But all in all, it turned into a penalty-fest. they shoulda lost the Dallas game and won this one, but in the end, these don’t matter so who gives a fig? A 16-13 loss to the Texans was the score of this one, and the good news was the ref effed the call to give the TD to Houston, thus otherwise avoiding the dreaded preseason overtime. I mean really, can’t they just say ties are OK in the pre-season? Stupid fucking clowns running (ruining) this game of ours.
Speaking of ruining, the latest penalty du jour is the “leading-with-the-head-to-initiate-contact” rule. Raheem the Dream Mostert laid a textbook shoulder-to-chest tackle on a punt return and was flagged for the mouthful above. As was Jeremy Attachou when he was attempting to rush the passer and couldn’t put his head behind him as he initiated contact with the right tackle. I now everyone across the Earth bemoans the idiocy of the new rules that come out every season, and the reasons these rules are being implemented. It is to appease the lawyers of the players who later on down the road will sue for their maladies and blame football (and rightly so) for their issues.
Perhaps the league should just come up with a better response to these issues than they did with the older vets, who were basically told, tough shit guys, we are making more money than Croesus, but we’re OK with you dying in the streets of CTE, brain damage, and a myriad of other ailments. Give you 1/2 of 1% of the multi-billion dollar pie? Greedy bastards! But I digress.
Jimmy Garoppolo avoided any head injuries by actually having solid protection for his 12 passes, and completed 10 of them. He hit a nice deep ball to Goodwin for 40 yards, and had a nice improv on passes to the FB whose name I can’t spell, and Trent Taylor in the back of the end zone. Beathard continues to look too small to play in the NFL as yet again he had more than a few tipped passes and a shit load of checkdowns. Jimmy G was 7-7 on 3rd downs (and 1-1 of 4th) while CJ was 0-6. By the time Mullens came in the refs were in full laundry mode and every drive had at least 4 penalties attached to it.
And, as I wondered after the game if Mullens would get a shot running the 2nd team word has come out that CJ sprained his foot at some point in the Hou game so it’s likely. Beathard is tough, sure, but he appears to be too methodical and doesn’t see the field fast enough to get to anything more than his 1st read, then the checkdown.
Other than that, Joe Williams, he who was about to be cut, was given a reprieve by cracking his ribs in the game, and Eric Magnuson tore his hammy and is out for the year. Not good.
San Francisco 49ers Forever 
Shit, Magnuson out for the yea? That sucks. The Niners are going to need that depth on the OL. Hard not to agree with the rest of your post, Chuck. I think with Alfred Morris now in camp Joe Williams may indeed be on the bubble. Fingers crossed that any more injuries are avoided. Guys are dropping like flies league wide.
That Magnuson injury was at the end of the game, too, I believe on the drive where they ended up with the go-ahead FG. Just crappy luck for him and the team.
Mike Zimmer confirming what I suggested might happen yesterday:
http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/24429528/mike-zimmer-minnesota-vikings-helmet-rule-cost-some-people-jobs
They are saying 6-8 weeks with Magnuson.
Nice. If we only had a line like that today.
I have a feeling that the offensive line and pass rush will be areas of focus again in the next draft. The OL is still in a state of flux. Who knows what Garnett will end up being at this point.
The pass protection seems fine. Run blocking? Not so much. I’m more worried abiout the pass rush. I’d hate to be chasing points all game. I think having our DBs healthy and having Sherman out there will help.
We should get a little better idea during game 3. I think we get quite a few players back. No way to know what our run game will look like until the start of the season,
Well, given that if there aren’t holes there ain’t much running, I’m not sure how big an impact McKinnon and Brieda will have.
BTW, it’s funny to see Bullitt harping on Kaepernick on Skeebs blog (what? No love for Blaine Gabbert? Or Matt Barkley, Or Brian Hoyer? Or Shaun Hill?), and Skeebs still lamenting the absence of St. Jim. All we need is NoFear pining for Teflon Mike and we’ll have the trifecta of drooling morons.
Jesus,H, get over it already, he’s been gone for, what, 3 years now?
Joe Fann (yeah, that’s his real name) over at 49ers.com cautioning fans to not read too much into how things looks at this point in the preseason, something I’m a little prone to. Winder mentioned it above, but, really, we won’t really know a ton about this team until the season starts, so I’ll be trying to keep my doomerism in check and just let the preseason play out and keep my fingers crossed that no more injuries happen.
It would be nice to see the running game start clicking, but this will be the first game where the o-line is fully intact, so that will likely take some time to gel and probably into the season to really start to look like we hope it will. Garnett and Person will be slugging it out these final two weeks for the starting right guard spot, so that’s definitely something to watch.
New thread is up