Well folks, it’s been a pretty quiet weekend in terms of stuff written about the 49ers, but the 6-week dead period will be coming to a close in the upcoming days. Fortunately, something was published, so this won’t be an “exhausted Nuggeteer tries out stand-up comedy material on a tough crowd” hour.
That being said, Ninerswire released the latest edition of their Training Camp positional preview series, focusing on the halfbacks (Juice & co. received their own edition), and overall I found myself disagreeing with their major points very infrequently. Specifically, writer Jerod Brown plainly planted his non-ironic “Joe Williams is our future” flag, musing that the third-day rookie could find himself supplanting, well, the rest of the RB corps, as the top option. If his argument was centered around Carlos Hyde’s chances of failure, even something along the lines of his injury-prone young career, I might’ve been able to lessen the magnitude of the eye-rolling I did. C’mon man, they haven’t even put pads on yet - sure, it’s an entirely new GM, HC/OC, and RB coach, but Hyde is, without a doubt, our most polished and productive rostered RB. Give the “start Williams” hype a rest, at least for now!
Another piece that did give me additional some pause was Brown’s analysis of the Matt Breida & Kapri Bibbs competition for the fourth RB role (playing along with his assumption that Hightower is a lock, which I’m unenthusiastic about). While Breida has become NN’s newest UDFA-crush, Brown sees Bibbs as having something of an edge due to his experience with special teams. The vocal majority will probably lament this idea, protesting that Breida will not make it through waivers.
Either way, upcoming TC reports should give us some further clarity on the status of the RB corps. I think conventional prognostication would lead most folks to buy into a Hyde/Williams one-two punch. After that, I think the arguments for any of the other RBs are far too mixed to really make any claims with any degree of certainty.
To the link!
Training Camp preview: RBs | Brown, Ninerswire