It was not a decision made of despair as much as common sense.
The last time that anyone carrying a 49ers made a clearance of clearance for a touchdown, it was September 11, 2011 when Ted Ginn Jr., who has already gone to kick off for a touch, closed the scoring against the Seahawks with a return of covers of 55 yards. The 49ers won 33-17.
In the 246 games that followed, including the playoffs, the 49ers have not done so since. It is a period of 500 feedback from 25 different return specialists.
Enter Junior Bergen.
With their 11th and last choice in the draft of the NFL, the 49ers selected Bergen du Montana at n ° 252 in total. Bergen, at 5 feet 10 inches, 184 pounds, played many roles with the Grizzlies, but the one who caught the collective eye of the 49ers was an eight -feedback record for the affected, a record of all time in the subdivision of the NCAA football championship.
“We throw it with the receivers and see how it goes,” said 49ers Kyle Shanahan coach at the end of the project. “But we brought him here to be a turner -up and try to do the team in this way.”
Bergen also has a touch of kick -off, and it arrives for a season during which the NFL has changed the rules that the touchbacks will be brought back to the line of 35 yards, which will make the teams less inclined to kick off and play the coverage.
This is an interesting decision insofar as the 49ers tend to keep the special teams down, with a philosophy to hold theirs rather than being a decisive factor to win and lose.
Although Bergen is not blindly rapid (a 4.52 dashboard of 40 yards in his professional day), Bobby Hauck, his coach in Montana, explained his success in this way in a telephone interview:
“He will not be the fastest guy on the ground. He was not at university, but he is quite fast and that did not prevent him from entering the field of goals. He has a good idea of what is happening around him. I would call him the capacity of the leader. He instinctively knows where everyone is.”
Hauck, who was a special team coordinator and takes care of this duty as a Montana chief coach, said that he never remembered that Bergen grown a return – even by playing in the serious weather elements that the state had to offer.
“He will not be afraid of a little rain or snow,” said Hauck. “He can catch them in Green Bay. Ensuring boots of clearance with all these people who take you is a personality trait as well as a skill. You must be difficult to do it. “
According to the director general of the 49ers John Lynch, the new coordinator of the special teams Brant Boyer and the assistant Colt Anderson, both with the links of Montana, campaigned for Bergen before the final choice. Boyer’s son Brayton is a Botter from Montana and Anderson is a former grizzlewarm.
“They continued to talk about this Montana child and selling it really,” said Lynch. “And they did a very good job. In the end, in the end, it is like: “Are we going to have a chance of a free agency if we do not write it?” Will anyone else write him at the end? »»
Upon his arrival in Montana after playing in high school locally in Billings, Bergen never imagined that he would have become a returnur of kits of record.
“One of my first returns of booting in training, I came back and I slipped and I fell,” Bergen told Montanasports.com. “And I said to myself, guy, I never want to start this again. I continued to catch them, I continued to catch them, and then after a while, it became so normal. You get so much confidence. And that is a very great thing in this return of chipped boot.”
Five of the touch of Botté de Bergen’s boot returned in the FCS eliminatory matches, which makes him what Lynch called a “sensation” of Billings in Missoula.
“I really love, really these moments,” said Bergen. “Some people become a little nervous, and I have always been the kid, we are in the aisle and I count, 3 … 2 … 1 and drummer of buzzer, or, I am being sidelined, as the clock is exhausted, my father’s count, like things like that, exercises of two minutes.
“I have always been the kid to do this kind of thing, and this kind of simple has become who I am.”
Although the return kicks will be the best Bergen at the NFL, he was an athlete with multiple facets at the school, playing the quarter-arier and the receiver. In Montana, he took the time as a ball carrier in the first year and ended with 577 yards in a career and four affected, as well as 1,777 yards and 13 affected. This is the kind of gadget player that Shanahan could use in different ways.
A first All-American team as a senior, Bergen has an average of 16.7 yards per return of a boot of clearance during his career and 23.9 on the yields of the kick-off.
By making the list, Bergen’s first challenge will be Jacob Cowing, who returned 28 clearances of clearance for the 49ers last season with an average of 8.8 and played at least the receiver as a fourth round recruit in Arizona.
Bergen was not made available to the media in the bay region, but described the feeling when the 49ers called while he was with friends and family.
“You could feel the tension in the room with the next choice to come,” Bergen told 49ers.com. “I heard many good things from them throughout the process.
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