Andrew Luck will teach Jim Harbaugh’s offense to Colin Kaepernick

Posted by Michael David Smith on May 6, 2011, 8:48 AM EDT
AP

New 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick can’t talk to coach Jim Harbaugh until the lockout ends. But he can get some coaching from Harbaugh’s star pupil.

Kaepernick says he’s in the process of moving to Santa Clara, near the 49ers’ headquarters — and near the campus of Stanford, whose quarterback, Andrew Luck, is well versed in Harbaugh’s offense after playing for Harbaugh the last three seasons. Kaepernick said he met Luck last year at the Manning Passing Academy and expects to talk to Luck frequently about Harbaugh’s offense.

“Especially if the lockout stays on,” Kaepernick said, via the Sacramento Bee. “I’m going to try and pick his brain as much as I can and try to get a jump-start into this offense, and pick up as much as I can from him.”

Although the 49ers weren’t allowed to give Kaepernick the playbook after drafting him, they did give their playbook to some veterans on the one day that the lockout was lifted, and it stands to reason that one of those veterans would have passed the playbook along to Kaepernick and other players who couldn’t get it directly from the coaches. So Luck may not be the only one teaching Kaepernick Harbaugh’s offense.

Kaepernick will have more to say on today’s edition of ProFootballTalk Live.

Permalink 25 Comments Feed for comments Back to top

25 responses to “Andrew Luck will teach Jim Harbaugh’s offense to Colin Kaepernick”

  1. You know this is a joke. On the fans. All these coaches (with the tacit approval of the owners) are colluding with the players to circumvent the lock out. Coaches are giving out playbook; players are conducting organized workouts. So how’s this different than any other May in the NFL calendar? Oh yeah free agents are being screwed and the NFL & its players are about give us the worst material when football starts.

  2. Wow, you would think that the NFL teams would have some kind of confidentiality agreement with their players regarding the playbook. Who needs video of walkthroughs anymore? Belichick must have copies of every team’s playbook by now!

  3. That will be good practice for him for when he has to teach offense to the vikes next year…

  4. I heard a interview with CK the other day where the interviewer advised him to get Luck’s # and he said he already had it and was going to call Luck for sure.
    It would be hard not to root for CK. He seems like such a nice, genuine, happy kid. I wish Gruden had done one of his shows on CK. I think Gruden would have been impressed.

  6. tundey,

    Seems to me that the rational thing to do here is to continue with the terms of the recently expired CBA during this summer and football season while also continuing with the negotiations.

    In other words, lift the lockout as a gesture of good faith and get back at the table while still conducting business.

    The only party who can do that is the owners, so the ball is in their court. Unfortunately, they’ve got the toughest defender ever in their face: their own egos.

  7. txchief – What are you talking about? Your statement makes no sense. It’s a college qb teaching the nuances of Harbaughs offense to a rookie. Luck doesn’t have the 49ers playbook but he has played in Harbaughs system. And as for teammates passing along copies of the playbook, why would you not want that? Their passing it to teammates to help them out their not faxing copies to the Seahawks.

  8. Would it be against NCAA rules if Luck were to charge for his services? Of course in the delusional minds of the NCAA that would be considered a violation of some sort, the schmucks

  9. It will be good for CK to get more familiar with Luck since he will be holding a clipboard watching him from the 49ers sidelines for the next 10 years starting in the Fall of 2012.

  11. wvugrad,

    Of course the NCAA will see it as a major infraction, and they will give Chadron State the death penalty for Stanford’s crimes.

  12. Did everyone who thumbs downed that correction I made realize that I was correcting myself not someone else? 😀
    I would never pick at another’s post like that unless they were calling our someone’s spelling etc. while having a bunch of their own errors.

    Personally I don’t care who screws with injury reports, what backdoor ways coaches are using to get the playbooks to their players right now, etc. To me, that’s smart and/or while pushing the envelope, still a risk worth taking for competitive reasons. People are currently in the “let’s canonize Tags because he isn’t Goodell” mode and it’s a little bit of revisionist history. That said, the one thing I miss DESPERATELY about Tags is that he didn’t try to PC-ize the NFL the way Goodell is. I think he realized that there has been and always will be some backdoor stuff going on and most of it is small potatoes and part of doing business. Punish/investigate the big things (like when union members make complaints about coaches overstepping the rules on offseason contact or too many OTAs, etc.). Those are violations of the CBA that could result in players enduring actual physical harm and NEED to be regulated correctly. Goodell’s problem is that even though he was with the league and the Jets prior to his role as commish, he doesn’t seem to acknowledge or respect the unsanitized/visceral side of the game that exists and always will. NFL football isn’t and never will be some choirboy “let’s not offend anyone” thing..ever. And it’s part of what I like..there’s some grit there. Heck there wouldn’t even BE an NFL without it.

  13. @tundey: how is that a joke on the fans? I’m a fan, and I would definitely prefer that the teams be as ready as they possibly can be to put a watchable product on the field. If coaches and players are skirting the rules and communicating, they may be screwing the owners and their own union, respectively, but it would mark one of the first times during the lockout when someone was doing something that would benefit fans.

  14. I had the same first thought as others: that Kaepernick may eventually be Luck’s backup. But it seems like a virtual certainty that Luck will be the #1 pick, and I don’t think the 49ers are the worst team in the NFL, so they probably won’t be making that pick. (The Panthers could be, though, so Luck could fall to #2. Still don’t see the 9ers being there. The Panthers will feel pretty stupid having to pass on Luck because they’re committed to Cam freaking Newton, though.)

  15. @bradwins
    I’m not sure you should feel so bad about Carolina giving up the Luck pick because of Cam. Can you imagine the kind of picks another team would give up for Luck in a trade?

  16. @sophandros

    Brilliant! Love the post.

    Even though the owners are trying their hardest to give us a garbage season, players and coaches continue to push hard and find workarounds even though they aren’t being paid or have reduced salaries (coaches and team officials). Just by working out they are taking a risk, yet they are doing it.

    Teams are going to tank their season for Andrew Luck…he is that good. Harbaugh is the man!

  17. that shows some great initiative and good smarts….hopefully he can turn that into something palpable for the niners passing game

  18. CKL says:
    May 6, 2011 10:46 AM
    Did everyone who thumbs downed that correction I made realize that I was correcting myself not someone else?
    I would never pick at another’s post like that unless they were calling our someone’s spelling etc. while having a bunch of their own errors.
    _____________________

    Yeah, we get it. It doesn’t matter if you said “a” instead of “an.” Nobody’s going to attack you for it. I have a lot of comments to read this morning instead of working so I don’t want to hit a speed bump by reading someone correcting their own grammar when it doesn’t matter. We also don’t like it when you complain that you got a lot of thumbs down on your grammar correction.

  19. That’s actually very kind of Andrew Luck. Usually, we see the ex-players of coaches who leave the program devastated and have a grudge.

    Luck is being pretty classy to Harbaugh and Colin Kaepernick.

  20. It is funny that Luck is so much bigger of a star attraction, still in college, that his pic gets put on CK’s headlined story.

  21. The intentions were good, but Andy and Colin kept getting into giggling fits there in the dorm room, and little was accomplished. One of them would fart, one had a booger hanging from his nose. Mad magazines lying around on the floor….you know how it goes.

  22. Good for Colin. Better than going to these voluntary unorganized workouts other teams are doing. At least he’ll have a leg up when this lockout is over.

  23. @hobart is just bitter that the niners plucked Colin away from the raiders. (and the fact they drafted a career backup college corner to replace Nhamdi)

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to leave a comment. Not a member? Register now!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.