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Colin Kaepernick named 49ers starting quarterback vs. Rams

We break down the news that Colin Kaepernick has been named the starting quarterback vs. the St. Louis Rams.

Chris Graythen

Jim Harbaugh came down from on high and finally bequeathed us with his wisdom! The 49ers head coach announced that Colin Kaepernick would be the team's starting quarterback against the Rams. This move is not a surprising one, but it was still something people were waiting on for confirmation. Coach Harbaugh decisively stated that Kaepernick is his starter, but Alex is still "our guy." Take that however you want, but Colin Kaepernick is the guy for Week 13.

When asked for the rationale, Coach Harbaugh stated that Kaepernick had the hot hand over the last three games, and that tipped the scales in his favor. Again, nothing remotely surprising about this, but it's nice that we don't have to deal with speculation about the starter through Sunday. Even though Coach Harbaugh stated that Smith was "our guy", Kaepernick is the starter for Week 13.

Since we can't get by with zero speculation, the new question is what does this mean moving forward. Coach Harbaugh said he would not assume anything about whether this is a long term change for the 49ers. Fortunately we can make all the assumptions we can! As long as Kaepernick is playing well, there really will be no decision to be made. If Coach Harbaugh is looking at this as going with the hot-hand, Kaepernick remains the guy until he isn't.

Technically this means we'll go through this every week, but at this point it really would be best for Colin to do a kick-butt job and remove any drama from the situation (Thank you, Captain Obvious!)