The Sad And Strange Decline Of Colin Kaepernick
By Sam McPherson
As the San Francisco 49ers lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday to see their record fall to 1-6, it was sad to see quarterback Colin Kaepernick play as a shadow of his former self. The onetime star QB completed less than 50 percent of his passes for the second game in a row, and he also committed two turnovers in the 34-17 loss.
It's strange to remember that Kaepernick was once the "next big thing" in the NFL after he posted a 7-3 record, including the playoffs, in 2012 after stepping in for the injured Alex Smith midway through that season. The 49ers came up one score short of a sixth Super Bowl win that postseason, and forecasts were all sunny for the future of Kaepernick and the San Francisco squad.
Now, all that seems like a dream as Kaepernick has posted a 3-12 record in his last 15 starts while the 49ers have gone from league power to league laughingstock. What went wrong? How did this happen?
Accuracy never improved
One of Kaep's clear flaws from the start—which too many people overlooked—was his inconsistency in hitting open receivers. While he posted a 62.4 percent completion rate in the regular season for 2012, it masked some serious issues. In five of his last six starts that season, including the playoffs, Kaepernick failed to complete even 58 percent of his passes. In a modern NFL where 65 percent is roughly average, his accuracy was flailing. Defenses were already adjusting to his game.
Of course, the team's wins and Kaepernick's legs blurred that reality for a lot of people, and a wiser QB would have spent the offseason working on those flaws. But the young star didn't handle his newfound celebrity well, and when 2013 rolled around, his completion percentage dropped to 58.4 percent for the entire year. But again, the team won 12 games and just missed a second Super Bowl appearance after losing on the road in the NFC Championship Game.
The trend was there, but many people ignored it: The team was still winning lots of games, and the defense was hiding a lot of Kaepernick's issues. Along with the telltale inaccuracy, the QB's other metrics declined, too. Most noticeably, Kaepernick led the NFL in adjusted yards per attempt in 2012 at 8.6 yards, and that number dropped to 7.8 in 2013 and to 6.9 in 2014. Last year, it was just 6.2 yards.
Overall team talent began to wane
Remember how good the San Francisco defense was in 2011-2014? Each of those seasons, the 49ers fielded a Top 5 NFL defense, in terms of yards allowed per game. The benefit of that strength helped hide Kaepernick's weaknesses for a long time, as the 49ers still stayed competitive through most of 2014 before collapsing at the end in Jim Harbaugh's final season as the head coach.
In 2015, after the retirement of linebacker Patrick Willis and some other personnel losses, the 49ers defense dropped to 29th in the league. That meant Kaepernick had to do more to win, and his skill set with its flaws wasn't up to the task. Defenses understood that if the run was taken away from Kaep, he wasn't going to be able to beat anyone with his arm.
It's an understated fact, obviously, that a QB can only do so much. Look at Drew Brees in New Orleans: Four of the last five seasons, the Saints defense has been at the bottom of the league rankings, and even Brees' brilliance hasn't kept his team above .500 with that problem. Kaepernick isn't Brees, of course, so the drop in success has been quite painful to watch.
Kaepernick's state of mind
San Francisco's quarterback always been a lightning rod for controversy, long before this season's national anthem issue. Whether it was posing nude for a magazine after losing the Super Bowl or his attempts to trademark "Kaepernicking" (the act of kissing one's bicep in celebratory fashion), the 49ers QB wasn't focusing enough on his game when he should have been.
Not every quarterback can be Peyton Manning; that's obvious. Yet if Kaepernick had just focused a bit more on improving himself every offseason, some of these downward trajectories in his career might have been avoided. The deterioration of the S.F. defense is not his fault, obviously, but if Kaep was willing to take credit during the defense's great years, he also needed to be prepared to accept blame during the defense's down years.
Some players simply aren't ready to handle fame in the NFL when it finds them, and Kaepernick was one of those players. Right now, it looks as though his career as a professional QB is winding down, and all 49ers fans will have left is the memory of those two glorious playoff runs with Kaep at the helm in 2012-2013. Right now, it looks like it could be a long time before San Francisco plays meaningful January football again.
