2020 Offseason

[Bingo_AlphaMan]

Jalen Hurd leaves practice early; his injury isn’t considered to be serious
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ninersnation.com/platform/amp/2020/8/16/21371214/jalen-hurd-leaves-practice-early-his-injury-isnt-considered-to-be-serious

If he doesn't pan out, that one is going to sting. I'm on record the day of the draft saying we should have taken McLaurin.

Yeah. Peter King's evaluation is the dream, but from day 1 my concern was if he was going to be soft.

Me and a few other folks liked him a lot as project with immense potential. However we also thought that he was drafted a little too high for our liking. I gave him a 6th round grade that had the potential to develop into a very good #2 receiver / gadget player in the league with he right coaching. I was shocked when he went that high.

I just hope that they ease him slowly and that this injury isn’t that serious.

[CrimsonCrew]

Yeah, I didn't have a major problem with the player, per se, just where we drafted him. And I had/have some questions about his durability and commitment. I totally get a guy - especially one of that size - switching from RB to WR. Frankly, that speaks to me of his intelligence. But he had some injury issues in college and he left one team under less-than-spectacular circumstances.

I certainly agree that I hope he does produce the way King and some of the FO folks indicate he was pre-injury last year, but first he needs to get on the field. And McLaurin would have been a great every-down complement to Deebo (though I was also on record as saying we shouldn't have taken two WRs in the first three rounds that year) rather than a gimmick type - though I'm hoping Hurd will be more than that. Not to mention that we almost certainly wouldn't have made the trade for Sanders if we'd added McLaurin, which would have given us 3rd and 4th round picks back in this draft. And very likely would have taken someone other than Aiyuk in the late-first this year, or would have a sick young WR group if we did.

[Scoots1994]

Whenever a player is taken higher than "expected" I have to assume it's because the had some information that they wouldn't be available later. That is a tough part of the draft ... loving a player but waiting to take them, knowing someone else may think the same as you and take them at any pick. Walsh said waiting 3 rounds for Montana was murder, and even then he was criticized for him being a major reach.

I have to have hope until it's gone.

[Bingo_AlphaMan]

49ers' Brandon Aiyuk May Already be Better than Deebo Samuel
https://www.49erswebzone.com/commentary/2418-49ers-brandon-aiyuk-may-already-better-deebo-samuel/

[Bingo_AlphaMan]

JALEN HURD
WR, SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS

49ers WR Jalen Hurd may have torn his ACL at practice, and is undergoing an MRI.

Hurd, a former running back, was expected to be deployed in a variety of ways in the Niners offense. Losing Hurd would be another setback for the team's offense, which might be without Deebo Samuel to start the season.
SOURCE: Mike Garafolo on Twitter

Aug 17, 2020, 11:44 AM ET

Read on Twitter

?s=20

[Scoots1994]

Ouch. Hurd missing another year isn't the end of the world, but it probably means he will struggle to develop into the "star" he was projected to be by some.

[CrimsonCrew]

Brutal. Argh. Jennings' odds of making the team just improved dramatically.

[CrimsonCrew]

Whenever a player is taken higher than "expected" I have to assume it's because the had some information that they wouldn't be available later. That is a tough part of the draft ... loving a player but waiting to take them, knowing someone else may think the same as you and take them at any pick. Walsh said waiting 3 rounds for Montana was murder, and even then he was criticized for him being a major reach.

I have to have hope until it's gone.

Yeah, but a major part of working the draft is taking advantage of value. Waiting for the value to fall to you, trading back, etc. My biggest issue with the personnel management on this team is the manner in which it approaches that. They have repeatedly misused draft capital and cap space, frequently in ways that haven't worked out.

Now, it's a given that in FA you have to overpay, but three years later and Juszczyk is still the #1 guy on Bill Barnwell's annual list of overpaid players at a given position. He's been huge for them, but they could have had him for half the price. McKinnon was pretty dramatically overpaid for a non-premium position (as evidenced by the success of our RB play with UDFAs manning the crucial spots the past two years), though there's obviously been bad injury luck there. Alexander was overpaid at a non-premium position.

The draft has arguably been worse. We not only took too high, but traded up to get, players like CJ Beathard, Joe Williams, and Dante Pettis. Deebo Samuel looks like a very solid second-round pick, but we had an opportunity to trade back, pick up a third-round pick, and still land either him or a very similar, impact player in AJ Brown. This year, in a historically deep WR draft, we moved up to take Aiyuk.

Those moves can work on a team with a ton of draft picks (thank you Baalke, Bears for the Trubisky trade) and cap space. They're a lot harder to justify on a playoff/Super Bowl contender with limited resources. Shanahan is a playcalling genius, and the FO seems to have put together a team that gels very well for the time being, but I question how long it can last with the way they approach player acquisition.

[Scoots1994]

I'm not sure they could get the players without significant overpays 3 years ago. Maybe.

[CrimsonCrew]

I'm not sure they could get the players without significant overpays 3 years ago. Maybe.

Sure, that's unavoidable for a bad team. The overpay for Juszczyk was absurd. Three years into his contract, he's making 2 1/2 times more than the next highest-paid guy at the position. The others are more based on the position we were overpaying for. Do it for WR, OT, DE, CB. Not for RB, FB, and off-ball OLB.

[Bald Bull]

49ers' Brandon Aiyuk May Already be Better than Deebo Samuel
https://www.49erswebzone.com/commentary/2418-49ers-brandon-aiyuk-may-already-better-deebo-samuel/

Oh lawd!

[Scoots1994]

I'm not sure they could get the players without significant overpays 3 years ago. Maybe.

Sure, that's unavoidable for a bad team. The overpay for Juszczyk was absurd. Three years into his contract, he's making 2 1/2 times more than the next highest-paid guy at the position. The others are more based on the position we were overpaying for. Do it for WR, OT, DE, CB. Not for RB, FB, and off-ball OLB.

And I don't fundamentally disagree, I do think Shanahan was targeting specific rare skills to build around.

That said, I do think they are a little arrogant in their moves and do undervalue assets too often.

[Bald Bull]

Jet moving well.

Read on Twitter

[CrimsonCrew]

With all the WR injuries, I wonder if we won't see Jet getting a lot of playing time, especially early in the year.

[Scoots1994]

With all the WR injuries, I wonder if we won't see Jet getting a lot of playing time, especially early in the year.

It's just that much more important that Samuel and Taylor and Reed get and stay healthy, and that Bourne steps up his game.

I think it also means we're going to get a much bigger chance to see Pettis and Jennings in the pre-season.

[CrimsonCrew]

Word is that Pettis had a nice practice. The very slight silver lining with the injuries is that a couple guys are getting a chance to show some things, including Pettis and Aiyuk.

Man, I was thinking about all the capital we've poured into the WR position and still can't seem to get it right. Since Lynch and Shanahan took over, we've used the following to address WR:

5 year, $47.5 million contract (Garcon)
3 year, $19.25 million contract (Goodwin)
2017 5th round pick (Taylor)
2018 2nd and 3rd round picks (Pettis)
2019 2nd and 3rd round picks (Samuel, Hurd)
2020 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, and 7th round picks (Aiyuk, Sanders)

That's one huge contract (at that time), one sizable contract, and eight picks in the first four rounds in four years, and we are still completely unstable at the position. There's some promise, and there's been some bad luck, but man that's rough. In that same span, we've drafted only one CB in that range: Witherspoon in the third.

[CrimsonCrew]

Another way to think about this: we have made 16 picks in the first four rounds over those drafts. So by one way of looking at things, we've used literally half of our high-value picks under this regime on one position that is still a problem.

[Scoots1994]

Taylor and Samuel were talented enough to warrant their picks, Sanders was worth it (Super Bowl), and Aiyuk is not known yet. I'm not one to blame the GM for odd injuries that happen so putting Hurd in the unknown is not unreasonable.

They have certainly been unlucky with WR injuries, every name on that list other than Aiyuk and Sanders missed games. It seems the 49ers struggle with injuries a LOT.

[CrimsonCrew]

Taylor and Samuel were talented enough to warrant their picks, Sanders was worth it (Super Bowl), and Aiyuk is not known yet. I'm not one to blame the GM for odd injuries that happen so putting Hurd in the unknown is not unreasonable.

They have certainly been unlucky with WR injuries, every name on that list other than Aiyuk and Sanders missed games. It seems the 49ers struggle with injuries a LOT.

Samuel is a prime example of the FO's issue, IMO. Sure, in a vacuum he was talented enough. But in the context of that draft, we could have traded back and almost certainly still gotten him, and definitely still gotten AJ Brown. The Sanders trade was worth it, even though I felt we overpaid at the time, but it's still frustrating to give up those high value picks for a one-year rental. If we had taken McLaurin instead of Hurd in the third last year, I don't think we make that mid-season trade.

[Scoots1994]

Taylor and Samuel were talented enough to warrant their picks, Sanders was worth it (Super Bowl), and Aiyuk is not known yet. I'm not one to blame the GM for odd injuries that happen so putting Hurd in the unknown is not unreasonable.

They have certainly been unlucky with WR injuries, every name on that list other than Aiyuk and Sanders missed games. It seems the 49ers struggle with injuries a LOT.

Samuel is a prime example of the FO's issue, IMO. Sure, in a vacuum he was talented enough. But in the context of that draft, we could have traded back and almost certainly still gotten him, and definitely still gotten AJ Brown. The Sanders trade was worth it, even though I felt we overpaid at the time, but it's still frustrating to give up those high value picks for a one-year rental. If we had taken McLaurin instead of Hurd in the third last year, I don't think we make that mid-season trade.

But you don't know that to be true. You are basing it on the mock draft world and they are regularly wildly wrong. It only takes one team to see the same thing in a player to lose him. It's data we essentially never get (I wish we did) ... how every team actually ranked players they didn't take. And I'm not going to blame a team for a draft pick getting injured because that's using data they didn't have available when they made the decision.

Whenever a player goes above the consensus mock draft position the team made a "major mistake", if the player then becomes an all-pro nobody really talks about it anymore. Every year there are players I like much higher than their "ranking" and sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm wildly wrong.

I agree and also think Shanahan falls in love with a player and does over-value/over-pay for them, but I don't agree that the players would "almost certainly" be available much later in the draft/for significantly less FA money.

On the bright side, now that the 49ers are not a leaguewide laughingstock FAs should be willing to join the 49ers for at or maybe even below market rather than far above market.