I wasn't thrilled with the Cox trade, but I gave it a wait-and-see approach. Gene claimed to want to build through the draft, so trading away a pick was a minor red flag.


However, it was the next year where I began worrying about Gene. Not only did he reject the 49ers offer to trade back and pick up an extra pick out of fear that his pick, Alualu, would be gone, but then he tried to trade up to get into the 2nd to take Sean Lee. The guy was never going to have a full set of draft picks if it was up to him. You can't just keep handicapping yourself like that. For "building through the draft" he never really seemed to have a full draft...


Then he drafted Larry Hart and in his post-pick comments explaining what he liked about Hart, Gene basically justified the pick with; "well, the last time I didn't like an undersized DE it was Dwight Freeny, so, here's an undersized DE to make up for the Freeny mistake all those years ago." I had a tough time being excited about that.


Didn't like trading a pick for Luke McCown either. Thought the team could have found someone else to do his job without sacrificing a pick.


The forcing of Don Carey in the secondary was the last straw though. Thats when I stopped actively supporting him and began worrying for real. Guy wasn't good enough to be the NB of the future like Gene wanted, so he got moved to safety. Then when he wasn't getting playing time at safety behind Gerald Alexander (who wasn't great by any stretch but was at least competent), Gene cut Alexander. And then traded the team's other starting safety a day or two before MNF and proceeded to not get anything in return.


The Anger pick was when I began to actively want him fired. There's no justification for taking a punter that early. The team got by fine enough as it was with Nick Harris. The Turk signing was just one of many bad choices Gene made; it didn't mean it was that difficult to find a punter like some on here were trying to lead us to believe.

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