The San Francisco 49ers return to the practice field later today for the start of their second set of organized team practice activities (OTAs). The 49ers opened their ten OTAs with three last week, Tuesday through Thursday. They will follow that up with OTAs today, tomorrow, and then Thursday. They wrap up next week with OTAs on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
Each week of OTAs requires at least one day open to the media. This week, that day will be Tuesday. The practice session is from 1:30-3:30 PT, with players available to the media starting at 3:30 p.m. This past week, Wednesday open to the media, and it resulted in some photos from practice. I've put together a gallery up above. We'll hopefully have another one after Tuesday's open session.
As the 49ers get going today, we'll likely see a bit of a carry-over in terms of pertinent topics. One of the big things to come from last week was Brandon Lloyd impressing Jim Harbaugh and Colin Kaepernick. Lloyd sat out the 2013 season, but Harbaugh and Kap were raving about his performance thus far in the offseason workout program. It's all non-contact work, so we can only take so much from it, but the more confidence Kap gains with Lloyd, the more he might look to him in the preseason.
The other big story was the absence of Alex Boone and Vernon Davis. Although Boone and Davis were not the only absent players, they were the only two reported to be due to contract dissatisfaction. Boone's absence moved Joe Looney into the starting lineup at right guard. Anthony Davis is rehabbing his shoulder injury, which resulted in Adam Snyder and Ryan Seymour getting time at right tackle. Once Davis is healthy, we'll start to get a better idea of how the interior line depth chart really looks. By that, I mean whether or not Looney is turning into the backup guard, or if all things being equal, it's still Snyder.
The team has some injured players working back to get ready for training camp, and as Chris Biderman wrote, OTAs thus far have been almost all about depth. The 49ers are currently as deep as they have been in the Harbaugh era. The injured players lose out on the on-field work, but it does open the door for reserves to get some extra work. Ideally the team is as close to 100 percent as possible come training camp when the hitting starts.
The 49ers get going later today with day 4 of OTAs. It remains all about the depth and just moving along toward training camp. Boone and Davis are not at practice this week, and at this point we're more looking ahead ot the mandatory minicamp in two weeks. That's the first really significant marker for a potential holdout. But in the meantime, the rest of the roster continues the work of installing the playbook, and getting the rookies and free agent/trade additions up to speed.
Oh, and maybe we'll find out if Lawrence Okoye can replicate his performance last week where he ran down Darryl Morris on the sideline. For some context, Morris ran a 4.33 in college, and Okoye weighs 304 pounds.