The rocky and strange relationship between Anthony Davis, the San Francisco 49ers and general manager Trent Baalke continued down a weird path Monday.
Peter King of MMQB reported in his weekly column that the 49ers had put Davis and fellow Niner Antoine Bethea on the trade block. However, Davis tweeted out Baalke rebutting the report after the rumor started spreading.
https://twitter.com/BamDavis_/status/719574642487209984
Now, at this point, anyone following the 49ers must conclude that, of the two sources of information here, King has more credibility than Baalke does these days.
The 49ers have been known to say one thing and do another, and this includes discussions about head coach Jim Harbaugh, quarterback Colin Kaepernick and many others.
Likely, Baalke got caught with his pants down on this one.
Davis has already made it know that dealing with Baalke is giving him a headache. He had planned on applying for reinstatement after “retiring” last year in time for the team’s offseason workouts, which started last week. However, due to reasons that haven’t been disclosed to this point, Davis has pushed back his timetable because he can’t seem to see eye-t0-eye with Baalke about something.
Set to count for just $5.2 million against the cap, Davis would be a bargain for any team in need of tackle help. This is, of course, contingent upon him being in physical shape to do the job.
However, perhaps because of how he left the team hanging, or because teams just don’t trust him to be the same player he was before abruptly retiring, it appears Baalke must not have gotten any offers that he liked when he reportedly threw out Davis’ name to fellow general managers.
And now he’s backtracking.
Or not. Reports are often used by agents and teams to gain an advantage in one way or another. We’ll likely never know exactly what happened here. What we do know is that things continue to be dysfunctional when it comes to the 49ers and the way they relate to their players and coaches in recent years.