Through all the injuries and inconsistency around the passing game last season, there is plenty of talk about the need for a wide receiver with speed. Someone who can get behind a (Seattle) defense and score on big plays. The blogosphere certainly has been burning up with ideas on who to draft. Since our division rivals up north appear to be the only thing in our way of reaching the promised land, it would seem to make sense to build a beast that can beat their beast. How do we do that? Little T.Y. Hilton had himself a day against the vaunted Seattle legion of boom. He and Reggie Wayne accounted for over 200 yards on 11 catches. Houston put up big numbers as well in a game Shaub gave away. NO and Minn put up some big numbers, but that was because they were hopelessly behind. Still and all, to me a big thing missing from the Niner attack IS a deep threat.
Strictly by the numbers, the Niners were, uh, 30th in passing yards. Terrible. But Seattle was not much better at 26th. So, what does this mean? Well, beyond the fact that the Niners and Seahawks were 3rd and 4th respectively in running the ball, it means you don’t throw as much as many other teams because you burn time running. Old schoool NFL football. Throwing 15-25 passes a game isn’t going to garner most QBs big passing numbers, but both Wilson and Kaepernick rated out 7th and 10th in rating respectively, and if you look at ESPN’s Total QBR, Kappy is 7th, and Wilson is 13th. That being said, of the top 10 passing teams in the league, 7 made the playoffs. The NFL is heavily tilting toward becoming a Mouse Davis run-n-gun wonderland of 4 WR sets, flooding the field with pass catchers, whether WRs, TEs, or RBs, and heaving the rock all over the field.
Back to SF, what is our plan going forward? Can we tweak the passing game enough to matter? Are we going to stick with this 1970s style offense of ground and pound? Like the QB that preceded him, Colin Kaepernick came from a wide open system where he’s now being converted into a pocket passer. Part of Colin’s strength IS the breaking contain and scrambling for big chunks of yards (GB must be sick of him), but his development as a passer is at the point where there are questions regarding his progress. And the reasons for this are varied and manifold. The lack of viable WRs certainly played a part. As did the inconsistent pass pro. Kappy however, locked on to WRs at times, and threw some pretty terrible picks when the play obviously wasn’t there and he forced it. Then there’s the whole play calling aspect of which has been beaten to death. Without knowing the design of plays and options, it’s hard to figure if plays are designed to only go a certain way, but it was disheartening to hear Kappy repeat that he’d throw that pass to Crabs given that one-on-one coverage by Sherman 10 out of 10 times.
I’d much rather hear him say he should have looked around for other options and checked down instead of throwing the pick. Being that it’s only talk, and maybe it’s false bravado after throwing the pick and enduring the choke sign Sherman gave him, but Kappy needs to learn from that play rather than stick to his narrative.
What irks me is Sherman ALWAYS lines up on the left side and takes the outside WR. Why not put Crabs in the slot? This is also where a speed WR can help greatly. Put the speed guy outside, and Crabs in the slot. With Boldin on the other side, and VD running routes as well, you can gain some favorable matchups. You can even run better with 3 WRs out there.
Forty Niners Forever 
12th –
The one thing you’re missing or not factoring into all of this is that Russel Wilson will take less to consistently compete for Super Bowls. I guarantee he will. That’s the kind of leader his is. He’s more concerned with rings, his team, legacies, and staying on top than money. So if you’re going to compete with that, you need to do the same or you’re screwed. And Colin Kaepernick was already saying he would also take less. He said it either during the playoffs or right after the NFC Championship game. Kaep was on board. But now if Harbaugh is seriously considering leaving for the money only, going to the barren waste land of Cleveland, Kaep will say, “Why the hell am I taking less if Jim’s left for more money? Me and Jim Tomsula aren’t going to win anything… show me the money.” That’s what you’re missing when you write, “He (Harbaugh) will take care of himself and that’s the way it should be.” I agree Harbaugh should look to get paid, but he should leave. And it’s not a direct analogy between Kaep and Harbaugh because there’s no salary cap for coaches, but that makes the principle even more important. The body follows the head of the snake. If Kaep wants more and it’s well known, Kaep will too. Then we’re all in a lot of trouble, especially if Wilson takes less.
If negotiations with Harbaugh break off, and the inner circles of the NFL hear about it, why wouldn’t Cleveland throw an offer out there? That makes sense. What doesn’t make sense to me is the 49ers jeopardizing future Super Bowl runs by not paying Jim Harbaugh like one of the best coaches in the NFL. That’s a mistake by the Yorks. That’s the only thing not making any sense to me. If Harbaugh needs leverage, he’s found it. Trust me, he’s found it.
I meant to write, “He SHOULDN’T leave….”
Jesus, I also meant to write, “If Harbaugh wants more, Kaep will too.” I need an editor.
Don’t hurt yourself Spit, I got it the first time.
I did hurt myself. Still hurts.
Spit you know nothing about what Wilson and his agent want, ditto Kap. An off the cuff remark when put on the spot regarding the other players is far from a home discount contract. Maybe they sign for less and maybe not.
Harbaugh is here for this year then enters lame duck status. Clearly there is disharmony in the organization whether the Browns story is true, partly true or pure fiction because twice now no new contract has been signed by Harbaugh. If I was a betting man I would think the 2 sides would find a compromise and work it out. I seriously doubt Colin Kaepernick’s upcoming contract negotiation has an iota of importance to Harbaugh with regard to his contract requirements.
I think you are attributing the milk of human kindness to Harbaugh but he is lactose intolerant.
“League sources have told CSNBayArea.com that 49ers defensive line coach Jim Tomsula would likely be the team’s next coach if Harbaugh were to leave.”
Interesting neither Roman or Fangio are thought to be HC material. I like Tomsula and Fangio, don’t see Roman as ready for the role to be quite honest.
We’re all entitled to our own beliefs. It’s all speculation anyway. Nobody really knows anything when on the outside looking in I believe Wilson will take less. I’m sure of it, but yeap, it’s speculation on my part. I also think, before this, Kaep would have taken less. I don’t give much credence (clear water revival) to the report that Jim Tomsula would have been made the head coach. I think that’s just CSN Bay Area creating more of a story for blog and website hits so they can get more advertising dollars during the NFL’s down time. Tomsula is an easy suggestion that floats because he was the interim for one game. The piece fits, but when you look at it hard enough, it doesn’t. Perfect for more web hits.
It will be interesting to me to see what Wilson does actually do now he does have a SB win in his back pocket. I think he has another year to wait though IIRC.
Spit, Hoyer ain’t half bad. Weeden was the dumbest pick in a while. Cleve actually has talent. With a good coach, they’d be in the same boat as KC last year and the these very 49ers in 2011.
Jed said there’s nothing to this. All the reports are saying Harbaugh nixed it. Cleveland is not really saying anything concrete. Sounds to me like Harbaugh’s angling for more money. I guess the question is, how did the 2 get together? Mike Lombardi’s last move? Did Harbaugh contact Cleve? Sounds pretty far-fetched.
With all the free agent questions, Kappy especially, this is a pretty shitty time to go into a money grab.
I agree. This is bad timing considering Kaep. Forgot about Hoyer. Jury’s still out on him. But he’s better than Weeden. Hell, Del with a heat on is better than Weeden.
That being said, Spit, I’d believe Tomsula more than Roman.
4949 Centennial Blvd. would be lined with angry villagers carrying torches and pitchforks if that happened.
I don’t believe there’s any merit to anything regarding the 49ers’ next coach. First off, Jim’s under contract. I don’t believe the 49ers took the Browns seriously. The Browns have nothing the 49ers want so the process couldn’t have gotten far enough along to where A.) the 49ers were thinking about a replacement and B.) they let their thoughts leak to the public. There’s no truth to the Tomsula rumor. CSN Bay Area is just making stuff up for web hits.
It’s not the 49ers that are the issue. It’s Harbaugh. Did he initiate the contact?
How did this even become a thing? I seriously doubt Cleve’s blowing smoke here. It sure looks like a cry for money and/or power by Harbaugh.
I don’t know if I agree that Harbaugh’s at the center of this. I think the change in Cleveland front office lead to the story being leaked because the team knew it could hurt an opponent without catching much heat around the league. They’d just have to point to Lombardi… who’s gone. I think CSN Bay Area just piled on. I believe Jed when he says the story’s not true. I think it’s true that the Browns were interested, but like I said, Del could ask out Jenna Jameson but he’d still be feeding the ducks.
It’s just so fucking outlandish as to not be real. I mean what’s the upside for Cleve? To let it be known another head coach told them to piss off, after all the others told ’em to piss up a rope?
Wonder how long Harbaugh holds his tongue?
There’s a ton of upside for Cleveland. They let their fan base know they were going after one of the best head coaches in the NFL instead of the past long list of lemons they’ve hired. Cleveland was going to hang the owner after he fired Chud recently. Did you watch those press conferences? Even the NFL Network was laughing at the owner. It’s a PR move to let the fans know the ownership is serious about winning. You drop a name like Harbaugh and they start respecting you more. Hell, I rode an elevator once with Jessica Alba, ten floors… just me and her. We talked. She was nice. See what I mean? If there were any girls on this blog I’d instantaneously be more desirable to them. If I wanted to push it, I’d say we exchanged numbers. Cleveland needed to push it.
Cleveland also gets to weaken an opponent. Nobody’s going to pickup the phone and listen to the Browns now, because they broke the Cardinal rule of talking to the press after an offer was made. The reason it’s a Cardinal rule is because even an offer can weaken a team. But again, an offer means nothing. Del offered to give me a massage the other day. I didn’t respond to his email.
Harbaugh didn’t leak this. I guarantee it. That only weakens Harbaugh when he’s at the negotiating table. I’m positive Jed York and the 49ers’ front office didn’t leak this. So it’s gotta be the Browns, who, coincidentally just fired their GM. To me, it all adds up.
Oh, I’m sure Harbaugh didn’t LEAK it. I’m wondering if he initiated the contact though. Maybe it was just a bullshit session between Lombardi and Harbaugh.
As far as Cleveland’s upside? Meh. Don’t see it. They got stiffed in the end by another team, and they are stuck with a middle infielder (Joe Pettini) as their head coach.
2 draft picks and Josh Gordon is not slim pickings Maybe they would have given us more… Ahhh, who knows? Some bs for the offseason I guess.
That didn’t take long. Harbaugh’s tweeting his denial of anything ever happening
Apropos of nothing, Windows 8 SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah it does.
I like Windows 8, except for when I’m working with pictures. Then it sucks.
I don’t have a touch screen so all kinds of screens pop up, menus display that I don;t select. the zoom goes in and out at random times, all kinds of stupid shit.
Wilson’s got 2 more years left on his rookie deal. $675,000 and $800,000 or some shit. Bargain of the year. I’m sure they’ll renegotiate some time between now and Feb 20, 2015.
Hah! An overrated band owns a football team? LA Kiss signs a QB.
Be still my heart.
Guess he gets props for trying to earn his way back. But LA?
I mean really. You think he signs with the Iowa barnstormers?
Harbaugh says he knew nothing about it, and I believe him. Jed says the story isn’t true and questions the wisdom of Pro Football Talk putting the story “on record.” Now Adam Scheftner says, “The Browns were kicking around ideas but never presented anything substantial to the 49ers.” This is exactly the Browns trying to fire-up their fan base and get some support when support is almost non-existent for the owner and front office. And this will backfire on the Browns……. big time. If I’m Jed, Trent and Harbaugh I go after the Browns in a big way.
Yeah, Harbaugh’s tweeting his denial of knowledge.
From ESPN:
When Pettine was hired, then-Browns CEO Joe Banner acknowledged there was one last “mystery candidate” out there who’d been under consideration but declined to name him.
Hey, maybe we’ll get their 2nd round pick anyway.
Tampering. Fuck the Browns. This will definitely backfire on them. If I’m Jed and Trent and Jim, I go after the Browns with all I got. I beat the crap out of them in the court of public opinion.
Oh yeah, and one last thing….. Jim Tomsula. CSN Bay Area has been called out for bs like this a time or two before.
Schefter is now saying that Cleveland ‘kicked around’ the idea of Harbaugh, but ‘never really pursued it.’
All this proves is PFT now looks like a bunch of idiots. Nothing will come of this. No rule against idle speculation.
Told ya it was smoke and mirrors. Nobody with any brains or talent wants to go to the banks of the Cuyahoga.
Factory of Sadness indeed.
This Harbaugh story has some legs as does the underlying friction between the FO and Harbaugh that Kawakami wrote about. Jed may have been judicious with the truth in his denial which he has not allowed to be further questioned.
Looks like a deal wash on the table, how serious is anybodies guess.
Horseshit. The story has no legs because the Browns never had anything the 49ers wanted. Draft picks? Nope. Half the picks wouldn’t make the team and without a coach to coach ’em, talent gets squandered anyway. Money? Who makes Jed more money? Jim Harbaugh in the new stadium, or Norv Turner as the head coach? Jim Tomsula? Please. You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, particularly not when the 49ers are opening a new stadium.
The 49ers and Jim Harbaugh might be going through a tough negotiation, but so what? Then it’s a tough negotiation. These guys are professionals. In a tough negotiation you don’t let the wheels fall off, and they wouldn’t have, still might not, if it wasn’t for an immature, opportunistic and desperate franchise in the Cleveland Browns name dropping to potentially gain much needed respect with their fan base.
You negotiate hard and don’t let the two sides resent each other during the process. Jed York and the York family have hired Dennis Erickson, Mike Nolan and Mike Singletary over the course of a decade. They aren’t going to let the best coach they’ve ever hired walk or be traded without insuring the next best option could compete for Super Bowls. And Jim has another year on his contract. A lot can happen in a year.
There’s really nothing to see here. The media got a day of work and wrote a few stories. And the Browns look dumb…… and dumber.
Some of the most respected reporters have put their name, i.e. reputations, to it or should we just read your opinion?
Mortenson and Florio and now another bit from the award winning Kawakami:
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami/2014/02/22/how-did-the-49ersharbaugh-almost-but-not-really-to-cleveland-scenario-happen-my-most-plausible-8-step-thesis-and-what-it-means/
Like you I have no inside info so it’s all supposition, but those that do have access to inside info say some version of these events happened, don’t be so naive Spit, shit like this gets talked about behind closed doors all the time. They just try to shield the paying fans from it unless it happens because it upsets their delicate sense of the universe, like you.
One more thing, Harbaugh has 2 years left on contract, he enters lame duck territory next year. This cat getting out of the bag gives Harbaugh more leverage and I expect a deal to get done but there is no guarantee. Owners aren’t known to enjoy playing second fiddle to the help.
Adam Scheftner (sp?) said the Browns never made an offer but were just kicking ideas around. That’s all anyone needs to know….. Next topic.
Lol, does that really work in your world?
1.) Idea
2.) Approach organization to see how receptive they are to idea.
3.) Negotiate
4.) Offer
5.). Trade
From what everyone’s writing the Browns were in stage one. This story never got legs. So it’s not really a story. If you’d like to keep writing about it, by all means – knock yourself out.
The accounts I read place them somewhere between 3 and 4 but maybe you haven’t read them?
What a BULLSHIT story. Shows how slow the football news is in the off season.
That deal would have required league approval and that would have been too hard to hide from snoopy reporters and professional leakers.
They’ve got a good coach in Pettine. Good D coordinator and possibly ready as a HC. Harbaugh has done great here, but given he was handed a great roster to begin with who knows if he’s able to build a team from scratch.
Kawakami belongs on a day time gossip show with the other ladies. “OK, here’s what I think is happening…”
NoFear,
You might be slighting Harbaugh a little when saying he was handed a great roster. There were definitely some nice pieces that McCloughan, Nolan and Singletary brought in because of their bad records giving them high draft choices. But Harbaugh and Baalke made important adjustments immediately to the roster and this required them to not only correctly evaluate the team but have offensive, defensive and special teams philosophies when building the roster into what it is today. Nolan and Singletary didn’t have cohesive offensive philosophies. I know Nolan lost his offensive coordinators a lot.
Harbaalke brought in guys like Culliver, Aldon, Whitner, Goodwin, Moss, Rogers, gave Boone a chance, but most importantly, Harbaugh rejuvenated Alex Smith’s career. Smith might have still gotten the Chiefs’ job even without Harbaugh’s tutelage (because Andy Reid was a fan), but Smith’s psyche was shattered. He was on the ropes. Harbaugh deserves a lot of credit for picking Smith up, dusting him off and taking Smith to the NFC Championship game.
It’s fair to say Harbaugh’s fallen short on two occasions (taking Smith to the NFC Championship game isn’t falling short. In my opinion, that’s over-achieving). But learning to win championships is a process. Some, like Bill Walsh, figure it out quicker. Others take time. But even Bill Walsh was in the NFL a long time before he won championships. Bill Cower, Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin, even Pete Carroll, all took time as NFL head coaches learning how to win Super Bowls. Wooden was UCLA’s head coach for something like 15 years before he starting winning championships, and he’s considered one of the best coaches in all of sports. It’s a process and Harbaugh has earned at least a five year deal. Five more years of Harbaugh figuring out how to win a Super Bowl. I’d bet he does just that, with the added benefit of making Del’s head explode.