The San Francisco 49ers welcomed Anthony Davis back to the team this week, and he is officially in the competition for the right tackle position. He’s currently working with the third team offensive line, but there’s a lot of time left to move up the depth chart.
Davis met with the media on Sunday, and he had some fascinating comments. Jennifer Chan transcribed the whole thing, but I wanted to pull out some specific comments. The first is about his weight. He said that back in 2014 he was playing at 365 or 370 pounds, and now he is down to 332. We saw some pictures on Sunday that showed a slimmed down Bam. He looked much smaller, but if he is in fact weighing 332, he’s certainly not undersized for right tackle. And if that’s his weight, it could be big for getting him a little quicker on his feet in Chip Kelly’s offense.
The other interesting answer related to his social media pursuits. He has always had plenty to say, and over the past year since he first retired, we saw him critiquing the offensive line, talking about the 49ers need to draft an offensive lineman, and complaining about Trent Baalke. When asked about all the tweets, he was pretty clear in his answer:
“That was me trying to manipulate emotions to get what I wanted at that time.”
He would not go into what he was trying to accomplish, saying it was in the past. He said he has had the conversations necessary to move forward, most notable with Joe Staley and Trent Baalke. Things could always go south, but for now, things seem to be OK.
But I find it interesting to see him be fairly up front about the tweets. He’s always been a fascinating player, willing to talk about a variety of topics and issues that professional athletes might not touch. And while the tweeting and deleting seems passive aggressive, it was interesting that he admitted to trying to manipulate things to a certain extent. It’s an interesting point to make.