- 6 weeks ago
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00:00I saw a tweet from our friend Tim Calcami that I believe is worth going over for a second.
00:08And if you do want to, and I'm not saying that you should or whatever,
00:12but if you want to criticize the Niners or you feel sort of bummed out,
00:17disappointed, if you will, that the Niners did nothing today,
00:21Calcami goes, hey, you know, Matt Barrows and I are sitting here on the podcast
00:26and we're batting some stuff around and something occurred to me.
00:30If the Niners hadn't backed themselves into a corner at running back two,
00:37then they wouldn't have had to trade a six-round pick for Brian Robinson in August.
00:44And if they hadn't have traded that six-round pick in August,
00:47I bet that it's likely that that six-round pick might have been used to get a player today.
00:54And again, is that fair or unfair?
00:57That's the staircase of life.
00:59You know, you have to decide when to go after your mistakes and when to just hold or fold.
01:06And today they decided to hold and fold.
01:08And back in August, they jumped on an opportunity to get Brian Robinson from the Washington Commanders.
01:14And that's largely because, A, Garendo fell out of favor.
01:18B, Jordan James out of Oregon is getting healthy scratches.
01:21And then go through all of the other running backs they've tried to draft, usually in the third round over the last handful of years.
01:28And it has been miss, after miss, after miss, after miss.
01:32In fact, if you want to bring that conversation in, this is kind of silly because Christian's a star.
01:37But it's like, after all these running back drafts, you ended up in a spot where you gave up four draft picks for Christian McCaffrey.
01:46Like, when, through all of this, did the 49ers just draft a running back and then use him and like him?
01:56Has that happened at all in the Shanahan era?
01:59I'm thinking because I don't believe Jordan Mason was drafted.
02:02He was an undrafted.
02:04Undrafted, as was guys like Raheem Mostert and Breida, right?
02:09If I'm remembering correctly, Jeff Wilson.
02:11Aren't these guys all UDFAs?
02:14I believe so.
02:15I'm just trying to think, as I do the Googlage and going back in my mind, you've got TDP, Ty Davis Price.
02:22You've got Trey Sermon.
02:24You've got Joe Williams out of Utah.
02:26These are all drafted running backs who actually were never running, or were they back?
02:32And now Jordan James.
02:33And Isaac Garendo.
02:34Isaac Garendo has logged zero offensive snaps this year.
02:38He's played 123 snaps to special teams, which tells me that they think he's a football player,
02:44but they don't trust him to even, like, get in there.
02:46Think about this.
02:48Adrian Martinez has more offensive snaps than Isaac Garendo.
02:521-0.
02:53Well, and the other thing they could have done, and I know that there are financial reasons for this,
02:57and we don't need to re-adjudicate, but they could have kept Jordan Mason.
03:01They could have kept him.
03:02Yeah.
03:03And then you don't need to go get Brian Robinson.
03:05So that was the other thing you could have done.
03:07And then you would have still had that sixth rounder.
03:09You might have had even less money to play with.
03:11I don't know.
03:12I don't know how all that plays out.
03:14You know what I mean?
03:14I don't know where Brian, what Brian getting paid, what Jordan getting paid.
03:18I don't know.
03:19But the way that this has played at a position which is supposed to be synonymous with the name Shanahan,
03:26which is we can grab almost any running back and make this thing work with a good offensive line,
03:31it is rather stunning how many times they've tried in the draft and essentially missed,
03:38but then gotten production out of undrafted free agents,
03:41and they now sit there today with a running back rotation that was solely acquired through trading draft picks.
03:50That's how it's worked for the Niners.
03:52The one drafted running back who actually counts and matters, Elijah Mitchell.
03:58Elijah Mitchell.
03:58That's the one guy.
03:59And that was a fifth-rounder, right?
04:00Sixth-rounder, yeah.
04:00Sixth-rounder.
04:01Yep.
04:02And he, I mean, he was good.
04:04He was good-ish.
04:05There was a lot of injuries.
04:06There was, you know, but yeah, the early returns were nice there.
04:10And then there's been other running backs that also were signings or trades, Tevin Coleman.
04:14Right.
04:15Like, they've gotten guys to produce, obviously.
04:18They've been a good football team in his regime, and they've always run the ball.
04:21But my word, they don't find him on draft day.
04:25And it'd be cool if they stopped trying.
04:28Or get it right.
04:29Or just find an undrafted, like your dad did, with Olandis Gary and Mike Anderson, sir, yes, sir,
04:36and all the rest of those guys they had.
04:39According to Matt Maioco, going into next year's draft, the Niners have a first, second, third.
04:44They've got four fourths and a seventh.
04:47And those fourths are all projected based on comp picks, including Jordan Mason and Hufanga is another one.
04:54So you're going to have a first, a second, a third, four in the fourth, and then you'll have one in the seventh.
05:00So, I mean, you're not without draft picks.
05:02No, they've got plenty of picks.
05:03But if you want to talk about Quinnen Williams, and if you want to trade a first and a second for Quinnen, now your cap is blown, and you have no first, no second.
05:12I would have completely been against that.
05:14Exactly.
05:14But you look around at the kind of stuff that we're talking about, that you and I thought maybe the Niners could do, which is, again, not a Quinnen Williams, not a first and a second.
05:26You know, I don't even know if there were conversations.
05:28There probably were at some point this year about Trey Hendrickson weeks ago when Fred Warner was still playing, like right when Nick Bosa went out.
05:35But nothing at the high, high top of the market of pass rushers actually really went down outside of Quinnen.
05:41And he's a little bit more of an interior guy, too.
05:44For sure.
05:45So, the edge rusher market was kind of based on movement in the range of fifth, sixth, and seventh rounders.
05:54They don't really have any.
05:55And that's what they did with Keyon White.
05:57Yep.
05:57They moved from the sixth to the seventh.
05:59Right.
05:59And now they just have that seventh.
06:01No fifths, no sixths.
06:02And if you were going to move a fourth, I don't know if there was a player good enough out there to where you could move for a fourth.
06:08I know that the Cowboys got a linebacker, which I thought was kind of intriguing.
06:12But the Niners, I think, like where they are at linebacker.
06:16And think about next year when you're going to get Fred back and you like D and you're going to have Nick Martin still and maybe he's a guy.
06:23And, you know, you feel like in the future you might be okay.
06:26And I do think that Tatum Bethune is absolutely a piece that you're going to want to keep.
06:30So as far as like now and later, shout out the candy, edge rusher would have been, or interior defensive line would have been the only position I think that you could have looked at that was gettable.
06:42Yeah.
06:42And they drafted a bunch of those guys.
06:44And like to their point, they might say, look, we used a fifth slash fourth.
06:48It's a fifth.
06:49It could become a fourth depending on how many sacks he gets.
06:52But they used that already on Bryce Huff.
06:53Yeah.
06:54In the offseason.
06:54And he's coming back.
06:55So, look, I don't think that the Niners don't have a point in this conversation.
07:01They do.
07:01They do.
07:02I get it.
07:03They have a point.
07:04And so I'm with them.
07:06Don't do something at the top of the market.
07:08Don't mortgage the future for now.
07:11That doesn't make sense.
07:12But, boy, there had to be a creative way in my mind to do something today because now I feel like not only are you sort of lacking pizzazz at the pass rusher position,
07:26you are now also still lacking depth.
07:29True.
07:29And that, to me, is the concern.
07:33And maybe that's my Niner PTSD.
07:36But I don't know about y'all.
07:38When I sit down and watch a Niner game, my pen and paper are already out to scribble down who gets knocked out for the year.
07:45Because it happens every Sunday.
07:47Seems like it, yeah.
07:47So, how are we, like, you can sit here today and go, all right, you got Collins and West, you got the rookies, and now you've got Cleland Furrell, and you can get Keon White in on this, and Bryce Huff is going to come back, and there's Kalia Davis, right?
08:02Like, I could, right, Jordan Elliott, and Sam O.
08:05There's a group there.
08:07So what happens when one or two of those go down over the, Chex Notes, eight remaining football games?
08:15Yeah.
08:15It feels absurd to think that one of them, or eight of them, won't get hurt the rest of the way.
08:22You're going to wind up driving to Eureka and going door-to-door looking at garage sales.
08:27And that's already where you are.
08:29And I think part of what confuses it, Mark, or makes it a little bit more difficult, is if you look at the NFL across the league, and I'm looking at only probably ten teams right now, at the most, that consider themselves sellers.
08:43And even Arizona, like, we're going with Jacoby Brissett, he wins, and the Cardinals actually have a better plus-minus than the Niners do in point differential.
08:53I don't think that Arizona, at three and five, thinks they're out of it.
08:56Dallas clearly doesn't think that they're out of it.
08:58And if you look in the AFC, yeah, the Jets, it was an absolute sell.
09:03Miami fired their GM.
09:04Tennessee's going nowhere.
09:06Cleveland and the Raiders, fine.
09:07The Bengals, I think, you're probably on the outside looking in, but I don't think that they believe that either, even though their locker room is breaking apart from the inside out.
09:17My point is that of the 32 teams, only about ten of them are legitimately sellers.
09:23So I do think that makes it harder for you to even strike a deal like you did.
09:28Now, you struck a deal with New England because Keon White had fallen out of favor.
09:33He was on their bench.
09:34They weren't going to play him.
09:35So if you could find a player like that, and I think that's what was the case with the Cowboys getting that linebacker is he had fallen out of favor with his team as well.
09:44And so he became available, but it didn't feel like there was a lot of those mid-level deals available today.
09:50No, I agree with you.
09:51And I think also what happens is that the table gets set.
09:56The whole league sees, well, this player got X in return.
10:00Well, that means that our player, now this is how much he should get.
10:05Like, for instance, and I don't know how real this is, but the reports were all over social media, that the Jets wanted for Jermaine Johnson a second-round draft pick.
10:15G-T-F-O-H.
10:17What?
10:19You want a second-rounder for Jermaine Johnson?
10:22No, I'm not doing that.
10:24I'm not doing that.
10:25That's absurd.
10:27Like, that's kind of what happens if Sauce Gardner is getting two ones and a receiver?
10:35If that's what, like, and so people start to see what's going on around the league, and I thought the prices were pretty high today.
10:42And also, especially at edge, because, and I guess this is why the Jets did it, same reason the Dolphins held on to Bradley Chubb, is I think that they sort of are like, well, this is what we want for it.
10:55Because, boy, there's a, let's see, one, two, three, four, there's 18 teams that want an edge rusher.
10:59Right.
11:00So they're going to hold a fire sale and take the highest bidder, and sometimes it gets to the point where it's like, well, nobody, nobody's going to make that bid.
11:10I know the Dolphins got rid of Jalen Phillips, but there was talk about Chubb, even Jalen Waddle.
11:15Jalen Waddle, yeah.
11:16You know, and it was like, I think a lot of those were like, well, let's just stick his name out there and see if somebody will lose their mind and give us a haul.
11:23But if not, we don't really want to trade him.
11:25And what did Seattle trade for Rashid Shahid?
11:27Was that a fourth, Grandy, or was that like?
11:31I think it was a fourth, I'll check.
11:32Yeah, let's get that.
11:34I mean, Rashid Shahid is no Jalen Waddle.
11:36Shahid is much more of an A to B straight line defense stretcher.
11:41I had him last year on my fantasy team, and you sit him, and then he has a 78-yard touchdown catch.
11:46Shahid was a four and a five.
11:48Okay.
11:49It was a four and a five.
11:51Two drop picks for Rashid.
11:54One catch.
11:54Yeah.
11:54One catch.
11:55And again, Shahid is going to.
11:57Rashid, Shahid.
11:57Shahid will be one catch for 68 yards and a touchdown.
12:00He's a field stretcher.
12:02Correct.
12:02He's a home run hitter.
12:03He had become the two in New Orleans.
12:06Right.
12:06I don't know what will happen in Seattle.
12:08They've got, I don't know if Cooper Cup is out for a long time.
12:12They've got this kid that they like in Torrey Horton, who had a big game on Monday night against Washington.
12:17And they have the guy who obviously could lay claim right now to being the best receiver in the entire league.
12:24I think maybe most underrated player on offense in the entire league.
12:28JSN.
12:28In Smith and Jigba.
12:29Yep.
12:29So, yeah.
12:31You're probably right.
12:32Like, I had this comment from my son when he woke up this morning.
12:36He's like, Chad.
12:37Big guy or little guy?
12:38Big guy.
12:39Little guy is at school.
12:40Big guy's like, it's 930 and my fantasy team's already effed.
12:46I'm like, why?
12:48Why?
12:48Because he was planning on playing Shahid.
12:51And he's like, his numbers are going to go down now.
12:53I don't think so.
12:54I do.
12:54Like, that's what I said.
12:56I don't think so.
12:58Better team, better quarterback.
12:59Yes.
12:59But probably fewer targets.
13:01Yeah.
13:01Probably fewer targets.
13:02But I think more high-quality targets.
13:04Yes.
13:05I mean, just a better operation.
13:06Succulent targets, yeah.
13:07And that's my quarterback.
13:09And speaking of fantasy, I had to text Guru last night and extend my apologies because
13:13I beat the Guru and I didn't deserve it.
13:16Congrats, though.
13:17I'll take it.
13:17It's not about deserving it.
13:18No.
13:19Nobody deserves it.
13:20We're people with laptops.
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