Fooch's note: I don't agree with this, but I figured the most negative opinion possible about the present situation is worth a front page bump!

The 49ers have re-entered the 2005 season where they have a new quarterback and the team appears to be going nowhere for the foreseeable future. The 49ers team is terrible, and given the teams poor performance against a mediocre Vikings team, and a game they should have lost against the Lions, it is unlikely a healthy Jimmy G would have taken this team to the playoffs. There are 2 primary culprits IMO for this latest debacle, Lynch and Shanahan.

Nearly all the moves Lynch has done have been horrific with maybe the exception of drafting Reuben Foster for value in the late 1st round, and finding Fred Warner who has the potential to be a star in the league. I believe 1 BIG problem is he is giving Mike Kyle Shanahan way too much input on who the team drafts. Last year the team overlooked several franchise QB's only to select CJ Beathard. Solomon Thomas was a total bust for a No. 2 pick and had horrible college stats when you discount 2 games (NC and ND) he had in his last year at Stanford. Moreover, trading up to get Dante Pettis was beyond ridiculous (or for Beathard for that matter). And the secondary is a total wreck thanks in no small part to the team picking up the 5th yr option on Jimmie Ward. And finally, signing (or even trading for) Jimmy G was not a move I was happy with at the time, and this latest injury only made it worse. The fact is at NE Jimmy G was an injury prone QB and virtually none of the games won last year were that impressive and all were done in the season's garbage time (Jax had lost to AZ several weeks before the 49ers).

Shanahan gets no better marks IMO. The guy's play calling probably cost the ATL a Super Bowl ring. He is basically like Norv Turner, where you want him to be your OC and never a head coach. In the 2017 draft he stated that he was not "really impressed with any of the quarterbacks." As a result the 49ers passed up on both Watson and Mahomes as neither guy apparently had the talent of one CJ Beathard. The team offense's under Shanahan has been extremely poor and only made worse by the fact he has let guys like Hyde go (who I wasn't ever big on) and replaced them with players with over-inflated contracts such as Jerrod Mckinnon (in all fairness to McKinnon he has been hurt but IMO he is nowhere as good as the players he is supposed to emulate - Coleman and Freeman). Finally under Shanahan the team has not used the running game nearly enough (some of that has to do with the 49ers always playing from behind). As a result, the offense is highly turnover prone and stuck with a defense that doesn't cause that many turnovers.

Based on the team's poor level of play, horrible draft picks and free agent signings, I think the Lynch + Shanahan experiment needs to have the plug pulled on it. I do not see the defensive secondary, the running game, the defensive line (and perhaps the offensive line), significantly improving any time soon. As a result, the 49ers are back in 2005 where they are going nowhere for the foreseeable future real fast.