The 49ers have been in training camp for two full weeks. So, Chip Kelly, are you getting close to naming a starting quarterback?
“No,” the 49ers’ head coach said Monday morning on the Murph and Mac show, “we haven’t done anything.”
Kelly laughed at a question about the statistics the team’s hard-working beat reporters are putting out in their articles, detailing completions and attempts, touchdowns and interceptions by Blaine Gabbert and Colin Kaepernick.
“We have our own metrics we measure our guys by,” Kelly said, “and both those guys are doing a great job.”
This is why Sunday’s preseason opener at Levi’s Stadium against the Houston Texans will be one of the most noteworthy NFL exhibition games on the schedule. It’s still unclear if Gabbert or Kaepernick will start the game, or if each quarterback will rotate in the first quarter, sacrificing rhythm for fair repetitions against Houston’s starting defense.
Kelly has been cryptic about the competition except for one aspect: preseason games will matter a lot more than practice repetitions.
“I think sometimes a quarterback is a little different in a game than he is in practice just because he knows he’s not going to get hit in practice,” Kelly said. “If he does, it’s something inadvertent where someone bumps into him. Aaron Lynch and NaVorro Bowman aren’t coming in full speed trying to take their heads off.”
Sometimes offensive play calling in the preseason is vanilla — you don’t want to put too much out there on film for opponents to study. But the 49ers might not have that luxury in 2016. Kelly needs to find out whether Gabbert or Kaepernick is the right man to lead his football team, and maybe even more specifically, if Kaepernick has taken a mental leap after a disastrous 2015 season.