Flat as a Pancacke. Gonna have to dig out a track from that album. A band I discovered in 7th grade. The scheduling mavens in the NFL thought it would be a good idea to have the 49ers open their season on a Monday night, and then travel across the country on a short week (5 days off) to play a team that opened their season 4 days earlier (9 days off) in a ‘road’ game in their time zone. I guess respect is a fleeting thing in the NFL, but as Goodie Goodell has shown, he doesn’t give a shit about the players. Just about the TV money for Thursday night games.
Anyhow, the stage is ripe for a setback as the Niners face a highly regarded team in the Steelers, and the aforementioned short-week-travel double whammy.
Well, fuck that. Pittsburgh’s defense looked absolutely lost vs Brady, Gronk, Dion Lewis, and Edelman. They accounted for 260 of the 360 yards gained by NE. Sure, Pittsburgh gained 464 yards, DeAngleo Williams gained 127, and the uncoverable Antonio Brown had 9 for 133, and Heath Miller had 8 for 84, and hey, DHB had 5 for 58 . . . uh, shit. This may not be as easy as I thought. Pittsburgh, for all its vaunted this and that, still has Rothlisberger and a damn good offense.
So, what are we going to do? Well, as we saw last week, Eric Mangini is much more of a risk-taker than his predecessor. It worked to great advantage last week as 5 guys contributed a sack. Which tells me Mangini likes to disguise who’s coming from where. The DBs played solid in run support, and defending the pass. o, what happens? Well, I think we’ll bottle up Williams better than NE did. The worry IS Pittsburgh’s passing game. Brown is the hottest thing since hot things were invented. I’d imagine some bracketing thrown his way. Which means a lot of nickel D, which means a steady dose of Pitts trying to run through that. Jimmie Ward needs to pull up his pants as he’ll be the guy covering DHB one-on-one most likely.
Pressure is paramount. Rothlisberger isn’t the quickest guy out there, but he stands tall in the pocket and avoids hits better than just about anyone else. When they get to him, they need to stay on him and get him down. Broken plays are his specialty and they get a lot of yards off Worthelssberger buying time and finding the open guy.
Kappy is coming of a strong game vs Minn, a team with a good defensive backfield, of at least proving to the naysayers (you know who you are) that he can step up his game. He bought time well, and went through his progressions and avoided the one-done-and-run days of seasons past. Sure, it’s only one game, but it’s a start. 95% of the national prognosticators had Minnesota winning handily. Problem is, they like shiny things and sound bites. All they look at is St, Jim leaving and the retirements. They happened to overlook the talent that is ON the team and instead focussed on the players that left.
Since no one once again is giving the Niners a shot, I’ll go with 28-20 Niners.
Forty Niners Forever 
The “other” blog is still crying about Harbaugh. You would think they’re on his payroll. So much angst!
No, they are on his dick.
That SUCKS!
Glad they caught those guys. The fucking stompings are getting out of hand.
Not surprised they waived Hunter. I’ve never seen a running back come back from an achilles injury. I know he has a knee injury as well but he never got back that burst he had before.
Ellington worries me too, he is hurt yet again. I think they need to look to other players for the 3rd WR role until Ellington can show he can stay healthy.
Me either and that is really a tough loss. Hunter was a very good RB.
Yeah he was, looked like he would take over from Frank, just turned out not to be durable enough. You and I talked about it last year Winder.
I really like Tomsula’s approach to keeping his guys healthy first and foremost. Harbaugh ground the players very hard to toughen them up but that’s a double edged sword.
Sir Spit is now ranking QBs based upon his whims! He admits to it.
Sounds like reliable info.
chuck – that’s is the first time I ever heard Gary Clark Jr. Pretty good stuff and if you did get to see him in a smaller venue he probably would rock the place.
We will get to see what we are made of this week.
One thing for certain the Giants are DONE. May as well play the minor league guys. ATT looks empty except for the seats down low.
RTF the main reason you never see a division win every game is there is usually a division game every week. My math might be fuzzy, but I think more often than not, that’s the case.
Yeah, Hunter I thought was going to be an excellent change of pace from Frank. It almost worked. DeAndrew White will liekly be the #3 pretty soon. Simpson can fight for time when he comes back.
They need to get WR production tomorrow.
Prediction: Absolutely worthless I must admit……Niners 20-17 in a nail biter. Skeebs will suffer in silence or will be crowing from the rooftops.
Bakker vullitsputty, after disawcring 500 ways how Minn would beat the Niners, proceeds to give us 1,000 way that Pittsburgh will. 257-0 indeed.
31-17 Niners
24-20 Niners fall short…
We picked the Niner to lose at Pitt in the season overview. However, I picked the Niners to win the game on Skeebers. I and we will be rooting for the Niners to win, and damn the preseason prediction.
I always prefer a 9ers win.
I just picked them to lose a close one this week, due to the short week and travel.
Pittsburgh has had 10 days to work out the kinks and get prepared.
We drew a sh!tstick from the schedule makers on this one.
Certainly won’t be disappointed to be wrong 😀
RT I see that one of the perps involved with the assault at Levis Stadium Monday night was a season ticket holder.
Looks like the team revoked his privileges following the arrests.
Good on Jed & Co.
Looks like Carlos Hyde got fined for taunting on Monday night.
http://tinyurl.com/q57c65c
I didn’t notice that until after the game. He pointed at the DB as he ran in. Ooooooh. Then again he got horse-collared in front of a red and they missed that.
Another case of perception vs safety.
New thread is up