Originally posted by MC9BEAT:
Pretty much agree with your whole post. Drafting a guy in the 5th rd hoping to sneak him onto the practice squad seems dicey and a waste. Keeping 3 kickers is wasting a roster spot that is badly needed on a team like the 49ers. It is kind of insane to even think of drafting a punter unless you fully expect him to beat out Lee and win the job, especially in the 5th rd. With Lee as your fallback position and nobody of the opinion that this punter is the Ray Guy of his generation it would have made more sense to trade back further and draft him in the 7th rd.
I would have thought they would go for a place kicker before a punter to save significantly more cap space but maybe they didn't see one that they liked.
As far as I could tell no other punters or place kickers were even drafted. A pretty good indicator this punter would be around in the 7th round but certainly with Lee as a fall back you could gamble on it.
I would have liked to see the 49ers at least go after 1 of the top kickers like Manton or Brindza as a UDFA to try and win the job and save us a ton in cap space. They got what , 4 receivers but not 1 kicker?
Maybe Baalke has a new punt formation in mind to split up the defenses ability to block or return the punt. Having 2 punters in the backfield will make teams second guess what is going on. Who's getting the snap? Will he kick it? Will he lateral it to the other punter? Will he throw or run it? Genius.
[ Edited by ltrain on May 12, 2015 at 11:41 AM ]