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The Senior Bowl provides teams with a chance to scout out talent in a new situation, but it also provides each team with an opportunity to meet the players face-to-face. Prior to the January All Star games, teams will scout players, but they cannot get much deeper than watching games live and on film. With the All Star games, teams can add a little more context to scouting reports.
Trent Baalke and members of the the San Francisco 49ers scouting staff is on hand in Mobile, and they are meeting with some players. The most notable potential meeting at this point would be what Walter Football is describing as a "hotel meeting" with Colorado State quarterback Garrett Grayson (6'2, 215 lbs).
We are not going to find out their sources, so for now we can certainly take this information with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, if this is in fact true, it is at least a little bit interesting as the 49ers work through the draft process. The 49ers will meet with a lot of players, most of whom they will never draft. However, meeting with a player takes time out of the day, which is time that could be used to meet with other players, or do more film review. Some teams will meet with players to throw other teams off their actual interest, but there is going to be some kind of reason to meet with a player.
Colin Kaepernick is the 49ers starting quarterback, and will be the starting quarterback in 2015. The team can technically release him by April 1, but I think most of us would be shocked by such a transaction. However, Kap's future beyond 2015 is hard to tell because of the coaching staff changes. My guess is he is around for the long haul, but given the coaching turnover, I don't think we can really say anything is "certain".
One thing that has bugged me the last couple years has been the 49ers unwillingness to draft and develop a quarterback behind Kap. I get what was going on in 2011 and 2012. Alex Smith was the starter, and Kap was the backup. However, once the team traded Smith, it would have made a considerable amount of sense to find another quarterback to stash behind Kap. B.J. Daniels might have been that guy, but the team lost him to waivers. The 49ers did invest picks in Colt McCoy and Blaine Gabbert. McCoy departed shortly thereafter, and Gabbert is likely gone after this year.
Will this be the year the 49ers invest a little higher in the draft in a backup quarterback? Right now, Grayson is looking like a potential mid-round pick, with draft rankings having him anywhere from as low as the 100s, to as high as the 150s. I'm sure that will change in the coming months, and I'm sure there is already disagreement on his value. Whatever the case, what do you think of him, and what do you think of the idea of investing an early day three pick on a quarterback? Or maybe you'd go even higher?