49ers QB competition officially gets underway

7:58 PM ET

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – The competition to earn the title of San Francisco 49ers starting quarterback is officially underway.

The Niners had their first training camp practice on Sunday morning and, as expected, coach Chip Kelly divvied up the first-team work evenly between Blaine Gabbert and Colin Kaepernick.

It was just the first step in what figures to be a lengthy battle between Gabbert and Kaepernick.

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Speaking before Sunday’s practice, Kelly didn’t want to put a timetable on making a decision between his two signal callers.

“I think sometimes if you put a preconceived date on it, it’s not fair,” Kelly said. “I’ve been in them before. Obviously, you’d like to get it done sooner rather than later. But you don’t want to get it done sooner and then make the wrong decision. So, I think how we train and what we do on the practice fields and then obviously the opportunity to play in preseason games will give us a real good indication, we hope, as we head into the regular season.”

Sunday’s practice offered no early statements on which quarterback is more up to the task. Gabbert entered with more experience in the offense after getting the offseason program to work in it but Kaepernick is now healthy. Kelly got his first chance to actually see Kaepernick perform somewhere other than on game tape.

The San Francisco 49ers officially have a quarterback competition on their hands …

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