Tag: General News

SANTA CLARA — It takes a while to find 49ers edge rusher Nick Bosa among the NFL sack leaders.

With 2 1/2 sacks in seven games, Bosa is on pace for roughly six sacks over a 17-game season, nowhere near what the 49ers or anyone else expected. Not after cashing in on an 18 1/2-sack season and NFL Defensive Player of the Year award for a five-year contract extension worth as much as $170 million.

The highest-paid non-quarterback in the NFL is tied for 64th in sacks. A half-sack behind his brother Joey, an edge rusher for the Los Angeles Chargers. A half-sack behind second-year teammate Drake Jackson, who had a hat trick in the opener and but has fallen off the map in terms of playing time since the trade for defensive end Randy Gregory.

On the opposite sideline Sunday will be Cincinnati defensive Trey Hendrickson, who dropped from 14 sacks in 2021 to eight a year ago but already has seven this season.

When questioned about Hendrickson’s rebound this season, Bengals coach Zac Taylor cut reporters off with a bull rush of his own.

“Maybe he didn’t have an extra-high number of sacks, but he impacted a lot of games,” Taylor said. “Some years you’re going to have sack production and some years you won’t. Sometimes it’s just a millisecond with the quarterback getting the ball out of his hands or some other factor.”

Which is precisely where the 49ers are right now with Bosa. Opponents consider him so proficient and impactful that Minnesota quarterback Kirk Cousins told Peyton Manning before his Monday night “ManningCast” he had a series of five plays he could check to any time Bosa was taking a breather.

Those plays called for deeper drops and required more time — time that the Vikings didn’t believe would exist when Bosa was on the field. Sure enough, the first time Bosa departed, Cousins went downfield for a 17-yard gain. Manning couldn’t help but pat himself on the back for relaying the inside information.

Kyle Shanahan, the 49ers’ coach, was unimpressed. He said Wednesday it was standard procedure for any team facing a dynamic edge rusher.

“Everybody does it,” Shanahan said as the 49ers (5-2) began preparations in earnest to host the Cincinnati Bengals (3-3) Sunday at Levi’s Stadium.

Bosa is getting chipped by tight ends and running backs and faces double-teams. Which happened last season and pretty much since he came in as a can’t-miss No. 2 overall pick out of Ohio State in 2019.

“Everybody outside the building is going to talk about how many sacks he has and is he affecting the game that way,” linebacker Fred Warner said. “But he affects it in so many different ways aside from sacks and that’s why he’s one of the best defensive players in the league and why he got paid as such.”

In judging his own performance, Bosa said he had bad games against Pittsburgh in Week 1 and Cleveland in Week 6.

“I’ve had two games that are below my standard and I’ve been happy with a lot of the things I’ve done in other games, but I don’t think I’ve played a great game yet,” Bosa said.

Great games go hand-in-hand with great money. Or at least they’re supposed to. Bosa said his own measure of performance isn’t complicated.

“It’s pretty simple for me,” Bosa said. “It’s just what I’m focused on. Just the mindset that I go into the game with focusing on getting off the ball as good as I can and be physical and everything else kind of takes care of itself. When I don’t do that, then I’m trying to play what I’m seeing and I’m a step behind.”

As much as Bosa covets sacks, he buys into Taylor’s theory that they don’t tell the whole story in terms of performance.

“I try not to equate them because it’s not an exact correlation at all,” Bosa said. “I think I’ve played some really good games this year that haven’t been sack games. Then I got one against Cleveland and it was one of my worst games.

“There are a lot of factors, but I think if you just stay the course they’ll eventually come if you’re putting yourself in the right positions. I’m trying to continue to play up to my standard and I think they’ll come. It’s a really long year so hopefully it’s in the biggest moments when they come.”

Shanahan doesn’t seem overly concerned. Sacks are the result of rush and coverage, and those two factors have yet to even out on Bosa’s rushes.

“I look at how people move and whether they look in shape or as talented as the year before, and he looks the exact same,” Shanahan said. “I know the results haven’t been there. When Bosa beats someone, there’s got to be nowhere to go with the ball . . . When we’ve had people covered, I don’t feel like we’ve always had that rush.”

Bosa concedes that the training camp holdout that earned him an average salary of $34 million might have been great for his bank account, but wasn’t ideal in terms of getting off to a good start.

“I’m trying to work on stuff this year that I wasn’t able to do in camp,” Bosa said. “Those (bad) games I mentioned, I think I was thinking too much because I was trying to add something to my rush plan, which is not what I want to be doing during the season. I want to be locked in on what I do best throughout the whole year. There’s no excuse at this point for that.”

OAKLAND — A group tapped by the city to help develop a $5 billion plan to transform the forsaken Coliseum complex into a hub of live sports and entertainment appears to be fracturing, with two of the founding members suing the others.

The legal complaint filed this month ensnares one of the six partner organizations in the African-American Sports and Entertainment Group. Two of the eight members within the flagship entity are alleging their equity shares in the project were unfairly diluted.

None of the parties involved in the complaint — filed in the Alameda County court — agreed to be interviewed on the record, but documents and video evidence obtained from the group paint a starkly different picture than the one presented in the complaint, calling its central claims into question.

The group ultimately plans to acquire Oakland’s share of the Coliseum property for $115 million, and earlier this year it unsuccessfully tried to buy the site’s other half-ownership share, which belongs to the likely departing A’s.

Last month, it whiffed on one of its most prominent goals: securing a long-anticipated WNBA expansion franchise. The league instead opted to partner with the Warriors and establish a women’s basketball team in San Francisco.

But the whole legal ordeal could strain AASEG’s commitment to a locally driven, community-based project, one that remains rooted among Oakland residents and keeps outside corporate interests at the door.

It could also pose another hurdle to AASEG as it gears up to meet key deliverables in an agreement with the city to convert the A’s ballpark, Oakland arena and intervening parking space into new restaurants, nightlife, retail shops, hotels and housing.

“We will fully participate in the legal process and will show the complaint to be without merit,” cofounder Ray Bobbitt said in a statement responding to the complaint. “In the meantime, the AASEG is hyperfocused on the tremendous task, responsibility and commitment we have to our community to redevelop and revitalize East Oakland and the Coliseum Site.”

The dispute is contained within AASEG’s flagship group, which is comprised of eight Oakland natives who collectively did not have much prior real-estate experience before they became involved in one of the East Bay’s largest commercial redevelopments.

The other partners include billion-dollar Black-owned investment firm Loop Capital, prominent sports agent Bill Duffy and a business-consulting group run by former Oakland city manager Robert Bobb.

The origins of AASEG trace back to Bobbitt, a local businessman, and Levant Ogbulie, an education administrator, who began looking into how major professional sports could return to Oakland following the departures of the Warriors and Raiders.

Among the other founding members they recruited were fellow grieving Raiders fans Brien Dixon and Karim Muhammad — the two men who are now threatening to sue Bobbitt, Ogbulie and the larger consortium for damages.

Dixon and Muhammad allege their shares in AASEG were wrongfully diluted when Bobbitt brought four new members into the fold without their approval.

The eight members, including Bobbitt and Ogbulie, equally own 12.5% of the flagship entity, which itself may hold as little as 5% of the overall development once outside pre-capital investments arrive ahead of construction.

Still, the complainants accuse Bobbitt of unfairly designating himself the project’s lead decision-maker and “deceptively” creating separate LLCs in Delaware that could be interchanged with the official AASEG branding — part of a larger effort to consolidate power.

“Not only is this a patent violation of Bobbitt’s obligations to AASEG and the other three members, it usurps a business opportunity from AASEG and could also be considered as an act of fraud committed against the City of Oakland,” the complaint states.

Documents reviewed by this news organization rebut this point: An email sent to Dixon and Muhammad in late 2021, for instance, specifically outlines how those various LLCs would interact and streamline future investments, contradicting the notion that Bobbitt established the other companies secretly.

The complaint alleges that Muhammad only learned during a late 2021 company retreat that four new members — Samantha Wise, John Jones III, Jonathan Jones and LaNiece Jones — had been promised equity in AASEG by Bobbitt, and that he eventually muscled them into the group by overruling the complainants.

All of the four members are Oakland residents, and perhaps the most prominent is Jones III, a violence prevention advocate in the community.

Video of a December 2021 team meeting — which took place two months after their addition — paints a different picture. In it, Dixon and Muhammad offer high praise for Bobbitt’s work on the project, reflecting positively on the earlier company retreat.

The eight members took votes together with no apparent objections, and Bobbitt is listed on the meeting’s agenda as AASEG’s “managing member,” a title that the complaint alleges he assigned himself months later in an operating agreement.

Whatever the outcome of the legal complaint, it marks a divide within the flagship group, which has spent several years building relationships with Oakland’s leaders, helping AASEG to secure the Coliseum redevelopment among tough competition from other bidders.

AASEG is also in negotiations with the Roots and Soul, upstart men’s and women’s soccer franchises that want to build a temporary stadium by 2025 in one of the Coliseum’s parking lots. Those discussions alone created tension within AASEG’s flagship entity as not everyone was on board.

It is yet another sign that in its quest to complete one of the largest-scale commercial redevelopments in recent East Bay history, AASEG—originally a group of fellow grieving Raiders fans who decided to start a business together—must also reckon with its small-town origins.

Brock Purdy is in the NFL’s concussion protocol and the 49ers may again have to turn to their backup quarterback, who is Sam Darnold this season.

Darnold arrived in the offseason after Jimmy Garoppolo, the No. 2 last season, left for the Raiders in free agency as the 49ers picked Brock Purdy, last year’s third-stringer, as their new starter.

The quarterback injury carousel is not a device unfamiliar around the league, but the 49ers’ version brings particular intrigue because of its history: Steve Young supplanted Joe Montana; Colin Kaepernick took over for Alex Smith; and Purdy replaced Garoppolo and Trey Lance.

So, what can fans expect if Purdy is unable to start Sunday’s game against the Bengals?

The 49ers have been positive since training camp about Darnold learning coach Kyle Shanahan’s offense, but there isn’t much to parse from this regular season: He is 1-of-1 passing for 1 yard. In the preseason, he was 22-of-33 for 282 yards, two touchdowns and one interception over three games.

He did not play in the first 11 games of last season with the Panthers after suffering a high ankle sprain in training camp and did not get the starting job back until Week 12. He went 4-2 as a starter, though he completed just 58.4% of his passes. He amassed 1,143 yards, seven touchdowns and three interceptions with a QBR of 51.4, right around average.

The prior season, he was Carolina’s starter for the first nine games before suffering a concussion and losing the starting job. He returned to relieve an injured Cam Newton in a Week 15 loss against the Buccaneers, then lost road starts in New Orleans and Tampa Bay to finish the season. Over those three games, he was 61-of-100 for 541 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions.

Here is how 49ers backups have fared under Kyle Shanahan (record as starter; stats cumulative for full season):

2022

When novelist Karen Dionne learned her 2017 best-selling psychological thriller, “The Marsh King’s Daughter,” was being adapted into a movie, she had to pinch herself.

“I’m pretty much black and blue from pinching myself and you can quote me on that!” said the former Shelby Township resident, laughing. “I have a fair number of writer friends whose books have been optioned. It’s not as rare as you think, but of those whose materials have been optioned and have been made (into a movie) – whether it’s in the theaters or went straight to streaming – is small. The number who have had it made (into a movie) for a theatrical release is smaller yet. I have no idea what the numbers are, but it’s definitely pinchworthy.”

In “The Marsh King’s Daughter,” Helena Pelletier is happily married with a loving husband and two beautiful daughters. But she has a dark past she hoped would stay buried. Her father, Jacob Holbrook, alias the Marsh King, abducted her mother and she was born two years later. Helena was raised in captivity in the marshlands of the Upper Peninsula. Eventually, Helena escaped her father’s thrall and Jacob went to prison.