Joe Staley is back on KNBR this year, and touched on a number of topics on his first hit with Papa & Lund on Tuesday.
Firstly, Staley explained why he isn’t doing pre and postgame work on TV this season, after impressing in his first season as an analyst last year.
“I had to move on to other pastures,” Staley said. “I did the TV thing for a year, I figured it wasn’t for me. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed everybody over at NBC Sports Bay Area, but it wasn’t going to be a long-term thing for me.”
Interestingly, Staley wants to stay in the game, on the front office side.
“I’m now working with a sports agency. Doing a lot of that stuff with training, recruiting, scouting and I think the long-term play for me is hopefully in a front office role somewhere. But I’m kind of honing my skills as a recruiter, scouter on the road. Going to a lot of college campuses this year and kind of honing my skills as a front office guy.”
Regarding this year’s team, Staley was honest about the Jimmy Garoppolo-Trey Lance situation, and how there is some potential for things going a bit sideways.
“Looking at it from the outside, if everything goes well it’s the best situation they can have, but that’s saying that Trey is going out there and playing really well for the first couple weeks.
“The thing that I’m worried about is that he is a first-time starter in the NFL. He’s going to have his rookie mistakes. He’s going to have some situations that don’t look that great. What I worry about with the team this year is if he goes out there and doesn’t perform perfectly, are the guys in that locker room all of the sudden going to be like ‘We have a team that’s built right now to win and we have a quarterback who has taken us to where we want to be. We’ve gone to a Super Bowl with Jimmy, we’ve gone to an NFC Championship with him, why are we kind of waiting for development?’”
While the potential for a hairy situation exists, Staley believes Lance will play well.
“I personally believe that Trey is going to do really well this year. I believe that the dimension that he brings to this offense is going to open it up, and I think Kyle’s been kind of waiting for that deep threat, down the field quarterback that Trey brings. I think that’s going to open up a lot of stuff underneath, and I think he’s going to develop an offensive game plan that is completely different than what he saw with Jimmy.
“That being said, there’s going to be a couple games and a couple decisions or interceptions that are not going to be that great. That’s where I think you go back and look at the roster and how it’s been built — George Kittle, Arik Armstead, Jimmy Ward — guys like that that have been around and bring that locker room together.
“That, from my perspective, is something to keep an eye on this year.”
