Darnell Dockett will be a significant improvement and upgrade for the San Francisco 49ers over the Justin Smith we saw last season. Don’t get me wrong, “The Cowboy” was certainly better in his prime, but last season showed pretty clearly that Justin Smith was no longer anywhere near that level of play. Smith only played around 60 percent of snaps last season and, as NFL.com put it, he played these snaps “with mostly one arm.”
Dockett, on the other hand, may be coming off of an injury, but it was an ACL tear — something that medicine has caught up with now and should not bother him or be a nagging issue in 2015.