… you don’t know how a 3-4 works.

maybe Leftwich didn’t want to come to SF, or wanted a lot of money who knows. Its the third string QB after all, not really a big deal. And maybe Leftwich wanted a better role than that.

Canty is a good DE, but he got paid 7 million a year!! Do you really want to outbid the Giants on that contract? That would have been an awful move, especially with where the team is now. You don’t overpay for non-elite talent when you’re rebuilding. Haynesworth is the exact same situation. You don’t give a guy like him 100M when you just went 7-9 in a weak division last year, at least you shouldn’t.

Brandon Jones isn’t too exciting, but he’s as good as Gaffney and Washington. Coles or Housh would have been better but obviously they cost a lot more too. The team is trying to get better from the lines up, you don’t do that by throwing big money at a 32 year old wide receiver.

I agree the RT spot definitely needs to be adressed, but there’s still plenty of time for that. For all we know, one of Eugene Monroe or Jason Smith could fall into our laps on draft day.

I think finally the correct approach is being taken to make the Niners a winning football team again. The key is not spending wildly on free agents to fill short term needs, but buildng up a young core through the draft, retaining that core, and then supplementing it in future drafts. Will the Niners be world-beaters next year, no, but these things take time.

Look at the Pats and Colts, the two most successful teams this decade. The Colts core of Manning/Harrison/Wayne/Addai/Saturday/Ugoh/Gonzalez/Freeney/Mathis/Sanders/Hayden/Brackett were all drafted by the team, and because of cautious free agent spending, they were able to retain all of those guys. The Pats don’t have quite as much home-grown talent, but still have Brady and their entire offensive (Light/Mankins/Koppen/Neal/Kaczur) and defensive lines (Seymour/Wilfork/Warren), both of which are terrific. They also drafted Mayo, Bruschi, Maroney, Watson, Merriwhether, and Hobbs. They made shrewd trades for Moss and Welker and a couple signings to fill out their team. But free agency was NOT the answer for either team.

Those are the two teams we should be trying to emulate, not necessarily in scheme but in the way we construct our team. Sure, landing Suggs would have been exciting, but is he really that much better than Haralson? Every dollar spent on a free agent is a dollar that can’t be spent to retain our own young talent, which is already starting to show and hopefully we will have a lot of in the future. Lets just be patient and not expect things to turn around right away. I think you’ll be surprised at what a couple of years with an approach like this will do for the 49ers.