What started out looking like a beat-down of a demoralized Cowboys team, and Tony Romo in particluar, turned out instead to be a gutty victory by Romo and the dreaded Cowboys. the game hinged on a couple plays. As the 1ast half was winding down, Dallas faced a 3rd and 9. romo missed on a deep ball, and apparently forced a punt. However, Brooks was lined up in the neutral zone for a penalty. On the subsequent 3rd and 4, Romo hit Austin on a short slant that Whitner just flat missed. So, after outplaying Dallas through the first 28:10 of the 1st half, the Niners caved in at the wrong time, and gave Dallas 7 to close the half. To make matters worse, the Niners got the ball with 1:48, but had no timeouts. Thus, the clock ran out on them.
The 2nd half seemed to devolve into a field possession battle for Harbaugh. After Kitna killed a Dallas drive by throwing a pick into the end zone, Smith returned the favor, and Kitna then drove Dallas downfield for the tying TD. The niners inexplicably then left DeMarcus Ware unblocked for a 7 yard sack on the ensuing possession. Punt. Kitna was again picked off on a tipped pass that Brock caught. Smith made a great read on singl;e coverage on Walker split out to the right, and hit him for a 30 yard score. The Niner D stiffened , and forced another Dallas punt on Romo’s return. After the punt and the penalty, the Niners had excellent field position. So, naturally, the Niners run up the middle a couple times, and Smith scrambled for 12. On the enuing 55 yard FG, Dallas was assessed a 15 yard penalty for leverage. Harbaugh said he trusted his defense with a 2 score lead at that point. Unfortunately, there were 11 mintues left . . .
The aggravating thing is, with the game in hand, the defense gave up a ton of short passes to Austin and Witten. The TD to Austin was a very good play, but the whole drive was pitch and catch. The pressure that was there all day evaporated. At that point, the D should have been fairly fresh, but after the subsequent 4 and out (they threw a slant!), the D was gassed. At least they kept Dallas out of the end zone.
The OT was more of the same. 7 yard run. 8 yard sack. 10 yard pass on 3rd and 11. It got overturned anyway after Harbaugh called a timeout, thus allowing the replay to happen in the 1st place. They should have just went ahead and gone for it. Dallas wasn’t going to challenge. Chalk that up to inexperience. These guys have to plan for contingencies like 4th and short, and how to get a play off quick. Same thing with the illegal formation call. Harbaugh chewed the ref’s ear off while the play clock ran down and forced a time out.
Way too much Gore. Way too much Ginn. At some point soon, Harbaugh has to trust Smith and the O line with a game that is more committed to passing. After everyone screamed for more passing than the Seattle game, the Niners threw the ball 4 more times. Not exactly the offensive juggernaut most envisioned. Yes, it’s early. Yes, they are learning on the fly. Yes, this is the safe approach. The problem with playing it safe in the NFL is that usually bites you in the ass. Just ask Miami’s defensive coordinator, or Minnesota’s linebacker coach . . .
Forty Niners Forever 
CHUCK
for a team with a new system and young 0-line vs. the dallas rush …
IT’S EARLY !
😉
It’s refreshing to see Spit look at the game objectively and notice the obvious positive signs. I agree with you Chuck, I really have no idea why the don’t roll Smith out more often. He passes better when he’s moving. That 45 yard seed he threw in the 1q off the muffed snap was a pearl. Plus, it would allow him to take off running more often.
God, I hate Dallas but we witnessed one of the most epic qb performance in years. He had a punctured lung, too? Insane. I still don’t understand why Fangio didn’t put crazy pressure on a qb who everyone knew was injured and a hit away from getting knocked out of the game.
I think we can take a few things away from this game –
1.) The first thing that jumps to my mind is that our secondary isn’t very good. Reggie Smith and Williams need to be shown the door. I honestly hope Goldson can get it together. Goldson and Crabtree could be sitting on the sidelines over money. If they are, it won’t last long. Anyone see Carlos Rogers stop trying after Jason Witten caught that first pass? His hit on Romo made up for it. Whitner’s fine. Brock looks like a keeper. That means we have half a secondary. Again, though, for effect – Reggie Smith and Funky Cold Medina Williams need to be shown the door.
2.) Kyle Williams is better than Micheal Crabtree. Maybe at some point Harbaugh will actually do what he said he would in the media – start players who are the best at their positions regardless of draft position, pay and politics. Harbaugh is a bold-faced liar when meeting with the press.
3.) The same is true with Frank Gore. Kyle Williams should beat out Crabtree, and Hunter and Dixon should beat out Gore. Gore has clearly lost a step from all the beatings Singletary and Nolan put on him. Right now Hunter and Dixon are better. Dixon should be our short yardage back. I don’t think that’s Dixon’s only skill set, but it would force him to stop dancing so much.
Maybe Gore is the main back because Harbaugh and Roman haven’t had enough time with Dixon and Hunter. Maybe it’s a lockout thing?
4.) Fangio is learning as well. Even though Harbaugh is taking the heat for a conservative game and a subsequent loss, Fangio, in my mind, didn’t do the Niners any favors. It’s hard to be an aggressive play caller on D when you secondary can’t run with anyone, but Fangio needed to bring the house at Romo the second Romo came back into the game. It’s hindsight, blah, blah, blah, but I guarantee you, if I was the DC and I saw Romo wincing on the sidelines and then come back it, I’d blitz 13 and take the penalty for too many men on the field. You don’t take your foot off the gas, ever. There was blood in the water and Fangio swam away. I’m not going to be too critical of the coaching staff this early on, but if there’s a pattern that develops with Fangio, I won’t be pleased about it. I want an aggressive blitzer as a DC. It’s rumored that Fangio, Baalke and Harbaugh wanted Patrick Peterson. If that’s the case, I can see why. Peterson would allow Fangio to blitz more. If Fangio has to play conservative to cover the deep ball or the longer pass, so be it, but they’d better address our secondary in the draft next off season because keeping the wraps on blitzes and aggressive defensive play calling isn’t much fun. Just think, we could have Earl Thomas instead of Mike Iupati. That would have been cool. Fuck Mike Singletary.
Based on his history, this is the best Fangio defense we’ll ever see. He’s turned every defense he’s headed into the very bottom of the barrel.
Spit the 1 thing I think Goldson is better at is covering the TE. He sucks at playing over the top.
What it looks like to me is that these guys are still not seeing things with the ‘same eyes’.
Biting on ball fakes is both too aggressive and too elementary when the premise is to protect over the top.
I lobbied for Whitner because he’s a Field General with an attitude but, as we saw, he gambles, A LOT.
He’ll find his comfort zone with the right partners around him.
What Whitner does well is what Goldson doesn’t do, take proper angles and tackle.
I’m onboard with your assessments, I see the upside because I know Harbaugh isn’t looking for instant gratification or media approval. He sees this as many of us do, a work in progress.
You teach the infant to crawl, hold hands to walk, get balance and, learn to be independent.
Goodwin is the OL commander, he’s raw in this unit, we have plenty of work to do so, we keep all sorts of extra help there until the unit thinks for themselves.
It’s about taking little chunks and digesting the philosophy before you roll it onto the runway to see if it flies.
I think Goldson is a good backup to Whitner. Reggie Smith is a hard worker who doesn’t have the wheels. Williams just never got over the injury. So, basically, we HAVE no free safeties. Nobody like Mert doing the Chicken Dance and playing centerfield. You can’t ask Whitner to play centerfield because as we saw, he’ll cheat up and bite on play action – he is a tackler above all else.
The roster still has holes. Not much we can do about it until next spring.
I think Goldson gets the start this weekend. Williams was late and/or missing on too many plays.
I’ll tell you one thing about our safeties, Reggie Smith and Media Williams are terrible. If you look at most of our blown coverages in the last two games, the you’ll a number 30 somewhere, totally lost. From time to time we hear about players, “playing in space.” Reggie Smith can’t play in space. And that hit on Miles Austin (or wiff), where Austin then used a hand to keep his knee from touching down while diving into the endzone? That was the worst angle / hit ever. What was Media Williams doing? No wonder Leslie Frazer dumped the guy. Whitner’s okay if he has a true safety playing center field behind him – actually he’s better than ok – he’s good. Goldson is slow, but he better go from shit talking chump to turning it the fuck on because the Niners need free safety play right now worse than ever. If Goldson can’t play, Fangio can’t blitz.
The Niners need an Eric Berry, Earl Thomas type in their backfield to take control and dominate back there. Goldson could still do it, but we need the Nerd Squad to go into his office and do a clean / swipe on his brain. Last year I was telling everyone Earl Thomas would be better than Eric Berry. Berry’s injured, but still, how do you like me now?
My feelings haven’t changed.
What did I tell you about Whitner — very good vs the run. The pass?
You’ve seen it for yourself now. This defense is so much like last year’s, it’s frightening. Very good stopping the run; DBs couldn’t cover a receiver in a phone booth.
And this continued shit goes much further than our new coaches and their philosophy. Who brought in this shit talent? I’m sure glad Jed conducted that nation-wide search for a new GM.
Well, hell. Goldson doesn’t thrill me either, but Jesus H. Christ. SOMEONE has to be able to play FS. I’d start looking at other teams taxi squads. There is NO WAY a FS should get burned like Williams did against the 3rd and 4 to end the 1st half, and the pass over the middle in OT. 2 plays, 150 yards. Awful.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but did the Niners stop blitzing in the 2nd half? Dallas was strictly shotgun. We needed to put more pressure on an obviously injured Romo.
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The more I go over this, the more I realize the coaches let this one get away.
Dennis, they can only do so much so fast. They turned over some of the personnel, they need to do more. This was a fucked-up offseason. It severely limited what they could and couldn’t do.
this is from a Sac Bee article. does not look like we the Fans will be seeing a lot of passing once Harbaugh establishes his offense.
In 2009, for example, when Stanford had an accomplished running back in Toby Gerhart and a redshirt freshman quarterback in Andrew Luck, the Cardinal rushed 536 times and attempted 313 passes. A year later, when Gerhart was in the NFL and Luck was the toast of college football, that ratio shrank a bit. But Stanford still ran 535 times vs. 379 pass attempts.
With a short offseason for the 49ers to learn a new playbook, Harbaugh again is likely to lean on his running game while the passing attack finds its footing.
“We are in a process,” Harbaugh said. “I know everybody wants to solve the debt today, but that is something that is a process.”
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/09/20/3923399/49ers-rushers-run-into-wall.html#ixzz1YWXcR674
Think about it, for whatever reason, this team has no secondary, no proven qb and a really young and pretty bad offensive line. And people want to open up our offense? I don’t blame Jim Harbaugh for one minute keeping it conservative. He got the lead in both games. In one game Ted Ginn saved his bacon, in another Fangio must have gone to the bathroom during the 4th quarter and then fell in. But no excuses.
The Niners wanted Patrick Peterson, but they got the next best thing in Aldon Smith. Either defend against the pass by attacking the qb, or get a good cover corner. Our secondary is shit, but our pass rush is getting there, and Chris Culliver is waiting in the wings.
If I was this team’s GM next year, in the first round I’d take a FS, and in the second round I’d take CB. Our offensive is terrible, but like Bill Walsh always said, “The offense knows where the ball’s going therefore they don’t need to be as gifted so draft defensive players early.” For my money, next year I go safety and cornerback with my first two picks, then I use picks 3-7 on wide receivers, linemen and tight ends. We don’t need another qb, not right now. We have Kaep and Tolzien and both could be ready next year. Now if there’s a guy you believe could be a hall of fame qb out there, like I did this year with Jake Locker, then by all means, grab him. But only if you think he’s a potential hall of famer. Otherwise we have enough project qbs on the team.
Spit, the problem I have is that the Niners seemed to be the ones that sabotaged themselves in the 2nd half. Dallas didn’t change much defensively. They didn’t blitz more, they didn’t radically alter their approach. The Niners however, seemed more than determined to run the ball. Why? To burn clock? They stopped throwing on 3rd down. And the defense went into slumberland in the 4th quarter. Did the Niners D wear down? I guess a claim could be made for that. But the Niners didn’t try to change things up on D, or get more pressure on Romo when it was obvious that Dallas was going shotgun the ENTIRE 4th quarter. We let him pick us apart. God forbid we give up on the (ineffective) run, and try to move the ball in the air.
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The Niners played as good a 1st haf as they could have, and it feels like we let Dallas off the hook by going conservative on both sides of the ball.
Learning to play with a lead isn’t easy. You have to be able to bleed the clock but then pickup crucial first downs. In normal football you have three chances to get the first, but when you play with the lead in the fourth you slam the running back into the line against eight in the box the first two plays, conceding you aren’t getting any yardage. Then on 3rd down you have to throw for at least ten yards. It’s hard to do. The good teams can put the game away either by going 3 ‘n out, punting and then having their defense stuff ’em, or by converting 3rd downs. Right now, because the Niners’ secondary is so terrible and our qb / offensive line is bad, we can’t ice games the normal way. So Harbaugh needs to learn how to ice games with THIS team. Not his Stanford teams or his San Diego St teams or his Baltimore Colts teams with Ted Marchibroda – this team. Icing games is a formula, and I don’t have the answer yet – and clearly neither does Harbaugh and neither does anyone else for that matter.
You can say seven step drop, spread ’em out, go for the gusto, but ask Mike Martz about how affective that can be down the stretch. You clearly can’t go in the tank and hand off all day long, but you certainly can’t punt and leave it to this secondary. No chance. So what the fuck do you do? I don’t know. I really don’t. I don’t think I go seven step drops, though. I don’t think I expose the Niners to having Alex Smith fight against a pass rush and complete balls down field. I think the answer could be 4th quarter trickeration, but you need speed for that – like Ted Ginn. Maybe some trickeration with Ginn and Kyle Williams. I don’t know. How the 49ers learn to ice games in the fourth quarter against teams that can stop Gore will be interesting. I think 4th quarter trickeration with Williams and Ginn is something I’d at least try when attempting to ice a game.
I vote for, throw on first down – throw short, but get at least five yards. After that, you can run or throw on the other downs without a big fat target on the QB’s chest.
Spit, it isn’t run run pass punt, or throw three bombs punt.
They need to do what they were doing in the FIRST HALF. Dallas didn’t change shit much defensively. WE did. Quick passes. They threw ONE slant and it gained 14 yards. Did we try it again? No. It was one of the few times in the 2nd half that we actually lined up 3 WRs. Hit the slot guy for a slant. Throw on 1st down. Try to get VD in a position to get open. We went into Singletary mode, and it was very depressing. the Niners went away from what worked in the 1st half. On both sides of the ball.
I totally disagree that they, “need to do what they were doing in the FIRST HALF.” There are half time adjustments and situations that change what you can do and how you can do it. Like Fangio recently said, each game is different and you never know what a team is going to give you or try and take away from you. But teams adjust and situational football is just as important from a coach’s perspective as it is in baseball. Unfortunately, fans aren’t as aware of situational football because you can’t see the entire secondary. Either way, it’s clearly not as easy to say, “just do what you did in the first half.” Can’t do that after the halftime adjustments are made.
I like Grump’s idea of throw on first, but Smith’s quick slants are inaccurate lasers. We’ve all seen them go for six the other way. Maybe Harbaugh can get Smith throwing outs to the sidelines where only the wr can get the ball. But then again, that would take consistent accuracy and good wide receiver play.
The Niners are going to get another taste of “how to ice a game,” in Cinci this week on the road. Our teams sucks on the road because, well, it sucks period. But I think Harbaugh will have the Niners ready to play on the road. I think the Niners beat the Bengals, but I don’t think they’ll learn much about how to ice the game because I think the Niners will be successful running Gore down their throats late in the 4th.
Dallas didn’t ratchet up the blitzing in the 2nd half. Their base D was doing fine in getting pressure. They rushed the same guys. Dallas didn’t switch things up. No, you can’t see teh coverages, but there isn’t a hell of a lot different you can do coverage-wise. For the most part, the passing game was nullified in the 2nd half by the fact that we’d run for nothing on 1st down, and then try to pass and get sacked. We had a lot of 3rd and longs in the 2nd half. Maybe the Niners just got worn down. The pass pro wasn’t all that good anyway. But the run blocking was worse.
That’s a good point. At 28 I could kick the shit out of any 21 year old, ever. Harbaugh’s got some young bucks on his O line who do wear down in the second half. I never thought of that. Maybe that’s also why Adam Snyder relieves Rachal in the second half?
If you build off that thinking the Niners can’t ground and pound to ice the game with Rachal, Davis and Iupati (even Staley is lite in the ass), then what a clusterfuck of a predicament for Harbaugh – he can’t kill the clock running late in games because of young offensive linemen, he can’t throw because of Alex Smith lack of touch and accuracy, and he can’t turn it over to the defense because of our secondary. In my opinion, it’s all about out patterns and trickeration. But even out patterns kill the clock. Maybe Solari needs more liberal substitutions along the offensive line during the second half? Fuck, I don’t know. Kilgore wasn’t even suited up the last two games.
Another problem is, you don’t even know if you can trust Hunter and Dixon to hold the ball late in games. Only one way to find out. Whatever the case maybe, the formula ain’t there yet. I’m almost certain the Niners lose to Seattle if it wasn’t for Ted Ginn. Seattle had serious momentum. They obviously lost to Dallas in the 4th quarter. I hope we see some creativity from Harbaugh and his coaching staff late in games so it shows he is addressing the issue.
That;s been my point. They need to change things up and so things different. Whether by putting in 4 WRs and running a few spread plays, or trying a dreaded screen (or hey, more than 1 slant?), roll Smith out, anything but the vanilla crap.
It actually worked for 5 yards too as I recall. Gotta learn to crawl before you can walk, never mind run. Problem is us fans have seen all that running up the middle, basic offense ad nauseum . It’s hard to be patient while the handicapped team deals with learning the basics.