I want to take a closer look at Blaine Gabbert. He was pretty dreadful in Jacksonville, but I remember thinking he looks like a different better quarterback in the preseason. He’s a former top-10 pick, and he’s been quietly working on his game for a coupe of years, and maybe he’ll be a nice upgrade over Colin Kaepernick. So I went back and re-watched all of Gabbert’s pass attempts from August.

In the preseason, recall, Gabbert put up surprisingly good numbers, completing 23 of 28 passes, with a passer rating of 108.8. Watching all of those plays back-to-back over an hour and a half, you get a feel for what kind of quarterback he is – and where he’ll be going with the ball.

My first takeaway is that Gabbert likes to throw to tight ends. Of his 23 completions, 10 went to tight ends, including his only touchdown. So with this quarterbacking change, I expect Garrett Celek will catch a lot of short balls. I expect Celek will catch a lot more passes than Vernon Davis did with Kaepernick at quarterback.

Of his 28 attempts in the preseason, 22 of them were short, easy throws – the kind of throws that you would expect a rookie selected in the fifth round to make. Guys wide open, and little payoff on the other end. All 22 of these throws were on target. Mike Davis dropped one. The only other incompletion hit Jarryd Hayne in the chest, and the ball came out when he was hit by a defender shortly after. So I suppose that one goes down as a drop as well; 10-20 years ago, it would have been a catch and fumble.

So let’s give Gabbert a little credit – 20 of 22 on short throws to guys who are open. Nothing really special there, but Kaepernick hasn’t been able to do that in recent years.

Three of the remaining throws were of medium difficulty. On first-and-10 plays, he hits Jerome Simpson and Bruce Ellington for 9- and 10-yard gains, with both guys getting knocked out of bounds right at the sticks. And on a second-and-10 play, he tries to hit Hayne on a wheel route, about 15 yards downfield. Hayne isn’t really open, and the pass falls incomplete.

His four other attempts were on long patterns, and he went 1 of 3 on these, with a drop and a penalty.

LONG THROW ATTEMPTS:

Third-and-four from midfield: 22-yarder to Celek down the seam. Nice throw. Defender is on the outside, but the ball is on the inside, where it’s an easy catch and the defender has no chance to make a play.

Second-and-11 outside the red zone. A similar kind of seam route to Blake Bell, only on the other side. Throw is where it should be and should result in a gain of about 20 yards, but the ball comes out when the defender hits Bell. Nice throws for Gabbert. Score it as a drop.

Second-and-9 from the 25. Gabbert sets up quickly and lofts a ball for the pylon. Jerome Simpson turns around late and never sees the ball. It lands near him, seemingly about where it should be. You get the feeling Julio Jones or Dez Bryant would have caught it. It’s an incompletion here. Not necessarily a bad throw for Gabbert.

Third-and-11 from the 31. Similar to the Simpson play, only going for Bruce Ellington this time, and he’s running more of a post route. There’s contact between Ellington and the defensive back at the 10, and he never gets close to the ball. Flags fly and San Francisco is awarded a first down at the 10. Can’t say whether the throw was good or not, but it was a successful play.

GAME RECAPS:

At Houston. Came in late in the first quarter. Led a 99-yard touchdown drive on his first possession, capped by a 10-yard touchdown to Celek. Drove 54 yards for a field goal with his second possession. Three-and-out punts on his other two possessions.

Dallas (at home). Drove team 24 yards for field goal on first possession. Other four possessions all resulted in punts, three of the three-and-out variety. Got ball at his only 41 with 1:51 left in the first half and did little with it (one first down and then it stalled).

At Denver: Four possessions in the second half. Started with a three-and-out, then had three straight drives resulting in field goals.

Gabbert tended to take too many sacks in Jacksonville – 74 while starting 27 games, so about 3 sacks per game. With that team, he was sacked (on average) once per every 11.5 pass plays.

That looks like it might still be an issue. He was sacked 4 times in the preseason with the 49ers, or once every 8 plays. On either 2 or 3 of those sacks, he had plenty of time to work with; he didn’t see anything he liked and chose to eat the ball (I didn’t see anybody standing wide open on any of those plays).

CONCLUSION:

I see a quarterback who’s a lot better now than he was earlier in his career. He’s been working to improve, and he looks like a reasonable fit for this offense. I believe he will be a significantly better passer than Kaepernick. Kaepernick passed for more than 165 yards in only three of eight games. With Gabbert in there, they’ll collect a lot more of the simply completions, maybe averaging 30-40 more passing yards as a team. Kaepernick has thrown only 6 TDs in eight games. Had Gabbert started those games, I’m guessing he might be at 9 TDs right now.

To me, I think Gabbert has some Alex Smith in him. That is, he wants to throw the short, safe passes to guys who are already open. He doesn’t want to throw the longer, high-risk passes. He won’t throw a lot of bombs, and he doesn’t want to throw passes before guys have broken out of their cuts.

With Gabbert at quarterback, I think the overall passing production of this offense will improve, and that it will be coming on short passes. Tight ends (mainly Celek) and Anquan Boldin, I figure, should be better with him at quarterback. But I have no interest in Torrey Smith, who’s at his best running vertical routes.

Gabbert runs a little better than I thought he would. He had a 6-yard run for a first down that was nullified by a penalty. After he fumbled a high snap, he tried to get outside but was run down. A couple of times he didn’t see anything he liked and tried to run. But overall, he’s not an athletic guy. He averaged 7 rushing yards as a starter with the Jaguars, with no touchdowns). In the preseason with the 49ers, he carried 4 times for a grand total of 0 yards.

For fantasy purposes, I don’t see any point in using a roster spot on Gabbert (unless you’re in a league starting two quarterbacks). But I think he’ll give that passing game a little spark, so I like Anquan Boldin and Garrett Celek more now than I did when Kaepernick was under center.

—Ian Allan