Ted "The Voice of the 49ers" Robinson joined Chad, Jo & Lo on 95.7 The Game Tuesday morning and discussed the San Francisco 49ers' quarterback situation and the competition between Colin Kaepernick and Blaine Gabbert.
"The team, at least what we saw last year, responded better to Gabbert," said Robinson. "Maybe Colin can repair that. And that would be something that I hope he started to do in minicamp and he would have five weeks in training camp to try to repair things in the locker room with his team."
Robinson went on to point out that Kaepernick has never competed for the 49ers' starting quarterback job. "Not one day. He never competed for the job when he was the backup," said Robinson. "It was Alex Smith's job with no competition. And the day Alex got hurt, the job was given to Kaepernick and there was never one day when Alex Smith had a chance to win it back. I personally think that would be a great thing for the 49ers if there was legit competition. And whether it's Gabbert or Kaepernick, the guy that competes and wins that contest is the guy that starts at quarterback because it hasn't happened around this franchise in a long time."
The discussion moved on to Kaepernick's past success and his NFC Championship game appearances as well as Gabbert's lack of success in the league. "Kaepernick went to two NFC Championship games and unfortunately for the 49ers, that second championship game in Seattle, the first three quarters where I think Colin played really well – well enough to win that championship game for three quarters – was really the last time we saw him play well. I didn't think he really ever had a good game in 2014 and last year was just a complete loss."
There has been much discussion about Kaepernick's fit within Chip Kelly's offense, which relies heavily on accuracy from his quarterbacks. "At some point, you have to throw the ball where it's supposed to be thrown and Colin hasn't done that," said Robinson. "If he can ever discover the ability to throw the ball where it's supposed to be thrown, we'd have a whole different conversation going on. We'd be talking about NFC Championships again."
"They have weapons to be better," Robinson said while answering a question about the team's personnel around the quarterback. "Successful? I guess that would depend on what our definition is, right? They have weapons to be better. And look, Colin last year played when [Carlos] Hyde was on the field. When Gabbert played, it was running back of the week, right? That's one of the things that we have to remember. Vernon Davis was playing when Kaepernick was there. Tight ends were all banged up and hurt by the time Gabbert played. Blaine Gabbert played with a lot of lesser accomplished players in the second half of the season.
"But I'll say this for Colin last year: There's no question to me that Colin was hurt by the team's inability to have the offensive line set. That when he was going to the line of scrimmage the first half of the year and he saw the center and the right guard positions, he got a little jumpy and I don't blame him one bit. So that's not on Colin. That, to me, is on the organization and they have to make sure that the offensive line is better set this year."
Robinson concluded by saying, "There's enough weapons with Chip Kelly's coaching to think they're going to score more points. They should score more points. The offense has to be better than it was last year."
You can listen to the entire 95.7 The Game interview here.
