Bunde Pulls the Plug on Kaepernick

After a down year in Santa Clara will Kaep get his groove back?

It's amazing how quickly one can fall of the proverbial cliff. However that seems to be the status quo in Santa Clara these days. I half expect the next ESPN ticker to read "49ers moving to Los Angeles." What I didn't expect was to see a potential franchise fantasy quarterback being dealt for spare parts.

Fresh off a 2012 season that saw the aforementioned 49ers narrowly losing the Super Bowl, Colin Kaepernick was all the rage and had taken the fantasy world by storm. A dual-threat that help jumpstart many fantasy rosters. Could this guy be Michael Vick 2.0? The team formerly know as Dr. Chim Richald's owned both Aaron Rodgers and Kaepernick, so GM Brett Bunde was faced with a dilemma: which piece do you move on from? Now in March of 2015 both players are set to make their hay on someone else's farm. To be fair, trading Rodgers helped get part of this team's namesake on the roster but moving on from Kaep not two years later seems like a desperate divorce.

In looking at the trade, it seems like it wasn't so much about the players as it was the collateral. Bunde needed someway to move into the first two rounds of the upcoming draft and try to capitalize on this year's wealth of talent. A third next year at this point would be similar to a late 4th rounder in this year's draft making the move necessary, but still unfortunate that a franchise player like Kaepernick commands so little value in the market. 

Will West lead a crowded Cleveland backfield?

Gold Standard needed some depth at quarterback after moving on from Nick Foles. In Acquiring Andre Ellington, the Towson terror Terrance West was made expendable. On his new team West will probably end up at best as a bye week filler, but with the likes of Le'Veon Bell, Jeremy Hill, and a resurgent Lamar Miller makes it a doubtful supposition.

The big questions in this trade will be: which player(s) will exceed expectations? What will the 2015 draft turn in to? It's early in the year, but the moves so far are definitely looking golden for Gold Standard. Keenan & Robs? Bunde, like the rest of us still have some work to do.