Happy 49'ers started with a win, any experts on how the team is this year?
Prognosis not great. Yesterday was one of the few games you'll be expected to win this season, only because Seattle are so bad this year.
The obvious problem is quarterback, where Alex Smith is back for another year, despite being a huge disappointment (he was No1 overall pick a few years back) and will no doubt get massive stick from the fans sooner rather than later. They drafted Colin Kapaernick as his likely successor but he looked poor in pre-season and is obviously not ready to start.
Frank Gore aside, there aren't many weapons in the offence, so they'll struggle to score points (NB: two of last night's scores were from kickoff and punt returns from Ted Ginn). Defensively, they're a little better, more middle of the pack than at the bottom end.
They didn't do a great deal in free agency this year, and it looks like new coach Jim Harbaugh is building slowly for later years. They'd be a contender in the 'suck for Luck' stakes (Stanford QB Andrew Luck being the likely No1 draft pick next year, and touted as the most pro-ready college QB since Peyton Manning). However, they'll struggle to lose enough games for this simply down to the fact that they're in the worst division in the NFL, the NFC West. The Seahawks have QB issues of their own, Arizona is rebuilding with Kevin Kolb this year (so a bit of an unknown quantity) so only St Louis look to have any sort of stability and should win the division comfortably (got 2/1 on them doing so, which feels huge to me).
Gut feel is that you're heading for 4-6 wins this season, and probably 3rd place in the division. I think St Louis win it with something like an 8-8 record (which is still better than last year when Seattle won it with 7-9!)
PS: I don't claim to be an expert by replying, but I don't mind putting up a prediction for it to be shot down in flames later on.
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