by David Zizmor

SANTA CLARA–The San Francisco 49ers will start the 2014 season without the best pass rusher in football linebacker Aldon Smith who started his nine game suspension this weekend. Smith will be allowed to attend meetings and workouts at the 49ers facilities but will not be able to play until November 10th one week before the Niners play the New York Giants on Sunday November 16th.

The impact of not having Smith around will effect the 49ers defensive line and there is no way you could replace a guy like Smith. Smith has more sacks than everybody in the league. Even his first three seasons he’s had more sacks than everybody in the NFL. There is really no way to get around it you just can’t replace a guy like Smith. The 49ers have been preparing for injuries and depatures on their defensive squad for several years now.

They keep drafting guys on their defensive line who will replace guys who will depart and if you look across from their defensive line they have several older players like Justin Smith, being the key player, Justin has been the key player for many, many years and arguably a Hall of Fame level player. Justin is in his mid thirties and his contract is coming up in a year or so.

The 49ers will look at linebackers Tank Carradine and Quintin Dial these are going to be guys who are hopefully going to step up and provide a little bit of breathing room for the 49ers and for those individual players. Aldon will be out and the 49ers have a lot of guys along these lines who can practice hard and play hard, work hard and we’ll see how they do in replacing a guy like Aldon.

Oakland Raiders update: Raiders quarterback David Carr had a very good pre season and there’s a very strong case to be made. Right now he’s already the best quarterback for the Raiders. The problem is that he’s a rookie and he was never with the first team against first team defenses. In that fourth game they never played against first team defensive units.

Even though Carr was the starter with the first group to be out there he never played against the number one defense. Carr looked good in that game against Seattle and that Seattle defense you saw them in the Super Bowl. There were a couple of starters here and there and the rest were a couple of guys who were going to be third stringers.

There is a case to be made that Carr is already a better option rather than quarterback Matt Schaub but again he’s a rookie. He hasn’t faced the top competition. He’s played a lot different in pre season than regular season. When you have a rookie and Carr who has a bright future he’s going to end up starting at some point this season because it’s doubtful that Schaub is going to be very good.

The Raiders haven’t seen anything that’s been very good from Schaub in the pre season, he didn’t look good with Houston last year. He’s had three bad pre season games and he’s out for personal reasons as of this weekend. There’s no reason to believe that he’s all of sudden going to snap out of it soon and transform into the guy he was three or four years ago.

David Zizmor does 49ers and Raiders commentary each week for http://www.sportsradioservice.com