Well, preseason anyway. I missed the thrilling Battle of New York in Canton Ohio yesterday as the New Jersey Football Giants of New York prevailed over the Buffalo Buffaloes of Buffalo New York in the Hall of Fame game. I did catch turnover machine Eli Manning get into mid-season form by fumbling on his own 12 yard line. Seeing as these are the Dark Ages for 49ers to be inducted into the HOF, I’m not nearly as thrilled to watch this shit as I once was.
Anyhow, the Niners are well on their way to getting a lot of younger players into the line up by injuring themselves nearly every day of camp. The latest casualty is Glen Dorsey, our big DT who is subbing for Ian Williams, our previous pseudo-NT who broke his ankle last year, and is still on the mend. Notes out of camp? With some cursory digging, I’ve seen that Vance McDonald is well on his way to continuing his maddening habit of dropping passes, Carlos Hyde has overcome some early shakiness to showing some solid pass-catching skills, and Jimmie Ward has made some nice plays in the defensive backfield.
The battle to replace Navorro Bowman rages on between Michael Wilhoite, Dan Stuka, and Corey Lemonier. Wilhoite appears to be in the lead. As far as covering for the newly-injured Dorsey, Williams is ‘close’ to coming back, Mike (who?) Purcell, 2nd year guy from the University of Nowhere, is taking the 1st string snaps at this point, but that looks to change as Quinton Dial and Eddie Jerrod-Eddie are getting reps at NT as well.
If anything, it gives these young guys some real-time action with the 1st team and will hopefully get these guys battle-tested before the real thing in 34 days at JerryWorld. Frankly, the only guy that MAY come back after this rash of injuries is LMJ. The least likely guy to make the team. He may not have a spot when he comes back. I really would like to see him on the edges and out in the flat wreaking havoc. Need a deeper passing game for that, though.
Forty Niners Forever 
It only gets called out in its full terminology once, and that’s in the huddle. Formation, modifications/options to formations/protections, motions, motions, motions, pass patterns/run plays/snap count and X2. Then explain specifics to all the guys who just said “huh?!”
What he’s saying is plays are too complicated for the players and the QB to have to deal with in an offense that’s not drilled in it for enough years. Simplifying will help Kaepernick to focus more on what the defense is doing than on if his protection got understood and his receivers know where to line up and release.
All I know is the transition from called play by the coaches to called play by Kaep in the huddle needs to be a lot quicker. Kudos to Roman and Harbaugh for identifying that issue and hopefully cleaning it up. The faster Kaep can call the play in huddle, the more time he’ll have at the line to start manipulating. Last year, nobody confused Kaep with Peyton Manning at the line. Hopefully this year Kaep will have made some strides with his presnap reads.
This problem predates the QB, the coach, the OC and the GM for that matter. This has been an issue since the Nolan era.
It’s about time to get this dealt with.
No, no, no…. new system. This isn’t a Nolan or Sing issue. It doesn’t date back to prior coaches. Smith ran Harbaugh’s system fine. The 49ers started having trouble with the snap count and getting the team up to the line of scrimmage right around the time Kaep took over and the 49ers had a cross between a pro style offense / read option / fly sweep / pistol offense. Kaep was new, Roman had a playbook of pro and college plays and things got away from the 49ers. Now they’re cleaning it up.
Wrong. These are the same issues Sing/Jimmy hat had. Turner’s digital system was fine, but Hostler fucked that all up. 2 plays in the huddle predates Roman.
ARF!
The Blaine Gabbert backup era begins tonight. I can hardly contain myself. What a spineless fuck. He’s got as much backbone as Tiger Woods nowadays. Tony B. left his heart in San Francisco. Gabbert needs to find one.
Tony B might have left his heart in San Francisco, but you left your liver at Club Mallard, Denny boy . . .
NEw thread is up . . . . . ……………….
New thread is up . . .