49ers Name Shaun Hill Starting QB

So according to 49ers beat writer Matt Maiocco's Twitter feed, the 49ers announced that Shaun Hill, and not former No. 1 overall pick Alex Smith, will start the team's first regular-season game three weeks from now. And while this is significant news for those who follow the 49ers -- and while I would never want to downplay the resolution of a training camp position battle since we all spend so much time analyzing them -- I watched the 49ers' game from Saturday night, and my reaction to this move is: YAWN.

Whether the 49ers picked Hill, Smith, you, me or brought Joe Montana out of retirement, whoever starts at quarterback in San Francisco is going to do a whole lot of handing off. They brought Nate Davis in during the second half and the broadcasters said something about, "He's got a big arm and we're going to get to see that," and they looked pretty silly when the first six plays after Davis went in were running plays.

In the game against the Raiders, the Niners tallied 47 carries and 27 pass attempts. If you were really looking for somebody to play quarterback for you, you'd have the candidates throw it around a little in the preseason, wouldn't you? Just to see? Since it doesn't count and all? Sure you would. But that's not what Mike Singletary and the 49ers did. They handed it off.

Glen Coffee, 16 carries for 129 yards. Michael Robinson, 14 carries for 97 yards. Kory Sheets, 12 carries for 51 yards. Frank Gore, the starter, carried twice for seven yards. They didn't even really use him. It was as if they were trying to tell the world, "Hey, we don't care who we have back there -- we're going to run the ball."

You can't predict individual or team performance based on preseason games, but you can predict team tendencies. Congrats to Shaun Hill and all the best of luck. But I wouldn't rush right out to pick the guy in the first couple of rounds of my fantasy draft. The 49ers are going to run.