Each offseason, we like to run a series of articles here on Niners Nation called "90-in-90." In the post, we take a look at 90 players (or so) on the San Francisco 49ers' 90-man roster throughout the offseason and what we can expect of them the following year. We take a look at their expected impact, whether or not they'll make the roster and things of that nature. For rookies, we're going back and looking at how we did with those posts.
Fooch covered Arik Armstead and I talked about safety Jaquiski Tartt yesterday. Today, we're going to eschew the draft order and move to the most disappointing rookie by a long shot ... running back Mike Davis.
The fact that I consider Davis the most disappointing rookie is actually a lot worse than you might think, considering I didn't have many expectations for him. Fooch wrote the 90-in-90 post for Davis and his expectations were tempered as well. He didn't think there would be many opportunities for Davis given the depth chart, and reflected little on his potential to actually see the field.
But he did mention his upside a little bit:
Davis is a power rusher, who brings a nimbleness to the position. David Neumann broke down some of his film in May, and we can see the abilities that reflect a little bit of Frank Gore. He has a whole lot of work to do to get anywhere near that, but the skillset is intriguing.
At this point, Davis has a whole lot more than a whole lot of work ahead of him. His 2015 campaign was aggressively underwhelming, and in six games played he carried the ball 35 times for a paltry 58 yards. That's a per-carry average of just 1.7 yards.
I'm not someone who wants to give up on a player after one bad season, but Davis looked completely unprepared to play in the NFL and it showed on virtually every snap. Granted, he didn't factor into the depth chart much before Carlos Hyde and Reggie Bush went down with injury anyway, but still.
In an ideal situation, Davis wouldn't have touched the ball much at all as a rookie. But he did, and he showed that there's absolutely nothing that can be counted on going forward. Davis had a lot of potential coming out of college and I still like what I've seen of him on film. He can pan out to be something special, but for now, we have a very bad rookie season and not much else to go on.
Fooch pretty much had it right with his preview, though he probably didn't touch enough on how obviously raw Davis was. Going forward, he should be a factor in a depth chart battle in training camp and the preseason.