As they did with Alex Smith, the Niners last year confined Kaepernick to a lot of simplified either/or reads. He generally had no more than two reads, and on most dropbacks, it was one. If the initial reads weren’t open, he tucked and ran. Kaepernick thrived with this, in part because defenses had never seen him in person or on tape. He won’t catch anyone by surprise this season. It stands to reason that the unpolished elements of his game—and there are several, including presnap awareness, huddle tempo, progression passing, route anticipation and a few minor glitches in his mechanics—will be more of a problem.
