by Andrew Healy

The great sports movie characters follow similar trajectories. Norman Dale. Willie Beamen. Ricky Bobby. Get to the top, fall all the way to the bottom, then recover back to the heights. In real sports, that trip is much harder to pull off. The Kurt Warner story is rare. Players and coaches who hit bottom usually stay on the floor.

Colin Kaepernick's performance this year puts him close to a zone that great quarterbacks almost never enter. With Sunday's performance (18-of-33 for 174 yards, 1 TD, 2 INT, 2.45 ANY/A) against Oakland's 30th-ranked defense, Kaepernick's DVOA for the season fell to -10.1%. After ranking third in DVOA in his first half-season in 2012 and seventh last year, Kaepernick is now the 29th-best quarterback in football. Last year, Kaepernick was sandwiched between Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson in the rankings. This year, he's keeping company with Mark Sanchez and Austin Davis.

Kaepernick's very bad day against the Raiders showcased the biggest difference between his play this year and that of his first two seasons. Kaepernick completed just two of his nine deep throws for 42 yards, with an interception on the game's first offensive play. That futility on throws traveling more than 15 yards through the air has plagued the 49ers' passing game this entire season.

Colin Kaepernick's Exotic Journey From Ryan To Vick Y/A on

Deep Throws Y/A on

Short Throws Sack Rate 2012 Kaepernick 12.50 5.36 6.5% Rest of League 10.72 5.01 6.0% 2013 Kaepernick 10.86 5.14 7.4% Rest of League 10.47 5.03 6.2% 2014 Kaepernick 8.95 5.25 9.2% Rest of League 11.46 5.34 6.0%

In his first season, Kaepernick was in the stratosphere as a deep thrower with Matt Ryan his closest comparison in yards per attempt on deep throws. Last year, Kaepernick was still a little above average. This year, only four teams (Vikings, Dolphins, Jets, and Raiders) throw for fewer yards per attempt on deep passes than the 49ers. Kaepernick's closest comparison in yards per attempt this year is Michael Vick. In just two years, Kaepernick has completed a strange, exotic journey from Ryan to Vick.

Kaepernick's own play obviously isn't the only reason the 49ers' deep passing game has fallen off so dramatically. The offensive line's play is not at its previous levels, which accounts in part for the increase in sack rate. As Bill Barnwell noted on Grantland, Michael Crabtree has not performed up to his earlier level of performance. Crabtree's decline hits Kaepernick harder than it would have his predecessor, as Alex Smith threw a higher share of passes to Vernon Davis.

But it's a little tricky to blame Kaepernick's declining play on the receiving corps, given the state of that unit in the previous two mostly successful seasons for the 49ers' passing game. In 2012, Crabtree was healthy, but Mario Manningham was second on the team in catches. Last year, the 49ers added Anquan Boldin, but Crabtree missed most of the season. This year, they have Crabtree, Boldin, Stevie Johnson, and Davis. It seems hard to argue that Kaepernick's targets are worse this year than in the previous two. Assigning responsibility for the 49ers' passing woes this season is very inexact, given the impossibility of separating the quarterback from his teammates. To me, it seems difficult to argue that most of the blame should be laid anywhere other than on Kaepernick himself.

For a team that less than two years ago seemed so set at football's two essential positions -- head coach and quarterback -- the 49ers' future at both spots is surprisngly uncertain. Jim Harbaugh has some Norman Dale-esque qualities as a wondercoach with questionable fashion sense who's a spoonful of competitiveness away from complete insanity. Like Dale's comeback at Hickory High, it also seems exceedingly likely that Harbaugh will have a successful second act after wearing his welcome thin in San Francisco. Almost no coach consistently gets subtle things right the way Harbaugh does. In Week 12 against Washington, he stole three points that no other coach, not even the hoodie, would have taken. The 49ers would be hard-pressed to replace Harbaugh with a coach nearly as good.

Would Kaepernick be as difficult to replace? There are two parts to that question, one about finding another quarterback and the other about how good Kaepernick is likely to be going forward. We can get some insights into the latter issue by looking at how quarterbacks have performed over their entire careers according to their first three years. At first glance, this doesn't look too bad for Kaepernick. Across all quarterbacks over the last 25 years, each of the first three seasons is about equally predictive of career success. However, Kaepernick has an unusual career trajectory so far, and quarterbacks like him don't really project all that well.

Quarterbacks with Year 3 DVOA at least 10 points lower than their average DVOA in Years 1 and 2 usually end up looking a lot more like their Year 3 selves than they Year 1 or Year 2 versions. For these early-career fallers, Year 3 predicts career performance (average DVOA across years, weighted by attempts) twice as strongly as Year 2 and about four times as strongly as Year 1. Using a linear regression, I found that a quarterback who had a DVOA of 30% in Year 1 and 0% in Years 2 and 3 would be predicted to have a DVOA of about 3.3% for his career. On the other hand, a quarterback who had a DVOA of 0% in Years 1 and 2 and 30% in Year 3 would have a predicted DVOA of 13.1%. The players who fell at least 10% from their Year 1/2 average then end up coming much closer to their Year 3 performance than their earlier and better selves.

Quarterbacks with Big Performance Drops from Years 1-2 To Year 3 Quarterback Year 1

DVOA Year 2

DVOA Year 3

DVOA Avg Career

DVOA Ben Roethlisberger 31.7% 35.8% 8.2% 16.3% Trent Green -5.9% 28.6% -5.3% 15.2% Daunte Culpepper 30.1% 4.2% -0.5% 10.4% Elvis Grbac 38.3% -7.5% 5.1% 7.6% Brian Griese -0.6% 34.7% -4.2% 4.1% Ty Detmer 10.2% -3.8% -12.5% 1.6% Damon Huard -1.8% 24.3% -16.6% -0.2% Jake Plummer -17.7% -8.4% -26.5% -1.5% Jon Kitna -10.0% 6.6% -13.7% -2.0% Kerry Collins -23.8% 17.5% -26.0% -2.3% Jason Campbell -1.1% 0.4% -12.2% -2.6% Charlie Batch 4.9% 6.5% -14.8% -3.0% Tim Rattay 30.6% -18.2% -30.1% -5.8% Rob Johnson 10.9% 4.4% -24.9% -6.9% Kelly Holcomb 8.5% -3.7% -18.0% -7.0% Kordell Stewart 4.9% -20.4% -31.4% -9.7% Patrick Ramsey -9.3% -7.0% -21.8% -12.4% David Klingler -34.4% -16.8% -37.1% -26.3% Heath Shuler -18.8% -28.7% -51.6% -32.5%

The best-case scenario in the table is Ben Roethlisberger, but Big Ben outperformed Kaepernick in every season. And even for Big Ben, Year 3 predicted his future more accurately than Years 1 or 2. His average DVOA from 2007-13 of 16.7% comes closer to his 8.2% in 2006 than his 31.7% and 35.8% in his first two years, a level he has not attained since (though he came close in 2010).

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Kaepernick's trajectory isn't really like anyone before him. His trend is most similar to Charlie Batch. And, to be very clear, I am not saying Colin Kaepernick is Charlie Batch. He would be a Money-Bin-Swimming, Super-Rich Man's Charlie Batch. Still, Batch was not bad in his first two years before falling to -14.8% in Year 3, not too far off where Kaepernick is now. Batch would go 0-9 with the Lions in his fourth year and then never start more than two games again. Kaepernick will almost surely accumulate more starts than Batch and have a better career, but if Kaepernick ends 2014 at his current level, my regression formula projects his career DVOA to be just 4.7%. That would make Brian Griese the closest comp in terms of career performance.

So Colin Kaepernick's recent struggles suggest that we are more likely to see Year 3 Kaepernick going forward and not Year 1/2 Kaepernick. It's certainly not written in stone, but it has been a red flag for quarterbacks to get worse in their early years. For a team that looked ready to contend for years, the future is suddenly not so bright in San Francisco. It's not just the injuries this year. Their coach may succeed again, but is likely to do so elsewhere. And their quarterback will be bucking the trend if he establishes himself as an elite quarterback in the long term after struggling mightily in Year 3.

Move Over Fridge, There's a New Sheriff in Town

While Kaepernick's poor play is the most important takeaway from the game, the Raiders offense actually had the biggest day according to the DVOA.

DVOA Off Def ST TOT OAK 41.9% -13.6% 5.0% 60.5% SF -24.7% 41.2% 3.6% -62.3% VOA Off Def ST TOT OAK 33.6% -20.8% 5.0% 59.4% SF -11.6% 21.7% 3.6% -29.8%

To find the reasons for Oakland's breakout on offense, we could look at Derek Carr's best day as a pro by a substantial margin. Or we could turn to Aldon Smith's very inconsistent motor and continuing limited impact for the 49ers on defense. I could then argue that we would want to be pretty cautious before getting all excited about Carr given the poor performances preceding Sunday, or that Smith's doldrums are legitimately worrying at this point, but does any of that matter when Donald Penn makes NFL history?

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That is a 6-foot-4, 340-pound man making a touchdown catch on a ball near his shin. Using Pro-Football-Reference data, I have this as putting Donald Penn alone in first place for touchdown receptions for players at Fridge weight (335 pounds or higher). This is very unofficial since PFR weights aren't always right (Penn himself is 340 on ESPN.com but only a ludicrous 305 on PFR, but according to my calculations Penn passed Jonathan Ogden, who was also 340 and had two career touchdown catches. Penn also pulled even with the Fridge with three total regular-season touchdowns.

Donald Penn might now be the greatest super-fat offensive machine in NFL history. Ogden gets ruled out right away for having only 2 career yards and the wrong body shape (an athletic 6-foot-9). The Fridge had an additional touchdown in the Super Bowl, but only 9 career yards. Donald Penn, on the other hand, has the Humpty-Dumpty shape and three touchdowns, along with a 15-yard catch and now 22 lifetime yards to his name. Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration: Donald Penn for best super-fat offensive threat ever.