Ahhh, the heady days of the bye week. Manningham was coming back, the defense was shoring up with needed D line help from the rookies, and Eric Wright was on his way. Well, a funny thing happened on the way to the playoffs. Not to rehash the obvious, but the offense went into hibernation, and the blogwaves erupted with the millions of problems plauging the Niners, and thousands of solutions to fix those problems. Far be it (Roman) from me to (Roman) point fingers at the (Roman) sudden ineptitide of an offense that (Roman) never recovers from 2nd half(Roman) adjustments by our opponents, but the play calling appears to be the leading indicator. Wichi is under the purview of Greg Roman.
I don’t have the stats handy, but most every game, the offense completely fall apart by the 4th quarter, and cannot get a 1st down to save their lives. I know that in all the losses, the defense was forced to stay on the field at somewhere like a 2:1 ratio, as the offense goes 3 and out 2 or 3 or 4 consecutive times. I know in the Indy and Seattle games, while the score was still close, Roman gave up on the run at the cost of re-establishing control of the line. He’d pass too much. SInce the blocking is shakey, and the WRs invisible, this often didn’t work. This leads to the whole mentality of every player overthinking their role and trying to do too much. As in Kassim Osgood tackling a fair catching punt returner, or LMJ returning a KO 8 yards deep in the end zone, only to get tackled on the 9 yard line. The college football mentality. Throw in a borderline hit on Drew Brees, and there you have our second 2-game losing streak.
Beyond that clusterf**k, we have an extra day .5 to talk, bloggolisciously of course. At this point of the season we are pretty much at DEFCON 5. Lose on Monday Night, and we coould be passed by the Cards and the Bears and tied with the Iggles. In the grand scheme of things, it’s good to be fighting for a playoff spot, as opposed to playing out the string like preseason hopefulls like Atlanta Washington. The reality though, is that the Niners were poised to make a strong push to the #1 seed but fell flat on their faces.
Speaking of face-plants, our next opponents, the Washington Redskins are performing their own death-spiral. I thought Shanny rushed his star QB back into games way too fast, and RG III-VII started out pretty slugglishly by losing his first 3 games. It hasn’t gotten much better for them. RG III has recently come to taking potshots at his defense, various players, and his head coach and OC.
In reality, though, the Skins are the 6th best offense in the league, and cannot be taken lightly, even with the infighting. They have the 11th best passing attack and the best run game. For all their losses, RG III is in the top ten QBs, Alfred Morris is 3rd in the league with 918 yards rushing, and Pierre Garcon is 3rd in the league with 67 catches. Take these guys lightly, and they can light up the scoreboard in a hurry.
Defense is a different story. Washington is 30th in points allowed, and 28th in total defense. They are in the minus in turnovers (-2), and in the bottom third in sacks with 25. If the Niners can get on top of these guys early, it should be smooth sailing. Keep this one close, as we’ve done in all our losses, and we just may play ourselves right out of the playoff hunt. This losing streak has shown a glaring problem in that these guys can’t close out a game very well. Regardless the hit last week, we are not pressuring the QB near enough. 21 sacks isn’t getting it done.
Has Aldon Smith lost his fire? Is he merely getting back into game shape? I don’t know, but Brees, and Cam before him faced little sustained pressure. A sure-fire way to lose in the NFL.
Forty Niners Forever 
7Tony8 wherever you are, I found your post in the spam filter and released it.
Not sure why yours went in there. WordPress getrs very randumb at times.
SKIN THE SKINS!
ANd in more good news:
http://www.49ers.com/news/article-2/Craig-DeBartolo-Jr-Among-HOF-Semifinalists/5fae7372-70e3-4ce2-9e5f-1c24df90919f
I don;t see Craig going in, but Eddie D deserves it. His gambling deal likely keeps him out a few more years though,
Wow. anyone watching Thursday Night Football? Ryan just took a shot, got facemasked, and thrown to the ground. No penalty.
Anyone watching Thursday Night Football? Matt Ryan just got facemasked and tackled around the neck. No call.
How do you pretend to miss that call? Anti-homers?
I think Brees is seeing over his linemen better tonight.
ANd that guy won’t get fined either.
Yes, he will.
it won’t be 16 large. It]ll be 5. If that.
What was Matthew’s fine on the Kappy hit? $3,000?
And that’s because it was late. Not because it was around his neck.
Guess it’ll depend on his history, too.
I think Mattews got fined pretty hard IIRC.
Stop making Roman the “Escaped Goat.” Last time I checked Roman works for Harbaugh. If Jimbo doesn’t like what he sees, it’s his prerogative to make any and all changes. And if Harbaugh can’t see the problems that exist, the fans who still want him as their HC have an even bigger problem.
Yeah, Dennis. That’ll speed up the play calling . . .
WTF happened to my comment?
I guess you and Harbaugh will not be exchanging Xmas cards even online.
$15,000 that he pled down to $7,500. I guess because he said before the game he’d take as many cheap shots as he could at Kappy.
You know, good behavior. I wonder if Brooks’ fine gets reduced.
Matthews fine was pled down from $15,000 to $7,500. I guess for good behavior. You know, his pre-game comments saying he’d take all the cheap shots he could at Kappy.
BLEEP!
Sorry for the duplicate comments. I cleaned out the spam filter. Don’t know why the fuck those went there.
Never say you’re sorry. Just blow ahead.
plow
In this Skins game, I want to see Niner screens, slants, outs, wheel routes, and fly patterns thrown to. A draw or two wouldn’t hurt, either. I don’t give a shit if they work. I just want to see them, because I miss them…
Snarkk DEMANDS victory, NOW!
Kyle Williams torn ACL done for the year again. If that kid didn’t have bad luck he wouldn’t have any luck at all!
Beats working at K-Mart.
Williams next stop?
I have a sense of why screens won’t work in this offense, and that’s because there’s no deep game to back the safeties up. DBs do not respect our deep game and can thus sniff out screens. Pitching wide? I don’t know. These guys have established what they do, and rarely deviate from it.
And the thing is, even if you DO send Manningham deep on the left side, and Boldin deep on the right, they STILL need outlets like Miller and VD dragging opver the middle or in the flat.
Despite all the hand wringing this is what it looks like when your new QB is struggling, your receivers are injured and you’re sill trying to win enough games to get into the playoffs.
It’s not that the coaches don’t know about offenses or defenses or adjustments, this is what they want to do.
CK7 started in the middle of last year. He’s having a hard time since he can’t play his college game here anymore. What’s new? Losing to a team like the Saints by a last second field goal after fighting pretty well for 58 minutes is not the thing that tells coaches they are completely wrong in their approach.
On the whole, yes. But in these last 2 games the 49ers have one first down, one FG, and about 22 yards of offense in both 4th quarters combined. In both games, the 49ers had the lead in the 4th quarter and couldn’t close them out with any kind of sustained drive.
Even in the wins, there were way too many 3 and outs. The losses only compounds these issues more. And, as noted by many, those issues wouldn’t fly against better teams, and they didn’t.
Again, late in these games it is imperative to give Kappy outlets on every passing play. Quicken the routes. Get the ball out faster. And pick up these fricking stunts. What gets me is the fact that teams like NO and Carol were not blitzing heavily, but we couldn’t block their 4 or 5 with our 6.
T Brock gets an extension. 4 yrs 7 mil guaranteed.