It’s July 6, so best we can do with football news is going over some random rankings and getting pissed off about it.
The rankings in question come via Seth Walder and Mike Clay of ESPN, who ranked the 49ers roster as the 8th best in the NFL. For a team full of blue chippers that went to the NFC Championship Game with the last pick in the draft, it does seem a bit low. Especially so if you look at some of the teams ahead of them. Here’s the top eight:
- Kansas City Chiefs
- Philadelphia Eagles
- Buffalo Bills
- Miami Dolphins
- Cincinnati Bengals
- Dallas Cowboys
- Los Angeles Chargers
- San Francisco 49ers
There are some teams on that list the the 49ers seem clearly better than, namely the Chargers, who disappoint just about every year despite having one of the most talented quarterbacks in the league.
Being the good sport that he is, Walder joined KNBR on Thursday to defend the list, and explained that the lack of a franchise QB is the primary reason the 49ers are so low.
“The seven teams in front of them all have franchise guys,” Walder said. “If Trey Lance makes it tough on them, that’s a really great problem to have. We don’t have evidence that that’s going to happen, and I don’t think that we have a lot of evidence that that should happen. I was impressed by what we got out of [Brock] Purdy, but we’re still talking about a limited sample on a seventh-round pick.”
It’s an understandable position, even if there is room to quibble with the notion that all of those teams have franchise quarterbacks. Dak Prescott and Tua Tagovailoa might both be players their franchises have gone all-in on, but both have question marks both with consistency and availability. It would stand to reason that if both are so good, and have better rosters than the 49ers, their teams would have fared better in the postseason in recent years.
Perhaps more understandably, Walder thinks that the 49ers offensive line is questionable.
“I think offensive line to me in the non-Trent Williams division is a question mark,” Walder said. “I think if you look at some of the numbers that we’ve got some weaknesses. The kind of system the 49ers run might be able to mitigate that with play-action, motion, roll outs, things like that. But to me, that would be another potential weakness.”
That’s probably fair. The O-line is very young an relatively inconsistent outside of Williams. Overall, however, Walder agrees that the 49ers are very talented.
“The team is stacked outside of quarterback, I agree,” Walder concluded.
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