San Francisco 49ers Forever

Well, that was a let-down. Both QBs looked pretty overwhelmed, but Drake Maye was flat awful under the relentless Seattle pass rush. Say what you will about the Seahawks, but they have built a defense that is hands-down the best in the league. Their 4-man rush was way too much for the Patriots to handle, and when Seattle threw a blitz at them, it resulted in a sack, a fumble, a pick, or all of the above. Since their pass rush is so effective, they can run a nickel defense all the time and take away everything deep by playing their safeties back. They do play a defense similar to ours (4-3, short zone), but everyone on their D line applies pressure nearly every play and their LBs fill the gaps on just about every run.

It looked like this would be an 18-0 snoozer what with Seattle stalling out on all their drives to the 20, but Sourdough Sam got one TD in the 4th quarter, and their defense got another one late. So, in reality, NE’s offense got 1 more TD than Seattle’s. Huzzah.

But the game was littered with missed passes on both sides. Maye hit one long gainer but otherwise was awful. HE was seeing ghosts. NE couldn’t run for shit either, but Seattle (and their MVP Kenneth Walker) set the tone early with a couple big runs and they kicked their way to a 19-0 lead into the 4th and coasted it out. All in all a real snoozer. All the shots around the Bay Area looked great, tho.

Didn’t see the halftime drama as the puppy needed a walk. Did the world end? Did Bad Bunny burn a flag? According to Twitter, the NFL will be forced to shut down due to the negative reaction by trillions of people. In other words, the basement dwellers weren’t happy but the rest of the world went “Whatevs. It’s a halftime show.” No nipples were harmed in this year’s production, so there’s that.

AI sez Bad Bunny got 136 million viewers, and Kid Rock got 5 mill.

Well, the mudflats! Dude I used to work wth called me Charlie by the Bay. Or sittin-on-da-dock-of-the . . . Anyhow, I kinda hate to say this but:

a) of course I’m gonna watch
b) I’m actually pulling for the Seahawks

Fuck the Patriots. I know Belicheat is gone, as is flat-balls Padre Tom but they have enough chips.

Seattle? Pete the cheat is gone. Russell Wilson is nearly toast, and you have to like the Sourdough Sam story. Rag to Riches courtesy of Kyle Shanahan. I tell ya, with our luck, Mac Jones goes to Minnesota and wins THEM a Super Bowl next year.

Didn’t watch the announcement, but I just saw that Roger Craig was elected to the Hall of Fame by the senior committee or whatever they are. Well-deserved, but he only had a 32 year wait. But hey, when yer in, yer in. Craig of course was the first NFL player to rush and receive over 1,000 yards, back in 1985. The glory years.

Saw a ton of game with him and the Niners in their heyday and he always played hard and never let up.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy, but I guess that means that Frank the Tank Gore will have to wait.

So much for Jim Schwartz. He’s still cooling his heels in Cleveland. The Niners on the other hand picked Raheem Morris to run the defense. He being the recent coach of the Atlanta Falcons. That didn’t go very well, but Morris did run the Rams Super Bowl winning 2021 defense.

For me, I’m jazzed about the hire. We have been running a base 4-3 defense since time immemorial it seems like. The wide 9 only rush 4 and pray your players make plays on every damn down drove me nuts. Saleh ran it, Wilks ran it, Sorensen ran it, and Ryans ran it. Of the group, Ryans seemed to do the most blitzing, but it was still a pretty basic short zone cover 2 bend don’t break defense. It worked sort of in its various flavors, mainly when we were healthy, but it still bothered me because it didn’t seem to generate the turnovers other teams got.

Morris on the other hand runs just about every scheme imaginable. 3-4, 4-3, 4-2, even (gasp!) 5 man fronts. Things I’ve been barking about for quite a while. He also plays a lot of press man coverage. Which in the case of teams like Seattle, and just about every other team out there, does well against the quick passing game. And with the departure of Robert Saleh goes Gus Bradley as he followed Saleh out the door today.

I for one am thrilled to see us run a much more aggressive defense. And I think the players will dig it as well.

If you miss the 80s, here’s a pretty big reminder.

Or, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Ol’ Jimbo Harbaugh’s arch-nemesis handshake buddy and erstwhile HC and DC for a bunch of teams, Jim Schwartz is available for our DC spot after being bypassed for the Cleveland Browns HC spot.

He was apparently “visibly upset” by the snub, so sure, let him take it out on the rest of the league. The Browns sucked last year, going 5-12, but not because of their 4th ranked defense. So I get why he thought he had a shot at the HC slot.

He uses the familiar 4 -man front and also uses the wide-9 to get edge pressure. But he is a LOT more aggressive with the 5 man fronts and uses a lot more man coverage. Although he doesn’t do a lot of blitzing, which is what I’d like to see. So, the same but different.

Works for me. Bradley seems like a good choice, but he’s been kinda middling for a good long while.

Huh. Just saw a statement from Dre Greenlaw saying how hard it was to adjust to Sean Peyton’s practice schedule and that they worked out so much harder in Denver. I always heard that the knock on Shanahanalynch was they ran their practices too hard. I guess not. Greenlaw said it took a while to adjust to the new defensive schemes and such, but he really didn’t stand out this year. I also heard that the team doesn’t stretch enough, or prepare for games well enough. These things are unverifiable by me or just about anyone not connected with the organization.

Beyond that, at least these clowns are talking about all the injury problems they have and that maybe they should change things up. If only for change’s sake.

Dre Greenlaw described his transition to the Denver Broncos as “tough” due to Sean Payton’s old-school, high-intensity, and demanding practice regimen, which differs significantly from the fresher-focused approach of his former coach, Kyle Shanahan. He noted Denver’s schedule involves more intensive, three-hour practices on Wednesdays and Fridays and a six-days-on, one-day-off routine.

Back in the old days, they practiced in the Rocklin heat in the summer, went through 2-a-days, and did a shit-ton of outdoor intense practicing. Well, they moved out of the heat, the NFLPA shortened the pre-season, cut games, practices, and hitting scrimmages. To us, all this means is we get hurt. Every season. All the time. Some teams are at the bottom of the injury list. We have been in the top 5 most injured 7 of the last 9 seasons.

Man, this sucks. When I was young, he was my first favorite QB. Our neighbors across the street had season tickets to the 49ers (in the east end zone at Kezar). So I got to go to a game in 1969 vs the Colts. Close game, and late in the 2nd half, the Colts put in Johnny Unitas to try and mount a comeback, and they did late the lead in the 4th quarter. But Brodie got the final TD and the Niners won 20-17.

I went to the Bears game that year as well and was hooked for life. Saw a bunch of Brodie’s games at the Stick as the team rode his shoulders to 3 playoff runs, including the comeback from injury to lead the 49ers past the Vikings only to have our hopes dashed by Roger Staubach’s (fuck preston riley) late comeback. Saw his last game in 1973 as well.

Quiet and steady, he didn’t demand the spotlight like Namath and others but he should be in the Hall of Fame. His numbers are markedly better than Namath’s. But whatevs. He retired from football to become one of the top guys on the Senior Golf tour. When they were still allowed to call it Senior.

So raise a toast to Brodie. A guy who took a lot of shots, had shit thrown at him for half his career by the unruly mobs that passed for Niner fans back in the day, and ended up almost climbing the mountain to the top. RIP John.

All these years seeing that clip and I just realized that it was after the Niners beat the Colts way back when.

Anyhow, I hate all these teams in the playoffs. Seattle and the Rams are right out. Fuck NE and FUCK Denver.

That being said, I guess I could stomach Denver winning. Mainly because they aren’t in our division, and they don’t have 5 Super Bowl wins, and Bo Nix was pretty fricking outstanding. My wife’s cousin is a huge Broncos fan and she and her husband came out here for the Super Bowl 50 pre-game festivities. It would be pretty fucking weird for Denver to win 2 Super Bowls in the mudflats 10 years apart.

Well, the one coaching hire that means the most to the 49ers of course is once and was our DC Robert Saleh moving on to the Tennessee Tuxedos. That also means we are hiring another DC yet again. In the past 6 seasons, we’ve had:

2020 – Robert Saleh
2021 – DeMeco Ryans
2022 – DeMeco Ryans
2023 – Steve Wilks
2024 – Nick Sorensen
2025 – Robert Saleh
2026 – ?x?x?x?

That’s a lot of different guys, but they all run basically the same 4-man wide-9 rush in cover 2 that emphasizes talent rather than aggressiveness. I think DeMeco Ryans did it best though as he would disguise coverages and blitz by bringing Warner up to the line or one of the other LBs.

I’d think they are gonna go with Gus Bradley, and for the most part I agree. They aren’t gonna hire from the outside like the disasters that Wilks and Sorensen were. I do want a guy that will take more risks though.

Beyond that, this team really needs to figure out their entire training and conditioning methods to get some kind of handle on the injury situation. This has been the case for 7 of the 9 seasons that this has been a major issue.

In what turned out to be a pretty entertaining season ended with a thud. But you really have to tip your cap to the team for overcoming monumental injuries to just about everyone in a uniform. Except for the guy everyone was worried about. Christian McCaffery.

This ragtag bunch of players, and a lot of rookies, weaved their way through what turned into a pretty tough schedule, beating 4 playoff teams, and even managing to knock off the defending Super Bowl champion Eagles before yesterday’s anti-climactic end.

So one of the positives is a lot of rookies got a lot of playing time. Williams, Collins, Stout, and West all played well. And Sigle showed flashes late. But we all know the issues. Besides the injuries. The O line is in bad shape. We are very thin at WR. We could use an RB, or Kyle needs to use who he has. We did pick up a ton of decent LBs as the team went to 4th string guys, but man, they really need to do something different in regards to training and getting guys ready. The injuries are simply killing us just about every season.

Or maybe it’s the fucking EMFs from the PGE power station next door.

All in all, this was a pretty spectacular coaching job on both sides of the ball, but a season that started out so extraordinary going 4-1 with 3 wins over our division rivals, ended with backups and backups to backups all over the field. ANd it sure looks like RObert Saleh will get another shot as HC somewhere soon.

And to add insult to injury, the fucking Rams beat the Bears in OT. Fuck.