San Francisco 49ers' Trent Baalke and Jim Harbaugh 2011 Strategy

I was not blessed with ESP—darn it—but I think I am getting a glimmer of the 49ers front office strategy for the team in 2011.

The lack of free-agent signings during the crucial first day of signings cost the team the best and second-best defensive corners in the league in Nnamdi and Cromartie.  A competent center, nose tackle and linebacker were lost to signings with other teams.  Holes in the talent of the team prevail, especially in the defensive side of the ball.

As this day dawned the team had no credible corners, nose tackle, center and is missing at least one strong linebacker.

It may be early to hypothesize on the plans of the 49ers front office.  But I’m dumb enough to try, so check this out:

The 49ers seem to have decided that this is NOT a playoff caliber of team or year.  They seem to have decided to take the long view, to build on what they have in-house and plug holes each year until they have a strong and super-competitive team.

They have done this before.  It is the method used during the 1979 through the 1990s era.  Each year they added another two or three sterling players that would become part of the team of the eighties.  Along the way they dumped the chaff and kept the wheat.

In 1979, when Eddie DeBartolo, Bill Walsh and Joe Montana arrived, the team was a loser, but had flashes of brilliance that made them interesting even as the season becomes a loser. 

Three years later in January 1982, “The Catch” propelled them to a Super Bowl and caused 10,000 near heart attacks across the San Francisco Bay area and 100,000 in Dallas and Texas. 

During the next decade they made history.  Of the 12 retired numbers for the honored 49ers players, five are from players of that decade:  Steve Young (No. 8), Joe Montana (No. 16), Ronnie Lott (No. 42), Jerry Rice (No. 80) and Dwight Clark (No. 87).

That period of great football is the reason many of us even watch, wring hands, cuss and agonize over them.

So today we have a team with a new coach and quite possibly a new quarterback; a combination that takes time and practice to gel.  The coach needs time to learn about his players’ capabilities and weaknesses. The quarterback has to learn about his job at a super-elevated and much accelerated level.

The team as a whole needs to learn exactly what it can depend on those two to do in many different situations.

The team also has no first line receiver to match the talents of the older quarterback, Alex Smith, or the new one, Colin Kaepernick.  It has an oft-injured star receiver that acts simultaneously like a wimp, a spoiled brat and a egoistic diva whose performance so far has been merely average and who will probably be released next season to save salary cap money.

It also has no experienced center and too many holes throughout the defensive side of the ball to plug up with free agency. 

Lots to fix.  Lots to stabilize.  Lots to learn.  Perhaps it is too much to expect that the entire job can be wrapped up in a single season.

So, just looking at the situation from afar—very much afar—I’d guess that this is not a balls to the wall, pedal to the metal, go for broke and all-chips-in-to-win kind of year. 

I’d guess that the 2011 front office strategy is to treat it as a simple, normal NFL team-building year.

Prove me wrong with facts and I’ll admit it.