Colin Kaepernick: Will San Francisco 49ers quarterback reach elite status?

Colin Kaepernick will face his former teammate and the man whose job he took this weekend, as the San Francisco 49ers host Alex Smith and the Kansas City Chiefs at Levi’s Stadium. Smith and Kaepernick will always be linked in the minds of football fans because the 49ers picked the young stud (Kaepernick) over the steady veteran who had been with the team for years (Smith). Both quarterbacks have experienced success since parting ways, but nagging questions linger about how good Kaepernick can really be.

If you were going to build a quarterback from the ground up using ideal physical traits from past NFL signal-callers, you would wind up with Colin Kaepernick. A howitzer of an arm that fits a Jeff George-caliber shell? Check. Sprinter’s speed that could match Michael Vick as a rookie? Check. The size and strength of a young Peyton Manning? Check. Kaepernick has every physical tool you could possibly want in a quarterback, but a few weeks into his fourth season, the 26-year-old is still struggling to realize his enormous potential.

So far this season Kaepernick has been adequate but hasn’t shown the kind of growth he should have in his third year as a starter. His quarterback rating (91.2) and Total QBR (58.2) both rank 19th in the NFL. That’s not good. He has completed 66.9 percent of his passes, which is a big improvement over last season (58.4 percent) but his yards per attempt (7.36) are down from last year (7.69) and he currently ranks 17th in the league in that department. Through four games, Kaepernick also has just six touchdown passes and four interceptions.

The 49ers are a team that will pound the ball on offense and therefore won’t lean too heavily on their passing game. But they are paying Kaepernick like a top-tier starting quarterback and should expect that level of return. In June San Francisco signed him to a deal worth $61 million in guaranteed money. Yes, the 49ers can opt out of the contract after each season if they so choose, but he’s still making $13.073 this season and is due $12.4 million in 2015 and there is no way they dump him before then.

Kaepernick is still a major work in progress. He’s a lump of clay that needs to be molded. He’s Walter White from the pilot episode, when the 49ers need him to be the terrifying, ruthless killer from “Ozymandias.”

I personally thought Kaepernick would have progressed further than he has up to this point. He still throws everything on a rope and rarely uses touch or shows the ability to drop a pass accurately into coverage. He’s completing a better percentage of his passes this year but still looks uncomfortable in the pocket. When he drops back he typically has happy feet and doesn’t seem settled.

Kaepernick has already been sacked 10 times this season and that comes despite the fact that he can pull the ball down and run as well as any quarterback in the NFL. His ability to dance away from defenders in the pocket would make Alfonso Ribeiro jealous, but eventually defenders in the NFL will make you pay for taking too much time. The problem is, Kaepernick is far too slow making his reads and when he does get the ball off late, he often tries to fire it into rapidly closing windows. On this play, Kaepernick misses a read badly and doesn’t pick up the blitz from Arizona’s Anthony Jefferson. The result? A huge sack late in the fourth quarter of a close game.

The issue with Kaepernick having that rocket launcher strapped to his shoulder is that he relies on it far too often. Yes, it comes in handy on occasion, like when he fired this pass to Stevie Johnson for the game-winning touchdown in Week 4 against the Eagles. There might not be another NFL quarterback who could make that throw, at that speed, into that window. It was a thing of beauty.

The downside to his reliance on that arm is this throw against the Chicago Bears in Week 2, where he scrambled left and threw the ball across his body into a small window. It was intercepted by rookie cornerback Kyle Fuller. He could get away with that pass in college at Nevada, but NFL defenses will make him pay for that mistake every time.

In addition to that, Kaepernick still stares down his receivers too much and often throws without fully setting his feet. Those are things that should be fixed by now and mechanics should not be an issue in his fourth NFL season.

Kaepernick has every physical attribute you could possibly want in a franchise quarterback and he does make plays that will “wow” you. But the mental and mechanical side of his game have to get better if he’s going to be the long-term solution in San Francisco.

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