SPORTS COMMENTARY
After weeks of telling the press that Colin Kaepernick is the starting quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, head coach Jim Tomsula has pulled the string and announced Blaine Gabbert will now be replacing Kaepernick under center.
The patience of coach Tomsula and his staff has reached its boiling point, resulting in their need to try a new signal caller as the team sits in the bottom tier of the league at 2-6.
The team has been in free fall since the departure of former head coach Jim Harbaugh this past offseason and the future of the franchise is in jeopardy.
This has become the low point of 49ers owner Jed York’s tenure as CEO of the franchise, exposing his inability to construct a winning team and a positive image for himself in the eyes of fans.
Since the on-field altercation between York and Harbaugh at the end of last season (when the two reached a breaking point in their relationship) contributed to the firing of Harbaugh, the team has been in constant shambles.
On ESPN’s “Mike and Mike,” one of the hosts said, “the 49ers organization deserves this. Their quarterback who he turned into a superstar has now forgot how to play,” Mike Greenberg said. “The organization deserves this because they had one of the two or three best coaches in football in any level and they threw him out as soon as possible. And now they went from being in the Super Bowl to being the worst team in football.”
With this level of fallout, it will be difficult for the 49ers to salvage anything at this point. Nobody in the 49ers front office nor coaching staff knows what to do.
They took one of the smartest coaches in football, who took a team that for years nobody wanted to watch and turned into a perennial contender.
The Niners made the NFC Championship game three out of four years when Harbaugh was the head coach.
After he left, players such as Patrick Willis, Justin Smith and Chris Borland jumped ship.
The mass exodus combined with questionable moves made by the front office, such as not resigning Pro Bowl guard Mike Iupati, had Niner fans shaking their heads.
Adding more salt to the franchise’s wound was Sunday’s 27-6 loss to the division rival St. Louis Rams. It was another dismal performance by the offense that failed to score a touchdown for the second straight week.
“This is a quarterback that this team has lost faith in,” said Adam Schefter on SportsCenter. “This benching effectively ends the tenure of Colin Kaepernick with the 49ers.”
The benching came at an interesting point of Tomsula’s reign as head coach because each week prior to now he assured everyone he had Kaepernick’s back.
The timing of the benching comes one week before the 49ers’ bye week and opens the door for speculation as to whether the team is finished with Kaepernick.
It is worth noting that a part of Kaepernick’s six-year $110 million contract includes an opt-out clause, which allows the Niners to cut him at the end of any season in the contract time.
It should come as no surprise that the Niners are struggling as much as they are.
The team has shown no signs of real leadership. The offense struggles to score points and the defense, which used to be one of the most powerful units in the league, seems unable to stop anyone.
The Niners will look to try and salvage their season this week with their new starting quarterback Gabbert against the Atlanta Falcons.
Check out the full published article in the Spartan Daily
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| Infographic by Kavin Mistry |
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