The San Francisco 49ers turned the team over to Colin Kaepernick last season after Alex Smith, who led them to an NFC Championship the previous season, was injured mid-season.
Now that Smith has been shipped to Kansas City, the 49ers can ill afford to lose their star quarterback. That’s why head coach Jim Harbaugh isn’t taking comments made by Green Bay Packers linebacker Clay Matthews lightly.
On ESPN’s morning radio show Mike and Mike Matthews said, "One of the things that the referees have told us is that when these quarterbacks carry out the fakes, they lose their right as a quarterback, a pocket-passing quarterback, the protection of a quarterback.”
“So with that, you do have to take your shots on the quarterback, and obviously they're too important to their offense. If that means they pull them out of that type of offense and make them run a traditional, drop-back, pocket-style offense, I think that's exactly what we're going for. So you want to put hits as early and often on the quarterback and make them uncomfortable."
Harbaugh didn’t like the sound of early hits on his quarterback with some extra hot sauce on them, so he has sounded the alarm for the referees to be on the lookout for unnecessary shots taken at Kaepernick.
"You're hearing a lot of tough talk right now, you're hearing some intimidating type of talk, the same thing we were hearing a couple years ago," Harbaugh said. "It sounds a lot like targeting a specific player. You definitely start to wonder.”
While Matthews never said the Packers were out to hurt Kaepernick, or stated that his team would be willing to risk penalties in order to inflict punishment, Harbaugh doesn’t trust his Week 1 opponents.
"A man will usually tell you his bad intentions if you just listen. You know what's being said publicly, not what's being said privately. You hope that their intent isn't going to be anything that's not within the rules."
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