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Golden Nuggets: Long, Laurinaitis now available

A collection of San Francisco 49ers links from around the web for Saturday, February 20th 2016.

By Patrick Holloway@PatOHolloway Feb 20, 2016, 2:30am PST

Good Morning! Hope this offseason is setting in and you're all finding new great interests and extra curricular activities to enjoy now that football is over with.

It was another slow day for the San Francisco 49ers, but the rest of the league had some fun. First there's some reports that Alshon Jeffrey could hit the open market according to Ian Rappoport. That's certainly something. Then later in the day we got word that the Rams released Chris Long and John Laurinaitis. If if we got Jeffrey for a decent deal, I'd be stoked, I'm just afraid of overpaying for him. Obviously, the team has a huge wad of salary cap space, but I also don't want them to blow it on a couple of players given that the roster has so many holes, it makes a swiss cheese green with envy.

As far as Long and Laurinaitis, I think there could be a wonderful scenario that Laurinaitis could come to SF. Hear me out: If the 49ers draft Jaylon Smith, they very well could be in a situation like when they drafted Tank Carradine, one where he [Smith] may be able to run, cut, etc. but when he gets on the field, he's simply not ready. This is where Laurinaitis comes in. He can keep the seat warm, and then we have no rush to get Smith on the field his rookie season. It seems difficult to predict a time table with Smith's injury. And if the 49ers can get Smith in a later round (I'm not holding my breath), having Laurinaitis in for a couple seasons would make a lot of sense given his age. But that's really the only scenario I can think of and a scenario that may not be necessary. And what happens if Hodges is better than Laurinaitis? Oops. And any of this is just a fan speculating at this point.