San Francisco 49ers

Chip Kelly finally checked his ego, admitted Colin Kaepernick is the best QB for the 49ers

Published Nov. 15, 2016 1:58 p.m. ET

Chris Chase

Why not?

Chip Kelly announced Tuesday that he's benching starting quarterback Blaine Gabbert and starting the embattled Colin Kaepernick in a move that was so painfully obvious and such a long time coming (well, for three weeks or so) that it's amazing anybody is surprised by it at all.

Simply put, Gabbert was a bad quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers this year. Kaepernick may prove to be just as bad, but there's literally no harm in finding out. Worst-case scenario, a 1-4 football team becomes a 1-8 football team. Best-case, Kelly finds that Kaepernick is a QB he can work with this year and beyond. Medium-case, Kelly realizes the Niners don't have his quarterback on the roster and he gets to lobby for a new one for 2017. It's all very low stakes. It's not exactly as if the future of Bay Area sports depends on it. (I mean, the Warriors season starts soon. No one's going to remember this quarterback controversy when Kevin Durant and Steph Cutty hit the court.)

Perhaps Kaep's slash-and-dash running style and maneuverability in the pocket is exactly what Kelly's dormant offense (which has been the NFL's equivalent of the Edsel since he left Oregon for Philadelphia in 2013) is looking for. Maybe time on the bench and a public humbling, plus a maturation that likely took place while Kaepernick stoically stuck to his beliefs during the national anthem protests and took way too much heat for it, is going to turn him back into a semblance of the player he was when the team made the Super Bowl in 2012 and came within a play of it in 2013. Or maybe he's just as bad as Gabbert. The downside is minimal. The upside spans higher than Kaepernick's hairdo.

Forget about the contract (that's no longer Kelly's responsibility -- though I assume we'll hear more about that in the coming hours and days). Forget about the controversy that's mostly died out. Kelly had to ask himself one simple question: After five weeks, who's the better quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers? The answer was easy. It had to be Colin Kaepernick because it sure as hell wasn't Blaine Gabbert.

The writing has been on the wall for weeks. Gabbert is ranked 39th in QB rating. He's under 60 percent with his throws, has more interceptions than touchdown passes and is averaging about 175 passing yards per start. The Niners are 31st in passing offense. They're 1-4 after a 28-0 victory in Week 1's late Monday Night Football game. It's just been ugly. A fresh start was needed.

And that required Kelly to do something he probably hasn't done since his days coaching in New Hampshire: He had to check his ego. Sending Gabbert to the bench is both an admission that Kelly's offense continues to be a failure and that, for now at least, he picked the wrong man to run it.

Kelly still had his reasons to stick with Gabbert. He's a first-year coach who has a longer leash than most. He's not getting fired this season, so he could have stuck with his plan and ridden Gabbert all year, hoping he'd come into his own and put up some unexpected Nick Foles-like numbers to propel him into 2017. You couldn't have blamed Kelly for that. Rebuilding years don't exist in the NFL until you start 1-4 with a worse-than-mediocre team. Then you can legitimately spend the next 11 weeks moving around the roster like chess pieces to see what works best. Kelly is a coach who can afford a 3-13 season if it's building toward something in 2017 and beyond.

Now Kaepernick is the past and present in San Francisco, all thanks to Kelly putting his self-importance behind the team, for once. The hope now is that Kaepernick becomes the future of the 49ers, too.