The crazy thing about football as opposed to baseball is the urgency of EVERY game. In baseball, you can go on a 6 game losing streak, and still come out of it fine. In baseball, there’s always tomorrow. In football, you drop 2 games in a row, and 3 teams can pass you up on the way to the playoffs. Parity being what it is in the NFL these days, there is NO room for error. If you look at last year’s games, there were maybe 3 plays that kept the team from being 9-7 instead of 6-10. Look at Sunday’s Eagles win. There were missed FGs all over the place, fumbles, and drive-killing penalties. But the game hinged on the pursuit of Justin Smith to strip the ball from Jeremy Maclin, and Dashon Goldson having the wherewithall to simply fall on the football and not try to do too much and be the highlight hero (hello Nate Clements).
So, here we sit, atop the NFC West with a 2 game lead 4 weeks into the season. I sure as hell didn’t think we’ll have a lead like this at this point in the season. I knew the other teams were weak, but I figured it would take the 49ers time to get acclimated to the new systems and schemes they are all learning. I guess we should all be thanking the scheduling Gods, because the Rams, on paper at least, the best team in the west, has a brutal schedule, and looks like they’ll end up 0-7, with Green Bay, Dallas, and NO as their next 3 games. Seattle and AZ certainly aren’t doing very well, and all my thoughts on getting Kevin Kolb (talk about Checkdown Charlie. AZ fans are blasting his signing now) were unfounded and silly.
TB is one of those fair to middling teams that, when on can be scary, but watching that game last night, they spent 3 quarters shooting themselves in the feeet repeatedly. They must have had around 10 holding penalties. Freeney was unstaoppable, but Curtis Painter kept Indy from doing much offensively. But, as the thread says, this is a big test for your 49ers. And one where the head coach has to REALLY stress the importance of staying focussed. They are coming home after their best road trip in probably 15 years. They are getting press (albeit it’s more of the ‘how the fuck did the Iggles give it away?’), but Harbaugh is already getting praise from the talking heads around the media-sphere. The threat is very real that these guys come in with swelled heads, and thoughtsw of prime-time glory. This is where your coach HAS to beat on these guys to remond them that it’s all about hunger. All about not reveling in the recent past. It’s about pushing forward and not believing the hype. Matt Maiocco interviewed Harbaugh after returning from Philly, and it gives me a good feeling regarding just this fact. The gist of the interview is:
Is part of your task this week to sort of gauge the pulse of the team and make sure they don’t get too high after this win?
Harbaugh: “Yeah, that’s one. It comes back to – you’re getting better or you’re getting worse, you never remain the same. We’ll keep that blue-collar mentality.”
His experience as a head coach at Stanford defintely gives him an edge that the previous head coaches didn’t have. Even more so, when you consider that keeping college football players from going to the moon after big wins (say beating USC in LA), is tougher than doing that with professional football players. Still and all, these guys, as a team, are winning games that they had previously lost. The difference is the coaches back then would praise the team for close losses (GB, Minn, Atl, NO, Colts, Titans, ring a bell in the last couple years?), and then come up short down the road becasue they would rest on their laurels and fall flat. I can’t count how many times the Niners had (to steal a phrase from Skeebs) GPS games. Statement games. Ones that would show the team’s mettle. Invariably they’d fall flat, lick their wounds, and have to rebuild themselves from scratch. The problem came from the coaches building up the team needlessly and not putting in the work. Nolan would regularly give the team Monday off if the team won the previous Sunday. While that may sound good from a player standpoint, it doesn’t drive hiome the point that you need to keep working to get better, not take time off. There plenty of time to rest in the offseason.
Here’s the entire interview with Harbaugh. It is an excellent study in motivation techniques, self-deprecation, and the ‘us-vs-them’ mentality that Bill Walsh always drove into his players.
Harbaugh understands what to do to keep these guys moving forward and not looking back. Well, the proof will be in the pudding this weekend, but he seems to have a much better grip on this than his predecessors.
Forty Niners Forever 
What I saw from Alex in Philly was a sense of timing and having WRs in the right ‘windows’ in the 3rd Qtr. My contention from the start was that Harbaugh is spoon feeding this Offense to everyone a taste at a time. Once Alex pulls the trigger like that without ‘Thinking too Much’, we’ve solved 2 major issues. The OL suddenly looks more formidable and, you force the Safeties out of the Box.
The Slant that Josh took to the house is a play I’ve been praying for too long. That is a staple of the WCO and forces a CB and LB to have eyes in the sides of their heads.
If Alex can master a 3 Step drop successfully, look out. We will be deadly.
I know you and I have differed on this in the past Chuck but, it worked like a charm in Philly. Suffice it to say, Philly LBs don’t exist but the Slant does break the 8Man Box if you can do it properly.
This is where Crabtree and Braylon will make a living I hope.
Then, you add Josh/Ginn/Williams to the mix along with Delanie and Vernon?
I’m drooling over the possibilities. You beat pass rushers by getting over on the LBs.
For me, the WCO is quick hitters and OLmen that can hit moving targets in space.
This is where I see Anthony and Iupati looking like animals, at the 2nd level.
Alex needs to get that focus more readily. It’s about timing and trust with his Receivers, be it WR/TE or RB.
Harbaugh will them on the same page in due time. I’m thinking we’ll look like a much different Team after the BYE.
Bruce Miller is already a capable receiver, he just needs to polish his Pass Pro and FB skills in the blocking dept. This will take plenty of reps but, Tom Rathman is the perfect instructor.
What’s curious to me, and I’m sure it’s the lack of practice time (or fucking training camps), is the fact they don’t use Crabs on slants. I’ve been advocating slants forever, but the two I’ve seen this year went to Morgan. Smith earholed Crabs a couple times last year when Crabs wasn’t looking,. Whether Crabs didn’t read it hot or just wasn’t ready, they ain’t together on it. That needs to happen.
Except for the 2nd half, all the pass plays are outs or comebacks. This has been true for the past 4 years. Teams seem to have taken away VD on the deep seam and there still hasn’t been any 40+ yard attempts. I agree that they are taking their time integrating all this. And like I said, they’ve gotten this shit rolling faster than I thought, And the faster Norriss fades away, the better.
There seems to be a concerted effort to involve everyone in little ways each and every week Chuck. It’s indicative to me that Harbaugh is playing the teaching game.
We’ve all waited a LONG time for a HC to have a GD PLAN. I’m perfectly comfortable grabbing ugly wins so long as they’re WINS. It’s not how you start, it’s how you FINISH.
The biggest and most obvious change right now is the fact that these guys are spilling it for Harbaugh. No Team succeeds if they don’t buy the PLAN.
I think losing to TB and Detroit is a distinct possibility. We opened the offense up last week because we were down by 20. In a close game would we do that again? I don’t know but I have
serious doubts. My guess is we run an old fashioned conservative offense, get beat in a close one, and then the blogs can all get back to blaming the loss on Alex for the one bad play he seems to have each game.
TB will be close but they are kind of not firing on all cylinders right now. I think we can take them. Detroit, we should lose… but they are bound to have a letdown at some point, and we might just catch them at the right week. Both games will be tough. I’m very curious to see how Harbaugh approaches each team. He does NOT need to throw 60 times a game, but running out of the gun seems to agree with our personnel. As for Alex, he has been ‘good Alex’ more than ‘bad Alex’ this year, he just needs to keep it up, show some consistency, avoid the really killer mistakes like pick sixes. He is playing with more confidence this year than ever before. I’m still wary of going all in on him as a guy who can win in the playoffs, but I think in Harbaugh’s system he should certainly play well enough for us to win this crappy division, and then we’ll see.
At least the team is interesting to watch this year, instead of making you want to stab out your eyes with a fork. That’s progress, of a sort.
My trepidation with Alex is not Alex. It is the play calling. See Bradford, Sam.
You must have missed the Monday night game, Berger.
TB shot themselves in the feet for 3 quarters before they finally did anything. Against an injury-decimated Indy team and a wobbly Curtis Painter. At home no less. Any good team will put up 20 on them before they figure out what the hell they’re doing. If they can’t get started for 3 quarters at home, do you think playing on a short week 3 time zones away is going to make shit easier?
Check out Stephen A Smith putting the beat-down on Skip Baseless (hah!) re Brett Favre’s comments regarding Aaron Rodgers .
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=7062194
Too funny . . .
I’m surprising confident about the TB game. The one thing we do consistently well is stop the run so Hilarious Blount can get ready to get shut down. And while I don’t think that Harbaugh is going to go all spread again like he did in the 2nd half, I DO think he’s going to mix Gore and Hunter into formations that really allow us to move the ball. Once we get 2 TD’s up on them, Fangio can throw all those wild ass blitz formations at Freeman and I think he is going to make a lot of mistakes on Sunday…..
Yeah, I will say that these are the kinds of games that show the heart of the team. Games like these were theones that Singletary failed big time on. The only difference is these gut-check type usually came after close loss. How many times last year did this team come up short, look flat and unprepared, and in the end, fuck up against a shitty team? The year before? The year before that? At least 5 a season.
If anything defines the Nolan/Singletary eras, it’s coming up small in big situations. This is the first big test of the character of the team. If they come out and play well, and somehow lose, it’ll be OK. If they come out, give up a bunch of sacks, can’t run, and get beat down like last year, then there’s a problem. Tampa is a team that looks a lot like the Niners. They are trying to gut out wins with a short passing game, and a power running game and a smothering defense. Indy made them look pretty bad offensively. Granted, we don’t have Dwight Freeney, buit our defense matches up pretty well with TB. The Niners don’t need to be scared of the deep game. That isn’t Freeman’s deal. It’s underneath stuff, and runs up the middle with Blount. The Niners should come out and show 8 in the box.
“Twinfan, I think many of us ‘Faithful fans’ wanted nothing more than for Alex to get a pair.”
Well, considering the shit he’s put up with since 2005, I’d say he’s more than shown he’s well endowed. Harbaugh has been a tonic for the whole team,but Smith has always been a talented QB. Jim has finally installed a system that can take advantage of skills Smith always had. He’s shown it many times over the years but the previous regimes always went back to the good ole “I” and give da ball to Frank..he was great in the third quarter Sunday because he was allowed to be great. Berger is right on, and if they want a guy to make clean hand offs to Frank and hit Morgan on those 5 yarders, they should have kept Shaun Hill. Besides Smith’s great half, the big diff from previous years- the fucking defense didn’t give it back at the end. Remember NO last year? They rallied to tie, turned it over to the defense, and never saw the ball again. That play by Justin was huge in great part because that virtually never happened in recent years, I’d bet nearly every one of us expected Vick to drive them down and their POS kicker nail one to win it..
Anyway, I expect them to beat Tampa. I’ll reserve judgement on Detroit until I see next weeks game. I think they’ll come back to Earth.. of course some think the Niners are playing above their heads, we’ll see..
The Lions have to have a down week sometime. Let’s hope they save it for us.
The Lions game will be a huge challenge to our OL. Besides their passing attack, their biggest strength is the pass rush. It will be interesting to see how we adapt our game plan to the way they play. Alex is gonna have to get rid of the ball quick. I think a couple of draws and some well executed screens will help to keep em in check a little. To win this game we are gonna have to own the line of scrimmage.
Suh is basically unstoppable. They have to adjust for him big time. AD had a horrible game vs Babin. Suh is better than that.
Yeah, Detroit would be a good week to unveil Smith rolling out away from pressure. Otherwise, he is too likely to get his head torn off. I still don’t trust this line in pass pro against the big boys. Also plays that take advantage of defensive aggressiveness: draws, traps, screens, slants.
I think Sunday would be a good time to give Kaepernick his first NFL start.
Was he traded to Dallas?
Yeah, we’ll get Nate Davis, Kory Sheets, and Thomas Clayton. We’ll be unstoppable.
Let’s not get too excited about Alex just yet, he had one great quarter against philly and a really ugly first half, The other games he really was being throttled intentionally by the coaching staff to avoid having the deadly mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I give him credit for not having the deadly mistake so far, do I think he is capable of winning a playoff game – no. If Alex shows the ability to put a team on his back and the consistency week to week I will gladly be at the front of the Alex parade.
Sure you will.
No one’s inducting Smith into the Hall of Fame quite yet, but the prevailing theory is that Harbaugh is feeding the offense to the whole team a little at a time. He started with the run. Now he’s moved on to the passing game. The Seattle and Dallas games saw little 3 WR sets, the Cincy and Philly games saw a lot more. The Eagle game saw more difficult throws. Slants, the throw to Crabs down the sideline that split their zone, and even the crossing route to VD. Different wrinkles.
The thing is, they started awful with the blocking and pass pro. They’ve slowly improved. The 2ns half last week was pretty good.
Which is why this game is a great gauge of how they are progressing and what they’ve learned. My quick take on this game is, we should be able to get on top of these guys pretty quick, and then coast home. TB is a team a lot like us. We need to do to them what teams used to do to us, and that’s force them out of their comfort zone (get an early lead), and force mistakes.
Baby steps right, we are so far back from all the shit in off-season. I say we fuck the Bucs (nice ring that) and become the scary team Jimbo is building. I realize it’s not Halloween yet (that would be the Browns) but goddamn it I wanna scare other teams! And pound them into guacamole, okay?
FUCK the BUCS!
The ugly first half was Roman’s more than Smith’s. Very similar to the GB game in 2009. Anyway, none of these guys are excited about Alex, Badger. Mostly they expect him to re-suck, you’re preaching to the choir, pal.