Super Bowl bound! 4-12? Shit, who am I kidding. I have no clue how this season turns out. Despite the naysayers and those that laugh and predict doom for jettisoning St. Jim the Wolverine, the team still has talent and the offense will hopefully move out of the 70s.
The defense? Well, shit should be fine, if not a little thin in the defensive backfield. Which leads me to believe we will be a little more aggressive with the pass rush. Ahmad Brooks still remains a 49er, albeit that depends on the charges brought forth by the woman who brought down RayMac. Cutting him at this point would only save $1.5 mill against the cap, so he’ll probably stick around if these charges go away.
If anything, both Ahmad Brooks, and his bookend OLB Aldon Smith have a lot to prove with their recent travails and issues. The defensive line should still be fairly stout as Justin Smith hasn’t been himself the last couple years, and the rest of the crew, plus Darnell Dockett should be good to go. These OLBs (Lunch included) can wreak some havoc if the D line takes care of business. Eli Harold has been seen as a high-value pick where we got him. Arik Armstead? He’s got the ‘potential’ tag laid all over him. The positive being Jim Tomsula has done very well as a D line coach with a lot less than AA.
Inside LB? Well, there’s the rub. Bowman is by all intents coming along just fine, but his injury was horrific and he is a question. Wilhoite has shown decent game, but his ceiling isn’t very high. Moody and the rest? Ehh. Have to wonder if someone will fall off a team after cut-down time.
The secondary is thin as well. Even with the signing of Jaquaski Tartt, heir apparent to Antoine Bethea. The only question is when. The corners were left thin by the Cully and COX departures, but Brock should be healthy. Johnson came on very well last year, but he’s a question as a starter and Shareece Wright isn’t all that. They did sign UDFA Mylan Hicks (Mich St) to a 3 year deal so they see something there.
As far as the coaches go, they have a lot of guys with a lot of time in the game. What does it mean? Little to nothing in itself, but Mangini is on the right side of the line now at least.
Forty Niners Forever 
Without benefit of any training camp views or opinions, and no exhibition games, I’m feeling the offense will be better than last year, the defense not as good. I can’t see howinhell the offense could be worse than last year, so I think I’m safe on that one. Hell, if they can get the plays off before the clock runs out we’re halfway to a great offense…
Chuck, Theisman is a turd.
LT should have broken his mouth, not his leg.
But I digress….
I feel like this season is all about adjustments.
New Staff, schemes etc.
Can’t have an opinion either way until I see something to base an opinion on.
I feel like Baalke is always a year or 2 ahead of the changes anyway.
What didn’t help was the sudden departures of Willis and Davis.
Mangini should be fine as the DC, we’ll see what he conjures up for the new personnel soon enough.
I know he’s a bit more of a mad scientist so, it may take some time to implement the schemes he’s known for.
Despite all the negative aspects of the Harbaugh departure, I do think we went as far as the personnel could take us in his scheme.
We lacked a potent passing attack.
Be it the QB/WRs or, the plan in general, we seemed to have hit a spot where opponents seemed to have figured it out.
As with anything in this game.
Change isn’t always an easy step to take but, it’s often necessary.
I’m anywhere between 6-10 and 10-6 until I see something that looks like football being played.
Too many unknowns right now.
We’ve got guys like Moody and Lemonier still hanging onto roster spots too.
IMO, guys get 2 years to step up or step out.
Not sure where we stand on those 2. or VMcD.
Seeing as Baalke loaded up on TEs this year, I think that Group is going to see some major changes.
For now, I’ll be happy to see the TEs used as receiving options, instead of extra O-Linemen.
Just give me something that resembles a short passing game and, things might just be more fun to watch this year.
Kaep is the straw that stirs this drink.
Hoping for him to step it up with the timing and decision making this year.
At corner they have Reaser and Acker (sp?), too soon to tell, but they are in the mix and drew good reviews so far.
Niners have consistently done well at corner with or without “names” or by using retreads like Carlos who, much like Wright, were not thought highly of.
O line is my big area of concern so far.
The good news from mini camp is both tartt and deandre white have looked really good.
At DB we have excellent starters and depth . We have a bunch of contenders to play corner too.
Oops I mean at safety
And deandrew
Yeah last year my take was Fangio did a lot with a little while Harbaugh did a little with a lot.
Both sides of the ball suffered major injuries, but only Fangio adjusted. With Harbaugh it was more that I think he limited what Kappy was supposed to do. They forced him into not playing his style of football. Stupidly enough he had more yards rushing last year than the year before because he was more often running for his life.
Funny how the cocksuckers are already giving the Lombardi trophy to the Seahawks. Remember he angst when the Hawks got Harvin?
Jimmy graham may be a solid TE but he isn’t a Blocker and he will be asked to do a lot of that. He may very well may tire of not getting the amount of balls thrown his way that he’s used to.
Graham is in the black and blue division now, hope he packed his lunch.
Unca- I will admit that Fangio did a great job with the injuries he had but it doesn’t mean I was happy with a lot of his strategies. He played it too vanilla too often. It seemed if a team needed a first down they would just find the TE. It frustrated the heck out of me that he could not get the defense off the field far too often. Our D would end up gassed in the 4th Q. The lack of a pass rush was too often perplexing as heck. He made David Carr look like rookie of the year. He had good stats but there is a lot more to winning than stats.
I think fangio did an excellent job last year keeping our defense in the top 5. we couldn’t do too much up front because of our multiple injuries at CB.
The pisser for me was seeing us stunting all over the place in the first Ram game and then going very vanilla vsDenver. Rushing 4 and dropping 7 against Manning is a bad idea. Then the rams drop 52 unanswered points on the Raiders and we make them look like the ’67 Packers.
There were too many games with little or no sustained pass rush.
But we were pretty wiped out personnel-wise. Again, I think the change will do the players good.
evan mathis is still out there ! I hope we make a play for him
http://blog.sfgate.com/49ers/2015/06/01/its-only-may-but-things-look-good-with-the-49ers/
nice on topic article from our old friend kevin lynch
looks like Dorsey might be moving to DE this year
J Smith won’t be as much a loss as it’s being made out to be. He was pretty much done by the end of 2012. We have a lot of bodies, so I hope these guys figure out a solid rotation among the group.
My English buddy (guy on the left) in a Texas band . . .
Funny that Seattle by percentage ran the most in the NFL last year. He won’t need to block. Eiiiiiight. Hard to be a decoy on a run.
Funny that Seattle by percentage ran the most in the NFL last year. Graham won’t need to block. Eiiiiiight. Hard to be a decoy on a run.
Chuck
Jimmy graham is the least of our problems right now IMHO. We have to get our own shit together first before we worry much about that.
Funny thing is we’ve beaten new Orleans every time we’ve played em lately. Except the refs b.s. game. In all our recent games vs. NO I don’t seem to remember Graham turning the tide ?!
I do see that some spitiot on another blog professes that we have nobody who can cover Graham. Well the same guy before harbaugh was insisting we cut pretty much half the team. He also insisted we trade up for Jake locker among a million other stupid statements. Please leave that shit on the other blog please.
Funny thing about Spitty Rob, he crows long and loud if his guesses turn out to be correct, not so much with his failures, which are abundant.
Funny thing about spit 12th is that I can’t remember him being right since I first started posting about 8 years ago
The man never quits.
Shot, even the national media is coming around a bit where it concerns the Niners. There IS still a lot of talent on the team, and the coaching staff seems to be on the same page. Something that was not happening last year under Captain Turmoil.
Shit, I’m just happy to see Johnny Morton and Greg Roman gone. What we have is a mystery but it has to be better than what we had last year.
I think I was the #1 advocate to get rid of Roman. It was more about finding out if it was Roman or Harbaugh than accusing Roman. The more I hear about the situation it seems like Harbaugh was more of the problem than Roman. I’m not sure how anybody would think it is a good idea to have 4 people call the plays. How could any recipe for a rhythm be established with too many cooks spoiling the broth?
No to spoiled food!
Mangini has been talking at least about raising the blitz factor, based on what he sees from the offenses we face.
Stressing unpredictability.
Something I think both sides of the ball desperately need. This team has been nothing but stodgy in recent years. has it served us well? Sure. At times. But for too many games, the team came out flat and predictable. Good teams exploited that to the extreme.
Down with “stodgy!”
Seems like TC is still a mile away. I also think in this case change is very welcome and good. At this point there is no sense in worrying about anything. Sure we will miss a few players but overall we will be younger and faster pretty much all around. Hoping that Davis can step in sometime this year and give us the dimensions we need at RB.
Hunter, Hyde, and Bush are going to get most of the work, but I think they can get him up to speed. Something lacking with this team. I’m more interested in how Torrey Smith does. Getting a deep threat is a welcome addition.