San Francisco 49ers' Five Biggest Player Decisions: Free Agency Starts at Home

Assuming they get a new collective bargaining agreement done, NFL Free Agency is scheduled to begin on March 3, 2011.  I'm going to go through every team between now and then and identify their top five free agents and try to determine what should be done with each player, be it resign them or let them walk.  I've been going team by team in draft order and am at the team with the seventh pick in the draft, the San Francisco 49ers.

Once again this year, people expected the San Francisco 49ers to be the best team in the NFC West and once again, the 49ers failed to live up to expectations because of poor quarterback play.  Mike Singletary went back and forth with the quarterbacks all year but no matter who the 49ers put in at quarterback, they failed to sustain drives.

Mike Singletary was fired and the 49ers brought in Jim Harbaugh as their new Head Coach.  This hiring isn't a coincidence. Harbaugh is a former quarterback, a former quarterback coach, and is credited with the development of Andrew Luck, the likely number one overall pick in 2011.  The 49ers organization expects to have better quarterback play next year.

The question facing them is whether or not that better quarterback play will come from someone already with the organization or an outsider.  They have multiple quarterbacks with pedigree on the roster, but none have ever produced.  Two of those quarterbacks contracts are up, and the organization needs to how important it is to bring them back, or if that money would be better spent on their free agents on defense.

Ranking The New Head Coaches.

(Wrote this for as an application for bleacher report.  They required an article in one of a few formats that they use a lot and one was slideshow. I'm not going to take the time to find pictures but I'm not gonna let 700 words go to waste.)

7. Whomever Al Davis picks - Raiders - The problem with this coaching change is it was the one that had no reason to happen.  A smart owner would not fire a head coach after he went 6-0 in the division.  There was a lot to build on for the Raiders with Tom Cable there, but who knows if the next guy (rumored to be current offensive coordinator Hue Jackson) will be able to get the players to play hard in Raiderville the same way Cable did.