Colin Kaepernick has started the last two games at quarterback for the 49ers and the results haven’t shown any improvement over what they were getting from Blaine Gabbert or what they got from Kaepernick in the eight starts he made during the 2015 season.
Kaepernick completed 59 percent of his passes in those games and averaged 6.6 yards per attempt. Those numbers are down to 46 percent and 5.2 yards per attempt this year while the 49ers offense has seen their yards and points per game drop a bit from where they were with Gabbert at the helm.
While those numbers don’t do much to support the idea that Kaepernick is trending in the right direction coming out of the 49ers’ bye week, offensive coordinator Curtis Modkins expressed confidence that improvement is coming.
“There’s a lot involved with the passing game,” Modkins said, via CSNBayArea.com. “It’s not just Colin. It’s protections. It’s backs. It’s being in the right places, timing. Colin knows and Colin will probably tell you this same thing, he needs to be, there are some throws that he probably wishes he had been a little bit more accurate on. There were some things he was accurate on that we dropped it or there’s a lot of things involved. But Colin is fine. He’s been up and down a little bit, but he’s fine and he’ll continue to get better. I don’t have an issue with where he’s at.”
It’s been a small sample size this season, obviously, but the pace of Kaepernick’s improvement will have to pick up pretty dramatically to offer a counter to the regression that’s taken place over the last couple of seasons that’s going to offer real promise for the future.