder was another savior of our defense last year, getting signed on a paltry contract to play a backup role before being thrust into the starting lineup in week two and repositioned as the team’s primary edge rusher. While he lacks the quick twitch and bend of someone like Dee Ford, the idea of Hyder lining up opposite a healthy Nick Bosa is hugely intriguing. If money were no option, he’d be higher on this list, but he has likely played his way out of re-signing with the Niners. The only reason I’m even including him on this list is because (A) if something falls through with Trent Williams we may have added space to be used on someone like Hyder and (B) the pass-rusher market is overflowing with talent this off-season, which could depreciate Hyder’s value.
If the latter occurs then perhaps Hyder agrees to another short-term, moderately paid season in hopes of getting a big payday a year from now. While I entered the off-season convinced he was gone, I very well might be wrong. The book might not be out on Hyder quite yet (NFL.com didn’t have him on the list of the NFL’s top 101 free agents of 2021). If so, I’d be happy to take back Hyder on a modest deal.
The absolute worst-case scenario is that we get priced out of a one-year rental. As in, we don’t have the money for a mid-level deal so he takes one on another team in hopes of catapulting another good season into a post-COVID windfall. That scenario would mean we get minimal compensatory pick return and that a stopgap team would be reaping the benefits a year later, rather than us.
Potential Replacements: There are a lot of intriguing names out there, but it’s hard to place which ones would land in our price range. If we’re outbid on Hyder then we can safely say we’re outbid on all the Shaq Barrett / Matt Judon-type guys and likely the tier beneath them as well. There’s a chance we could hope for a market-based discount on a potential lateral move like Shelby Harris or roll the dice on one-year wonder (with first-round pedigree) Haason Reddick. Regardless, I would assume our plan at DE is to wait out the initial movement, find value once the dust settles, then draft a speed rusher.
DT, D.J. Jones
Jones is a big body who moves like a considerably smaller one. While he’s been hampered with injuries and didn’t have the breakout campaign that many would have hoped last year, he’s been a plus contributor for the past two years and has played in 27 of 32 possible regular season games during that time. He’s also the only actual nose tackle-type that we have on the active roster. Given that he’s probably more valuable to us than elsewhere and likely doesn’t have the body of work to net a big payday, I’d expect us to be able to retain him at a reasonable rate. If not, it’s certainly a position we’ll attempt to fill on the cheap. The arrow’s pointing up for both Javon Kinlaw and Kevin Givens, but we need a real nose to pair with them on early downs.
Potential Replacements: If D.J. departs, his primary replacement is likely already on the practice squad. Darrion Daniels was getting some training camp love last season and ended up seeing playing time in four games down the stretch of his rookie season. Was he prepared for that playing time? No, not really. But he’s a massive nose tackle body with enough quicks to project as a contributor along the DL and should only improve with an actual off-season and preseason under the tutelage of Kris Kocurek.
Slot CB, K’Waun Williams
On pure talent alone, Williams would be higher up on this list, but the nature of the position and the market means re-signing him is slightly less pressing. As nickel corners often are, K’Waun Williams has long been an underrated talent. While he wasn’t as splashy last year and was—like everyone else—limited by injuries, he’s been one of the better nickel corners in the league for the past few seasons and has been healthy for 43 of 48 games with the Niners leading up to last year (when he missed eight contests). Our nickel corners are important starters and active edge defenders / rushers.
Potential Replacements: Depending on what happens on the outside, Emmanuel Moseley has played in the nickel before. While it doesn’t seem to naturally fit his physical profile, he’s a smart dude and would certainly be able to make it work. Jamar Taylor played well in Williams’ stead, but he’s a UFA and unfortunately tore his ACL mid-season, so it’s tough to know if/when he’ll be back. An external candidate of interest would be the New York Jets’ Brian Poole. Good players on bad teams are often a prime candidate to get undervalued on the market and Poole’s been one of the better nickel corners in the NFL for quite some time. That said, with Saleh in the fold there, it would be hard to see them letting Poole go if they believe he fits the scheme that they’re implementing. His availability may be based on whether the Jets are trying to avoid any major contracts so that they can commit to a multi-year rebuild or not.
Tier 4 Free Agents
As mentioned earlier, Richard Sherman is basically out the door already and has largely stated as much publicly. We should be wishing all our free agents well, both for their contributions to our team and community and because the more they get paid the better draft returns we receive. Sherman’s potential return caps out as a fifth-rounder, but we’d be happy to take that if he can find one more big payday.
If the oft-injured Jaquiski Tartt returns it would likely be late in free agency on a bargain deal. He’s a good player, a vital communicator, and is still on the right side of thirty, but his injury concerns are simply too great, and the Niners will likely be looking to see if they can maximize Tarvarius Moore’s tremendous physical gifts in the last year on his rookie deal.
Given what will likely be a slim market for their services and our need at the position, I’d happily take back Ahkello Witherspoon, Dontae Johnson, and (depending on his rehab) Jamar Taylor. Even if we don’t have continuity amongst starters, having backups who know what they’re doing is crucial. LB Joe Walker’s return likely hinges on what our roster looks like in terms of specials after the draft as special teams standout Mark Nzeocha was not tendered last week.
Along the DL, Ziggy Ansah is likely a walk. I’d love to take back Ronald Blair on a one-year contract if his knee is right. Again, this could be a chance where Saleh—a vocal Blair fan—could poach one of our guys, but with snaps available opposite Bosa and a rehab team that he’s accustomed to, Blair has plenty of reasons to stay. He could be the 2020 version of Kerry Hyder (aka the 2018 version of Ronald Blair). Dion Jordan and Solomon Thomas likely are who they are at this point, but depending on how the rest of our DL shakes out that could be enough to find a rotational position. The draft capital we traded for Jordan Willis (a 2022 sixth-rounder for him and a 2021 seventh-rounder in return) is low enough that we could cut ties with him and not regret the trade, but I’d expect the team to bring him back through the off-season and training camp to see if they can untap his potential.
Along the OL, I wouldn’t expect Tony Bergstrom, Tom Compton, or Hroniss Grasu to return, but I’d welcome back Ben Garland if he’s recovered from injury. He’s no world-beater in pass protection but he is a really good run blocker and a Garland/Brunskill combo on the interior would already make me feel better than last year.
In the backfield, Tevin Coleman and Jet McKinnon are likely walks—with the Niners’ third running back job going to JaMychal Hasty—who flashed for a bit before people realized he was always cutting back and would never bounce anything—Austin Walter, and/or a late drafted/undrafted rookie.
Trent Taylor was fully supplanted by Richie James midway through last year. He’s probably played his last snap as a Niner. If Jordan Reed returns or not likely depends in part on his interest in playing. He returned last year because of his relationship with Shanahan and his belief that this team could compete for a championship. While I continue to be extremely bullish on the Niners, the path looked a lot clearer a year ago and it’s TBD whether or not he wants to put his body on the line for another year. Lastly, CJ Beathard was clearly the better of our backups by the end of last year, but I expect the Niners to make a move on the outside to shore up that position.
That’s next time.
Go Niners 👍🏈