Randy Moss is a member of the FOX Sports team this year, but he was a wide receiver for the 49ers in 2012 and he shared some thoughts about two of his former teammates during a conference call earlier this week.
Moss said that he didn’t think quarterback Colin Kaepernick and tight end Vernon Davis developed a “rapport” during the 2012 season, something that Davis wasn’t all that shy about saying once Kaepernick took over as the team’s quarterback. He had six catches in six games at the end of the season, but things perked up in the playoffs.
After catching one pass in the win over the Packers, Davis had 11 catches in the next two games. Davis doesn’t begrudge Moss the right to say what he thinks in his new television role, but that experience as well as spending time with the wide receivers during practice in the spring and summer has him feeling like things are different this time around.
“I feel me and Colin are on a different level than where we were last year,” Davis said, via Cam Inman of the Bay Area News Group. “You have to think about it: When a quarterback just steps in, it takes time to learn his receivers. I don’t think you can base everything on what happened last year, because a lot can change in six months,” Davis said. “Colin is a different man. Some of the things I learned this training camp, I didn’t learn last training camp.”
It takes time for players to get used to playing with one another and the 49ers offense with Kaepernick was so different than the one they were running with Alex Smith that things were going to be even more difficult in this specific case. The playoff success came at the end of the process, which bodes well for the partnership this season.