Well, the early test of relevance came and went in a flash. Carlos Hyde dropped a 3rd and short pass on the opening drive, and Seattle never looked back. Like the Green Bay game, the defense actually put pressure on Russell Wilson, and sacked him 5 times. However, there were a lot of busted overages, and guys wide open on crucial 3rd down plays. Unfortunately, the defense was helped none at all by the offense. In another dismal showing, the offense couldn’t run, pass, block, or sustain drives.
Yes, Kaepaernick was under pressure. Yes, he threw a lot of shitty passes. But again, every time they showed the coverages and Kappy broke contain, every receiver was covered. For whatever reason, this team cannot scheme to get guys open. This shit drove me nuts with Alex Smith. Wideouts never seem to know how to help out a QB on the move. This is a scheme thing. VD did get open a couple times, and Kappy made a nice back-shoulder pass to Boldin, but 5 passes do not make a game. Again, Torrey Smith did not get a deep ball. On 3rd and 19, throw deep. If it’s picked off, it’s better than our 5th round turd punting the ball. No harm no foul when shit is going bad.
What next? Well, Kappy apparently bruised his hand amid the turmoil last night. No bone breaks, but I wonder if he gets a seat for the Ram game coming up. The Rams are a mess themselves as they stagger to a slow 2-3 start. Are we the next team to get on top of them? I find that hard to fathom as this team has no identity on offense, and inconsistency is apparent on every facet of play. Atlanta is going to blow us away like Pittsburgh and AZ did, so it looks like 3-6 is the best aspiration for this team.
I can’t understand how a QB that won so many playoff games on the road in pressure situations (Atl, GB, Carolina) is now a shell of his former self. All this crap of the league catching up to him is a load of shit. If this team had a better system in place, I’m certain Kappy would look better. As it is, he’s catching the heat. Rightly so for some of it, but the team is failing, not just the QB.
As far as the management goes, this team may be in for the big blow-up. Trent Baalke is on the hot seat as his drafts have been less than stellar lately. The inability to land a bona fide WR is killing this team. They need O line help, CB help, RB depth, and another QB to groom. Throw in pass rushers, and you have the issues with this team.
Sure, they could right the ship and get to some sort of respectability, but it doesn’t look good at this point. The line is still very inconsistent, and Kilgore is slow to come back and may miss the year. Throw in the mass exodus and there you have it. And underwhelming season with a makeshift coaching staff.
Forty Niners Forever 
The worst thing about this whole mess it makes Skeebers look like an all knowing sage. Yikes!
No it doesn’t. He’s a spineless idiot forever bemoaning the loss of Alex Smith. Boo hoo.
All his endless pissing and moaning aside, the state of the team now has a lot to do with Jim Harbaugh’s actions these past few seasons. Kappy was Harbaugh’s pick as the QB of the future. How and why this isn’t working out is plainly up for debate, but the facts of the matter are the picks Harbaugh lobbied for aren’t working out. LMJ being another one.
Baalke has drafted well for the defense, and since Harbaugh was the offensive mastermind, you’d think his fingerprints are all over guys like AJJ, LMJ, Hunter, VMcD, MMartin, Lattimore, Patton, and Ellington.
Baalke is now the guy on the plank. He has to feel the noose tightening around his neck as these offensive picks continue to underwhelm. Hyde looked promising, but he’s having problems staying on the field. The dearth of WRs these past 5 drafts is telling.
I could give a rats ass about Alex Smith but it is kind of funny to see the AS excuses now carried over to Kaepernick. Shoulda extended your stay in Rome Chuck.
Okay so from Ronnie Lott, Joe Montana, Brent Jones, all of them say let Kap be Kap, they all say get him out from behind center and let him do his thing. The hell with this old school be hind center BS!!
I don’t know. But the guy played at a very high level for 2.5 years before this shitstorm of the past couple. Having a line that gives him time would help. Deciding whether to be a zone-blocking team or a straight-ahead scheme would help. They are all over the place and have no identity.
Hyde is hurt, and Bush is useless inside, and we aren’t run blocking well anyway. Teams are teeing off once we fall behind. Which seems to be every game.
I think it’s a little more than ‘Kappy sucks.’
Kap only sucks when he is under center. When he goes to the shot gun ALL teams know he is passing. They only had 42 offensive plays and 7 of those were 3 and out! Someone on KNBR said the Niners are easy to read. Defenses know what it takes to stop them!
I tried to warn you guys. The good: we now have the #6 draft slot. The bad: other crappy teams play this weekend and a couple others have had byes already. They’ll catch us and we’ll be back down to about #10. This is what I feared. This is Mediocreville. This is the trap that many bad teams fall into, and can never escape. Pleasing the fans means at least giving lip service to winning. That translates into just enough wins year after year to make it much more difficult to get those immediate, sure fire top picks that can help a franchise turn around. As we’ve argued before, top picks do NOT guarantee success in the draft. But they sure can help. Of course, with Jeb and TB I don’t think it’ll matter much, but that’s another story.
RTF, the Niners had a ton of high picks from 2004-2010. Scotty built a strong team with those picks. Constantly sucking got them a lot of talent that Harbaugh put to good use. Then they got old and retired/left. Now the team is backsliding. Baalke hasn’t done enough to keep the team stocked with talent. Especially on the offensive side of things. Which is why this last draft confounded me.
This is the cycle of the NFL though. Teams like NE keep the ball rolling through these cycles. Most other teams don’t. They have the luxury of playing in a dogshit division so they were always playoff contenders.
I’ve said that many times. Pats play in a decade and a half long division full of patsies. Guaranteed to win pretty much 6 division games every season. Win half the rest, and you’re already at 11 wins…
Bethea to IR.
Tartt looked like he suffered a concussion as well yesterday. Didn’t hear anything though.
The losses are so bad something has to give. Somebody will walk the plank………soon. The crowd will demand it! Scapegoats are common in sports. It’s a cruel business.
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Tomsula’s not the real problem, nor the only one, but I would’ve fired him after the game for those two fourth quarter punts – unless he’s intentionally tanking, in which case I would’ve picked another team against which to do it – not the Seaturkeys.
I can’t even imagine Lombardi, Landry, Walsh, Parcells coaching today ever conceding a game to their biggest rivals. They’d shoot themselves first.
Hard to have confidence in your offense when they’ve gained 120 yards in 3.5 quarters and you are debating going for it on 4th and 3 from your 26, but yeah, this is what got Mooch ousted.
If they get to 7 wins it’ll be a shock based on what they’ve shown.
It wasn’t the same. Mooch got fired for a first half kneeldown deep in their own territory. There was still an entire second half to play, and a fourth down attempt would’ve made any possible comeback that much tougher. This was a case where they needed 3 scores and only had the 4th qtr to do it. If you have that little confidence in the offense YOU have installed then you are in the wrong business and should be selling shoes or something – or just stick with being a line coach.
*a failed fourth down attempt would’ve led to more Atlanta points as they would’ve started in FG position
Atlanta? It was the fact that Mooch didn’t try to score with time on the clock. It had nothing to do with a 4th down call for Mooch. It was the fact he didn’t go the aggressive route.
The Niners had the ball on the 20, 1st and 10, with close to a minute left in the 2nd quarter and chose to run the clock out. They were down pretty big but still didn’t try. Just like yesterday. Actually yesterday they were close.
Closer.
If you’re going to have a team that sucks, go all the way and lose a ton. Get in position for a top 5 draft position. Winning 4 or 5 games is no good — as said above, mediocrity breeds mediocre level picks, and you end up like the Warriors, spinning wheels for years and years. Look at the Stros and Cubs — they parlayed a bunch of high picks stockpiled over some dogmeat seasons into really good lineups now. So enjoy this dogmeat season for little successes, hope for 2 wins only, and a really high pick position…
That’s a fool’s errand, Snarkk. Cleveland, Detroit, Tenn, St L, and plenty of other teams have drafted high for years and it has gotten them nowhere.
Baalke’s track record is spotty. Who;s to say he drafts well higher up?
In conclusion……….BLEEP!
I have ignored blogging for a while because my time is better spent talking with people who aren’t fooling themselves in to believing g some national writers who don’t pay much attention to detail. They just know what they see on TV, like the average fan. I have not been reading the comments here so this post is not pointed at anybody in particular. But because I am an experienced blogger I know what is being said. How could one not know. I will say exactly what I have been saying all along and move on again until something changes. Either smarter posters or a big change on the team.
Kap is not the problem and has never been the problem. Kap started his career great. He had a coaching staff run a college offense last year which made it hard to improve his acumen for certain pro defenses. Other teams spotted RoBaugh’s tendencies and exploited them. The problem was the coach in that Kap was not learning how to run a pro offense. Harbaugh even called the plays at practice. This year Kap has the worst offensive line in the league, by far, and the whole team is learning a new system. There is not a QB who would succeed behind this line. Russell Wilson has similar problems with his line but he has a running game and receivers that get open by 10 yards when he scrambles. That is a huge difference.
The problem is the offensive line. Read what former O-lineman Mark Schlereff had to say, “In 12 years of playing, and 15 years of broadcasting, it’s the worst I have ever seen an offensive line play consistently across this league. It’s pathetic.” Sounds like he is saying it is our consistency as the problem, which is what I think because I thought our 2003 line was as bad or worse.
Mark goes on to make fun of the Kap bashers and talk more about the situation at hand: “‘Oh Colin Kaepernick, it’s time to move on, he can’t play.’ Stretch Armstrong couldn’t play behind that line of scrimmage right there. I don’t care if you’re a super hero, you’re not doing anything behind the way they played last night. They should be embarrassed … C’mon, clown. Block somebody.”
Isn’t this what I’ve been saying? C’mon clown fans, learn to know what you are seeing. Like I’ve been saying, fix the line and Kap will suddenly become a really good QB again, like he did vs NY and Baltimore. Funny how that works. Outside of a possible comment or two again this morning to reply to the idiots who think I’m full of it, I’m gone for a while again. Reading most of what I’m reading these days is wasted time. It’s kind of like watching the 49ers if Devey and Pears are allowed to keep killing our season by manning the right side of our O-line. This is on the coach if he doesn’t try some big changes to the O-line by the next game.
Your post wasn’t up when I wrote mine but it looks like we are seeing the same thing.
Check the filter Chuck.
Funny Bergs but what you said is exactly what I said in my post.
This team can’t get receivers open to save their lives. An ongoing problem.
Its easy to jump on Kap and he has his fair share of blame but this O line is historically bad:
http://www.csnbayarea.com/49ers/ex-nfl-lineman-49ers-o-line-worst-last-three-decades
Excuses? Nobody will play well behind this line. Squawks have a good to elite pass rush and so do the Rams. The right side is severely overmatched.
Tomsula had to make more radical changes than just splitting time between Devey and Tiller.
Boone is a tackle playing guard, change that and put him at RT. Even if it didn’t work it would be no worse than Pears. Tiller should replace Devey completely. Play Thomas at LG, the season is effectively over so what is there left to lose? Kilgore may not be coming back so Martin is it as far as I can see. They tried other players at C but he was considerably better, scary I know.
One aspect of the games I have no respect for is that the coaches and Kap keep playing it “safe” on O even when the game is clearly being lost. What difference is another turn over or pick when you are losing by more than 1 score in the 4th quarter? What are they protecting? Lose by 10 or lose by 17 who gives a shit? 2 picks or 4 picks so what?
They have to go all out to try to win at the end of these games not play to make the final score look respectable.
No doubt the OL is bad. Everybody knows it. So, if they can’t fix that with personnel, call plays to minimize the impact of the rush. Quick throws, screens, draws, run Kap. He didn’t have one run the “Hawks” game. He might get hurt, he might not. Whatever…
I agree Snarkk. They are not going all out to win once the game gets lopsided.
They keep playing it “safe” as though that somehow will bring about a win.
Its a balance, I get that, they don’t want to throw a bunch of risky plays in there too early but once it is clear they are going to lose unless they throw caution to the wind then go all out.
Everyone knew our OL was a priority but we did nothing. I don’t understand the thinking. IT STARTS IN THE TRENCHES. I was a center in Pop Warner and that is where I learned that. The only thing i can think of is we don’t have very good evaluators. And, if memory serves we got Willis with the 11th pick so you never know. How many too 10 picks end up being worth the spot, dunno but my guess is less than half.
What are they protecting? ……..Their bodes.
Winder- We went into the draft expecting Davis to be our RT and Kilgore to be our center. We couldn’t plan for what happened and the moves we made were not good. Now that we know the problem, fix it. Everything does not always go as planned. I predicted 9-7, so I wasn’t expecting play-offs anyway. This line is far worse than expected, shit happens, fix it.
Give a coach great talent and everyone looks at the won-loss record to say what a great coach. That is not always true. The truth of the matter is give a coach obstacles like this and you find out if he can put together some chemistry and win. This is a golden opportunity for Tomsula to show his worth.
Simplify the defense and fix the O-line. I believe that should do the trick. Easier said than done.
Yup.
I completely disagree with this “we couldn’t plan for what happened” argument I’ve seen often in many places. By this logic, Pears (in our plan) would’ve been our backup at both tackle positions, except Pears wasn’t on the team. That made NOBODY our backup at tackles.
At starting riight guard, was it Brandon Thomas? Now, there’s a case. He was projected as a 2nd/3rd rounder BEFORE tearing up his ACL. So we pick him up in the 3rd anyway and in his second year he’s not even listed on the depth chart.
You get my point. ADavis wasn’t a great RT either had he stayed, it’s just that healthy he was SO much better than what we’ve replaced him with. We don’t know how effective he would’ve been if he stayed, coming off of injury.
You make contingency plans before the draft. You don’t assume guys coming back from serious injury will be able to play. You don’t wait till training camp, say oops we’re missing 3/5 of a line, backups included, and another 1/5 will be playing a new position (Boone). Zero planning in my view. Here’s a link, almost a YEAR ago to the day:
http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11731889/daniel-kilgore-san-francisco-49ers-injury-leg-ankle
LOOK AT THAT OFFENSIVE LINE!!! WHAT DID WE DO IN ONE FULL YEAR TO IMPROVE IT?
yeah berger. I know there were unforseen circumstances but they still had a couple of months to work something a little better than they did. And to me all that is on Baalke.
Season is toast, so why not go balls out? The purpose of the rest of year is to see who can play on this squad, who can’t. Stop running this dogmeat offense like you’re scared of your own shadow. Stop putting Kap in these 5 – 7 step drop plays where he’s getting rushed like a pack of dogs after after a pork chop. As we’ve been saying for years, including when Harbs was here, where are the quick slants, quick outs, draw plays? Is it THAT hard? It must be, which tells me this QB is not the future. Any competent QB in the league should be able to find his wideouts for a slant or quick out pretty regularly without fear. Even if that doesn’t work, keep trying. If Kap throws picks, so what? As if the other offensive calls are better? You throw the ball away just because the wideout has coverage that’s a little tight? That’s what Kap is actually saying — which is ridiculous, and sign of a guy that is playing scared. Cut the crap of Kap dropping back only to immediately start running for Morgan Hill or San Carlos, depending on the quarter. If the offense continues the ineptitude to the bye, I’d put Gabbert in there post-bye. Only to change something up, and give the entire team something new to deal with, even if only a new look in losing…
BTW, what’s with this Pinion punter? They got rid of Andy Lee for this guy. So far, another Baalke blunder…
Andy Lee ranked 3rd, Pinion 19th. The benefit to Pinion is he is young and he does the kick offs. Oh and Baalke saved a couple of million bucks.
Since the Niners are great at three and out, at least Pinion will be getting a lot of reps…
2 games in the next calendar month, then 7 games in the following 6 calendar weeks. Then poof, season’s over and then the endless offseason, just moan and groan until the draft. I guess, like a New Mexico winter, I’d best starting getting prepared early; it’ll be upon us before we know it.
What happened to Bethea — shoulder injury out for season says Maiocco…
On IR. Shoulder injury.
Hark! We’re losing! Wanted O linemen. Call Trent 24/7 any hour of the day.
Berger it’s a fine hair to split with Kaep.
Yes, he’s had success with Harbaugh because of a solid running game and, a Defense that was in it’s prime for several years.
I’ve speculated that Harbaugh masked many of his deficiencies as well.
What I’m seeing now is, teams daring him to read coverage and throw his way out of stacked boxes.
Given the issues we’re experiencing on the OLine, it isn’t helping by any stretch.
Fact is, Kaep lacks quick eyes and short touch/accuracy.
Hard to expect him to stand still given his run first makeup either.
I’m simply suggesting that Kaep may NEVER be comfortable as a pocket QB.
He’s had plenty of outlet options which he either hasn’t seen or, couldn’t connect with.
Again, I’ll agree that the OLine isn’t helping him but, he doesn’t FEEL the game with his head.
Once he’s rattled, he’s making poor decisions more often than not.
He doesn’t seem to know where his routes are designed to go on any given play either.
We’re a hot mess right now.
Fingers can be pointed in many directions but, the QB HAS to know where his outlets are.
I’ve lost count of how many throws he’s attempted short that landed at the Receivers’ feet or, just flat out weren’t delivered properly or, not thrown at all.
He’s lost mentally IMO.
IMO, you are wrong. Fix the line and becomes a really good QB. You are making this complicated. It is my opinion Mark Schlereth knows a lot more about football than you and whatever the cancer blog is probably saying. He says no QB could do anything behind this line. It is what I’ve been saying and I see no reason to see it any other way. The good news for you is the cancer blog will shelter you and your opinion.
We’ll agree the OLine is a hot mess Berger.
No denying that.
I’ll take Schlereth’s opinion with a grain of salt as well.
Russell Wilson isn’t blessed with arm strength, height or, an above average OLine either.
But, he managed to make some outstanding throws that Kaep has yet to master.
Most everything Kaep throws is to the outside.
Rarely is he in command of the middle of the field.
Can’t complete a dump off inside, when you’re throwing off balance, at someone’s feet.
We’ll see what happens with the extended break between games now.
Tiller likely will supplant Devey.
Pears is a Swing Tackle.
Might be time to see what we’ve got with TBrown at RT?
Kilgore should be close to returning too.
They’ve got to do something.
This is getting painful to watch.
Comparing to Wilson tells me you don’t know what you are seeing. Wilson has a solid running game and when he scrambles his receivers get open by 5 or 10 yards. There is no comparison.
I’ve watched enough of Russell and Kaep over the past several years to see a MAJOR difference between them.
Touch and accuracy being the 2 biggest components.
Yes, their running game is still top notch by comparison.
I’d love to see Kaep attack the LBs much more than he does.
His confidence level ‘inside’ isn’t close to what Russell is showing.
Whatever. Fix the line and you’ll see a difference. Of course you take Schlereff with a grain of salt. The truth doesn’t fit your slanted view. Guess what, your messiah has a losing record because his Seahawks have a bad line too. A graphic shown on the screen from Thursday showed all the QBs in the league with the most sacks have losing records. Explain that. At least Wilson’s line can run block to take some pressure off.
NJ- I’m wasting my time with you. You go ahead and believe whatever you want. I’m out of here.
Berger, its reasonable to expect people to complain about all aspects of the team given the product on the field. While I generally agree with you, fix the line and the QB will miraculously look fine, there is no doubt Kap has struggled himself too.
Where are you going to blog that is not going to have a hanging posse for Kap?
Don’t take it personally.
Berger fixing the OLine is a given.
No disagreement there.
Simply not seeing much from Kaep, in terms of recognition and accuracy, which is something equally important to improving his game.