The Continuing Decline of Colin Kaepernick in 2015

While Colin Kaepernick is a name that most fantasy football fans are familiar with, he might not be a name that is as relevant as he has been in years past. In a standard scoring league, there are an increasing amount of reasons why Kaepernick will further his decline in the 2015 season.

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First off, Kaepernick no longer has Jim Harbaugh as his coach. While Harbaugh isn’t the one on the field making the throws, he was the coach that stood behind Kaepernick and gave him the starting job over Alex Smith as well as the one that chose him in the 2011 NFL draft and taught Kaepernick how to play like an NFL caliber passer, while working with his offensive coordinator to find ways to hide some of his flaws. Kaepernick’s mentor has now moved on to bigger and better things at the University of Michigan after being forced out of San Francisco despite turning one of the worst teams in football into a team that went to the three consecutive NFC Championship games.

Also, while the retirement of Patrick Willis and Chris Borland on the defensive side of the ball doesn’t necessarily have direct fantasy implications for Kaepernick, it adds additional drama to a team whose quarterback already has immense pressure to perform after receiving a monstrous seven-year, $126M contract.

Flipping back to the offensive side of the ball, the 49ers running back situation isn’t going to help Kaepernick at all. Reggie Bush, who is long past the days of being a cute redemption story with the Detroit Lions, ran for a mere 297 yards last season, losing starting time to Joique Bell and Theo Riddick. Carlos Hyde and Mike Davis are both relative unknowns, which makes it hard to bet anything on either of them with no real previous workload. Kaepernick and the San Francisco offense are going to struggle without Frank Gore, who had been a rock for the 49ers since Kaepernick was a junior at John H. Pitman High School in Turlock, California.

Looking at the receiving corps for the 49ers, outside of a 34-year old Anquan Boldin (barring any sort of regression which is certainly possible at his age), there aren’t any other great receivers. Kaepernick’s secondary option is a rapidly declining and increasingly irrelevant Vernon Davis, who is on the wrong side of 30 and may lose his starting job after he played so poorly in 2014 (235 Yards, 2 TD, both career lows).

It will be hard to gauge how well Torrey Smith will play with a new quarterback in 2015 considering he was never consistently able to become a number one receiver in Baltimore with Joe Flacco throwing him the ball who has been a much better passer than Colin Kaepernick.

After Boldin, Davis, and Smith, pick your poison on your ancillary receivers who include Bruce Ellington, Jerome Simpson and DeAndre Smelter. The point is, it doesn’t matter who the complementary receivers are because all three figure to be largely irrelevant.

The Niners offensive line is the only thing that gives fantasy football fans any shred of hope that Kaepernick won’t regress in 2015. Two of the three interior lineman are above average offensive lineman and with San Francisco possessing two great tackles in Joe Staley and Anthony Davis…wait, Davis retired too? Great, now the one thing that figured to be a positive for the 49ers is an issue...

All jokes aside, there is nothing funny about Kaepernick’s touchdown-to-interception ratio last season. He finished the season with 3,474 yards, 19 TDS, 11 INT with 557 rushing yards and two rushing touchdowns. With numbers like that, which only figure to get smaller in 2015, Kaepernick should not be considered a top-ten fantasy football quarterback.

Additionally, while Kaepernick was never a down-the-field gunslinger like Brett Favre, his passing yards in his last seven games of the 2014 campaign are alarming. They read 193, 256, 121, 174, 141, 114, 204. 121!? 114!? Those are Christian Ponder-type numbers that even Niners backup quarterback Blaine Gabbert could likely hit.

Another problem with Kaepernick is his mobility. While fantasy football fans often become enamored with the thoughts of starting a mobile quarterback, they do present an increased injury risk from taking additional hits while scrambling for extra yards. Meaning if Kaepernick is your starter, a capable backup should be in place in the event he suffers an injury that sidelines him.

All in all while there are a lot of reasons why Kaepernick will decline in 2015, it should be noted that there are definitely worse options at quarterback in your fantasy leagues. Although he may not be a top-fifteen fantasy quarterback when it’s all said and done, he likely should be higher than the likes of Joe Flacco and Alex Smith on your fantasy football draft boards based on the upside of his mobility.

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