Forty Niners Forever

Baltimore may all of a sudden may be in the running for a quarterback. They lost Lamar Jackson after one play when coming back from his ankle sprain, and his backup Tyler Huntley was hurt when ha defender fell on his ankle and he’s out for a while.

Other than that, Minnesota fell to the Lions in a pretty wild game. Aaron Rogers has the Steelers at 6-2, Buffalo keeps winning, and Cincinnati is emerging as a contender in the AFC East. Denver avenged their opening day loss to KC to move atop the AFC West.

And “whos got it better than us?” Everyone. The Chargers reamin winless.

Got a good one tonight as well as the Bears travel to Starbuck City to play the Seahags.

Very interested to see this Deetroit/Minnesota game. All I know about Minnesota is they have a very tough defense, and that they blitz about 70% of the time. ame. I’ve seen very little of either team so far this year. And that they are offensively challenged. They are riding on the tiny shoulders of Kyler Murray. he’s 36th (???) in yards per game and is in the low 20s for QBR and Rating. They are 6-0 but this’ll be a big test for them.

Deetroit is riding the hot hand of Jared Goff, Jahmyr Gibbs, and Amon-Ra St Brown. Haven’t seen anything of them this season, but it looks like they give up points and yards. Goff is good at avoiding the blitz, so I think they take care of the Vikings and their soft schedule.

Other than that, the Broncos/Chiefs games are always entertaining. Don;t see the Rams faltering to the Chargers, but hey, they need to get ONE win. Might as well be now.

Seahawks/Bears Monday night will be a barnburner.

Seattle has the tougher game as they play the Bears on Monday night at home. A little surprised they took care of KC so easily, but hey, they are still a big problem for the 49ers going forward. LA? Not so much. They face the hapless 0-6 Chargers in a game that neither fan base will show up for. I mean how do you even pick a home team? It would be pretty funny if there were a ton of empty seats at that one. But they have a slew of soft games in their schedule so they may sneak back into contention.

Anyway, the team did a solid and got De Fo back and that is great news. It wouldn’t hurt to maybe get a WR from somewhere but I guess we’ll wait for the Raider game to see who’s healthy and viable. Stout should be back, and that’s good news as well.

And the word is we are riding with Eddie (funny) Money. No thought at trying out a new kicker. Dude better straighten his shit out. We are at the point where mistakes get magnified.

BREAKING NEWS – The 49ers traded a 4th round pick for our long lost DE DeFo Buckner. A move almost everyone who’s a fan wanted to happen before he even got traded. We may not be done as there’s talk we want the Colts DT Grover Stewart as well. More? I guess we’ll see if they try to strengthen their WR corps, but I got to give the front office credit for not sitting on their thumbs.

For once this seems like a pretty good time to get the bye week. Usually they are too early or too late, but as of now it looks like the 49ers look to get 10 players back from iunjury:

And also good news is Upton Stout will return.

Hoping McCaffrey is OK. He tried to play through his hammy and wasn’t really effective, but he was moving around so he should be fine. And of course the biggest concern is the wide receivers. Mike Evans is simply a game changer out there. D Robinson was doing very well, as was Deebo before they went down. Stribling is still looking at a December return.

Bosa is Bosa. At this point, getting anything out of him is gravy. But I don’t see this team doing much to keep him around. At this point in his career I’d offer him a one-year make-good deal. But someone will back up the truck for him. I just hope he can stay healthy for the rest of the season. West? He was getting pushed around but hey, he’s a big body.

Other than that, the other issue is Eddie Piniero. He’s gone from Eedie Money to Jake Moody Lite. 6-9 in FGs and 21-25 in XPs. Given that all the available kicers are kicking for someone, not sure who they can find in the couch cushions at this point. But if they are gonna make a change, the time is now. I’d really hate to see another important game get turned on a missed XP or FG. Does Super Bowl LVIII ring any bells?

And despite all the talk of Lynch being aggressive, I think we stand pat. Unless there’s some kind of big offer for Mac the Knife.

This pretty much went the way I thought it would.We were the Rams this game. We were the tired lazy team that made stupid mistake after stupid mistake. 4 turnovers. 3 were flat stupid mistakes. The one pick by the LB was just a good play, but still a dumb throw.

Penalties, 3rd down conversions, no pass rush. We seem to be snakebit in Georgia, but Atl looked like the 6-0 team and we looked like the 2-4 one.

Still and all, I’m not really gonna sweat this one. The game really did show that Purdy can trust Jordan Watkins. But for a ridiculously retarded call to take away the TD, he had a solid game. I don’t even know if the Magic Christian Kirk even set foot on the field, and luckily CMC seemed to be OK after missing about a quarter of the game.

Pisser to me is I sit here and watch a drive, and KNOW the refs are gonna start with the laundry. 3 third down conversions later Atl scores the TD to take the lead. It ALWAYS happens in the 3rd quarter.

We didn’t get enough pressure. We didn’t play tight coverage early to stop the short shit. We looked gassed after that 2nd quarter when Atl had the ball for 12 minutes to our 3. And after CMC went down, the offense died for 2 quarters.

We played tired and lackadaisical. Still and all, after 3 turnovers we still had an opportunity to take the lead late. But Purdy had his bad throw to Watkins. Funny thing is, it looked like the DB was in position to make the pick.

Anyhow, the bye couldn’t come at a better time. If we can get our WRs somewhat healthy, we should be in good shape for the playoff push. The only thing I’m gonna take away fmro this game is that Purdy looks like he trusts Watkins as he really made some great catches, even if they took the TD from him on a BS call.

Short week. Three time zone flight. Morning game. Evans out. I have a bad feeling about this one.

I hope we can score fast and stay on top, but I think Bijan and B Rob are a potent duo, and Penix is doing fine at QB in his 4 games. But they do rely on their run game to open up everything else.

Not a trap game but a let-down after some tough-ass games. And I think these guys are looking forward to the bye. Hope we healthy up and somehow get out of Georgia with a win.

We’ve had so many stupid games against this team though. Even going back to when the Falcons were in the NFC west. Including the Billy White Shoes Johnson Hail Mary loss so many years ago. And I know there are a few more weirdly ending games vs Atlanta. I think we own them all-time but it sure seems like they always fuck with us.

23-20 Atl.

But who does Purdy trust? With all of our wide receivers currently injured, at least the ones with a track record playing with Brock, it is fairly apparent, based on where the passes are going, that he is not very comfortable throwing to the likes of Jordan Watkins and Commander Cowing. In fact, one of Brock’s only 2 picks came because Cowing ran the wrong route and was in the wrong place and gave up on the play.

As we all saw, when Mike Evans went down, the offense died with him. Washington brought their safeties up, shut down Kittle and CMC, and the run game was stopped as well. I mean I was on Purdy at the beginning of the season regarding the too many INTs, so yeah I guess i should have factored in the lack of trusted WRs at any given moment these last couple seasons.

Having a guys like Evans emphasizes this even more. 50/50 balls become 90/10 balls. His knack for reaching over, under, around, or through DBs is uncanny. Size and strength. And I think that’s exactly what they see in Stribling. But as of now, they are not out there.

Evans injury is still being called ‘manageable’ but if there was a time to let him rest it is now. I’m cool with the fact that this is possibly gonna be one of our three-time-zone-tough-roadie-on-a-short-week-loss kind of games.

Or what, we go 20-0? Wouldn’t that be the nazz? Or even the nazz nazz?

Bear with me on this but why not bench most of the starters for this Falcons game? Load management works in the NBA. Try it for football.

The main reason why this is a perfect game to rest guys in the Falcons game is:

a) it’s an outlier team that the Rams and Seahags don’t face, so it won’t bite us in strength of schedule should we lose.

b) it’s right before the bye week.

Minn is undefeated, but we play them in a few weeks, and THAT is a much more important game. In Mexico.

No, they won’t do it, but given our record and how the rest of the league not named Minnesota is struggling, and even they are offensively challenged, it would behoove us to try and get healthy for the playoff seedings push after the bye.

And, you want to know something funny? The LEAGUE is talking about implementing this very thought. If (WHEN) they go to 18 games, they are talking about making the starters sit out one game. Or add another bye week and expand rosters so teams have more cannon fodder (players) available.

Point being if we play Evans and lose him for the rest of the season, it’ll be devastating. I hope at least he sits. If not Kittle, CMC, Purdy, Bosa, and Trent.

This type of game where we travel 3 time zones east at this point is the season is ripe for us to lose anyway. Give Dirty Mac a start.

Well, the power station got to Mike Evans last night after trying in vain to stop him all season. Broken ribs, and now the achilles soreness. He somehow avoided the dreaded achilles tear, so there’s some hope he’ll be available. I’m thinking keep him under wraps till after the bye week.

The game? I really don’t know what the NFL is trying to sell us, but in all the games I saw, teams that managed to get big leads suddenly saw laundry on the field. It happened in the Bears Falcons game, the Raiders Bills game, and it happened in our game.

After busting out to a 23-3 lead, the refs saw fit to give Washington first downs on three 3rd down plays. Which led to 2 TDs. The worst being the illegal contact call on Renardo Green. That would have stopped the Commandos on their own 26 but instead kept the drive going.

Then there was the invisible fair catch call that led to a 15 yard unsportsmanlike on what was a great hit by Sirhan Neal on the punt returner. I think he signalled for the fair catch before the ball was punted.

Yeah, we shoulda stopped them Yeah, we went 3-and-out 3 times in a row. Yeah, the offense died when Evans left. But it is sure looks to me like the NFL is telling the refs to slow teams down if they are in the process of rolling a team. Why? Betting of course. Plus, close games keep the interest up. Which keep the betting up.

And this popped up a couple days ago.

https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/ex-nfl-player-accuses-referees-111614557.html

Christian Kirk is out. Mike Evans is a game-time decision, but I think he plays. We did bump a WR, Malik Turner, and linebacker Jalen Graham up to the roster from the PS. But I’m sure Turner is here for Kirk.

The next-man-up thing is great until we get like last year when we were playing 4th string guys at WR and LB. Spots where we are thin again.

At this point all I want to see is a game where we don’t lose 2-3 guys. We don’t need to go all-out for this win, but every game is a big one in the NFL these days. As is that #1 seed. If only to heal up.

I’m OK with Bosa not being back, as long as we can dial up the pressure like we did last week. We seem to struggle with mobile QBs, and Daniels is certainly that.