There's nothing like a football head coach predicting a breakout year more than three months before the season to put pressure on a player. Unless it's the player not agreeing to the head coach's prediction.

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ESPN.com reported Thursday that San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh proclaimed 2014 the year of Colin Kaepernick, the Niners' quarterback.

"I really expect that real breakout year for Colin," Harbaugh said, according to ESPN, after the team's second OTA session Wednesday. "He just has the look and feel that he's going to break out, more so than he already has. I'm really excited about everything about his game right now."

Kaepernick, who has been the team's starting quarterback for about a year and a half, led the 49ers to an appearance in Super Bowl XLVII and the NFC Championship Game last season. He's a second-round pick out of Nevada in 2011.

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Part of Harbaugh's optimism lies in the offseason acquisitions of Stevie Johnson and Brandon Lloyd joining a healthy Michael Crabtree, saying that Kaepernick was the one that first brought up the upgrade at the wide receiver position.

"Kap said it the other day. He feels like he has a stable of receivers and maybe that's the first time we've said that since we've all been here together," Harbaugh said, as CBSSports.com reported. "I concur. It feels that way. I feel like we have a lot of firepower in our corner. I feel like we have a lot of ammunition in our camp. I was just thinking about it the other day, 'It doesn't get better than this.'"

Except that Kaepernick didn't sound quite as optimistic when asked about possible improvement on the offense in 2014.

"This is the time of the year where you can be vocal and you can work on things a lot more because you don't have to play Sunday," he said, according to ESPN. "So if you want to experiment with things, if you want to try things out, now is the time to see if we can get something new that is going to work for our offense."