Forty Niners Forever

You thought the Bay of Pigs was bad?!? Well, just wait for the Stupor Bowl! The 1-7 49ers battle the 1-6 soon-to-be-the-I-210 Raiders in Stupor Bowl II! Last week was pretty stupor-inducing as the 49ers yet again found a great way to lose. Give up 15 points in the 4th quarter to the worst offense in the league, and then hike the ball over the Beater’s head to seal the deal.

This Thursday Night extravaganza should be a frightful event as the 1-9 Beathard takes on the suddenly free-falling Raiders. Wh of course are in the process of dismantling a decent team at the cost of stoking Jon Gruden’s ego, I suppose. Gone was their best player, Khalil Mack, and more recently Amari Cooper, their best offensive weapon, for 1st round picks. So they have at least something to look forward to.

We on the other hand are down to (apparently) our 3rd string QB in Nick Mullens. He of the 0 experience and 0 passes in a meaningful game.  Should be a punt fest. Although the Raiders did put up points against Indy. We on the other hand, play like we are just learning the game and don’t quite get the nuances of how to pressure, how to defend,  and how to tackle.

Bet the under.

15-13 Niners.

What do you call this? Playing to the level of your opponent? Figuring out new and exciting ways to blow games? Hike it through the goal posts for 2? The curse of Super Bowl LI? Or, as Bill Walsh said, playing just well enough to lose?

For whatever its worth, Kyle Shanahan cannot close games to save his life. Our only win was saved by a ticky tack holding call nowhere near the play that negated an interception that would have been a first and 10 from the Niner 15 in the closing minutes of the Detroit game.

The 49ers have blown 4th quarter leads like I blow through a 12 pack on game day.  The Super Bowl failure has been well-documented, and put to rest, but blowing a one point lead against the Clippers isn’t horrific, esp on the road. Blowing a 7 point lead, twice, to the Packers is tough, esp because we out-played them for the most part but couldn’t finish. Couldn’t finish/.

Blowing a 12 point lead to the fucking Cardinals? In front of a crowd that sounded like 1/2 49er fans? Pathetic. Injuries be damned, when you have a team down 12 in the 4th quarter you have to be able to shut the door. You hold a team to 3 points for 3 quarters and give up 15 in the 4th? Fuck that in spades.

Saaleh should be fired on the spot. This is obviously not just his problem, but once again, we let 5-6 screens go for 15 yards a pop. 3rd and 12? No prob. Screen to Johnson for 18 yards. I’ve never seen a defense that systematically leaves so many people unaccounted for over and over. rosen wasn’t all that good, but he got the job done when he needed to.

CJ the Beater? Hell to the no. He seems to think that he has all day to throw and he can peruse the WRs in their routes for 5-6 seconds. He doesn’t. He takes WAY too many sacks. The idiot announcers did at least point out on numerous occasions that Beater was not just firing the ball out when he had a couple guys open. He was waiting for someone to get more open? Shit I don’t know.

Bu the bottom line here is, I’ve got some questions about how these guy finish. I mean, we get the Stupor Bowl to look forward to this Thursday as we travel to the wilds of Oakland for our last visit to the Mausoleum. Frankly, I have no hope for our defense. The Raiders suck as bad as us and can find a bunch of ways to  lose themselves, but they can score points once in a while.

Without Garoppolo, we are shit on a shingle. And maybe we are winning these games with a better QB. Butt the holes in our defensive scheme are big enough to drive 8 more losses through.

Playing for the 1st round pick? Playing out the string? Fiddling while Santa Clara burns? Whatever the reasoning, the Niners should be focussing on their younger players and benching/cutting the vets who are no longer in their plans. Hello Pierre Garcon. Whether Richard Sherman is included in that group remains in doubt, because he is playing well, and we can’t bench all the vets, but is Arik Armstead in our future? Solomon Thomas? Ahkello Witherspoon? Those no-name LBs Pita and Pocket? These guys need to play themselves in or out of the roster. As does Dante Pettis, Bourne, those backup O linemen,  and such.

Robert Saleh is also on the hot seat more than any of the players. He needs to figure out how to get his players into better matchups. His pass rush is nonexistent, and he’s leaving guys wide open all over the secondary. His blaming that on a lack of talent is ludicrous. Shanny has proven to be very forthright in his assessment of things, but he hasn’t thrown Saleh under the bus. Publicly anyway.

I can’t imagine him saying anything positive in the defensive meetings as WR after TE after RB catches a pass without a defender within 15 yards of him. Over and over and over. Yeah, w can stop the run, but all that oes is ‘force’ teams to torch us through the air.

Anyhow, I think we win this one, unless of course our QB decides to lead the league in -/+ yet again. The Beater has more turnovers (10) than 16 TEAMS in the league.  Christ. hold on to the fucking ball.

Through a scheduling quirk no one could have imagined, the drags of the NFL, the one-win teams, all bump into each other, or at least into us, these next 3 weeks. The 49ers, the Raiders, the Cardinals, and the Giants are all in the one-win club. And they are all on our schedule concurrently.

Be still my cold dead heart. As far as the race to the # 1 pick goes, the Raiders took the early lead this offseason by getting rid of their best player, Khalil Mack. They have also recently dumped their best WR in Amari Cooper and are pretty much Kaepernicking Derek Carr by whispering in the hallways that he’s soft and weak. Marshawn Lynch is hurt, but one can only imagine how he feels when he comes back and all the other weapons are gone. But hey, they have a shit-ton of first round picks.

The Giants are riding an old and ineffective Eli Manning behind a non-existent offensive line to a horrific season. Saquon Barkley looks great, but not when there are 11 defenders keying on him. ODB will end up somewhere (LAR/LAC/Dal) soon, and the Giants will stagger to their demise. They look hopeless for about 4 more years.

AZ is also riding their newly minted savior QB into the ground by giving Josh Rosen little protection and no defense to help him out. Patrick Peterson “desperately” wants out, and poor Larry Fitzgerald is thinking “shoulda left last year’. Their only win came as a large gift presented by CJ the Beater as he fumbled and threw picks while putting up staggering offensive numbers.  It was the best losing effort in NFL history. Yay us! They very well may damage Rosen to the point of diminishing returns.

Speaking of us, we are kind of the spoiled cream rising to the top of the curdled milk. Our big blow came at the en of the KC game when Jimmy G was knocked out for the remainder of the season in game 3.  Add to that we lost the guy we built our offense around in Jarick McKinnon.  The issue with the offense going south is the fact that the defense has less of a safety net to work with as CJ does his best for the Niners, and whoever the opponent is on a given Sunday. thing is, though, of these teams, I think we have the best chance to rebound soonest.

Even still, the defense is a gigantic problem as we have no pass rush and generate no turnovers. Saleh looks lost in the ozone again as we repeatedly leave WRs uncovered for ginormous plays.  Even with Jimmy G, we will struggle to win games if we continue to play terrible defense.

Up next is the AZ Cards, in their house. A place where we usually fail. So, come on Beater, throw that pick 6 in crunch time to seal our doom! We need a Baby Bosa!

. . . but this bad? Wow. Losses like the Green Bay game are one thing.  Being the overmatched scrappy underdogs almost scratching out a win on the road no less is one thing. Looking like bumbling fumbling idiots in your own house is another thing entirely.

Yes, we are a young team. Yes we have a shit-ton of injuries. Yes, we are thin across the board and have lost our starting QB, starting RB we built our offense around, and yes, the defense is young and inexperienced.

But the problems with last game are not of the young-team variety. They are of the monumental breakdowns in coverage time and time again. I can count 7 or 8 plays where a WR is left completely alone on a pass pattern that nets upwards of 30-40 yards. 3 guys cover one WR and someone else is wide open. As in no one within 15 yards of him. This isn’t an eager DB jumping a route. It is a breakdown in reading the WRs by the defense as a whole. Giuys not knowing their assignments when a situation comes up.

When these guys watch film, what do they say? Oh, gee, when the WRs crossed, everyone went to WR X. Witherspoon should have stayed with WR Y while the middle guys stayed with X. Hmmm, that was a 42 yard play.

Next play, WR X is lined up behind WR Y, and no one picks up X while Y runs a crossing route. X gets 40 yards because no one is there to stop him. Ooooh. 65 yard TD.

Next play . . . you get the idea.

It isn’t like we are seeing some brand-new routes. These are your basic run-of-the-mill crossing routes, post, and flag routes. We are simply not reading the plays right to get guys in position.

Even then, if we DO get in position, the DBs invariably drop the sure INT, but THAT is a different issue. The main problem is Robert Saleh seems unable to come up with a pass coverage scheme that is remotely effective.

We have 3 high #1 picks on the D line that give us very little. 1.5 seasons in to Saleh’s reign, and we have little to nothing to show for our defense. Aaron Donald did more in the Niner game than the entire team has done all year.

The ONLY decent stretch I’ve seen from this defense is the 3rd quarter of the Green Bay game. Saleh went press man coverage, and he blitzed Foster and Witherspoon, among others, to disrupt the Green Bay passing game. It worked for three possessions. Once Green Bay brought in an extra blocker to slow the blitzing, the comeback was on and our fate was sealed.

Unfortunately, there is a lot of season left ( or fortunately) to work this out, but I think Saleh is doing a shitty job with the D line especially. All that talent,  and a group of young fast LBs in Foster and Warner have yielded nothing in the way of a cogent defensive plan. The line does well agaisnt the run, and we kept Todd Gurley in check for the most part, but all that does is ‘force’ teams to pass on us. To the usual 3rd down conversions and big plays.

In what should be a laugher for the Rams, I don’t hold out much hope for this one. Our banged up and hopeless secondary against this high-powered aerial attack? Our anemic pass rush vs the Rams stout O line? If Goff challenged Sherman all game, we might stay close, but they aren’t that foolish.

Our only chance, much like the first half of last week’s game, is to keep their offense off the field. We kept it close, had the lead, and actually had a chance to  . . . well you know.  So the chances of winning are small but I’ll  be watching. And hoping.

This game ends the real tough part of our schedule that I thought we’d struggle with, even with Jimmy G. Without him? well. 1-6 will be here. and who know about the rest? Our best game statistically was our worst loss. We play the tougher teams of the league, on the road, very well. We could have beat Minn. We could have beat KC, and damn fucking well should have beat GB, all on the road. We barely hung on to beat Detroit as Jimmy G did his best Beater impersonation and threw a game changing pick that was mercifully called back. The AZ game? CJ’s worst.

Tomorrow never knows,

This one I think IS a bloodbath. As good as we played, I wonder if the offense crashes back to earth after 2.5 quarters of some good football the other night. The defense came around for a little bit once we started getting pressure on ol’ one-leg, but Jared Goff is young and spry and has a much more talented receiver corps to throw to.

I don’t see how we can even stay in the same area code, let alone win.  Sure, we will hang in there for a little while, but in the end we will get toasted.

44-17 Rams.

Well, we all saw the debacle that was yesterday’s game. Funny thing is though, there was a lot of good amid the collapse. The Beater looked very good at times, till he tossed the duck for a pick. The defense played very well for most of the 2nd half after an atrocious first half. We stopped turning the ball over in the 2nd half. The penalties were way down (2). the defense went to press man coverage in the 3rd quarter, and with the blitzing we slowed Rodgers to a crawl on 3 straight possessions in the 2nd half after the opening 2nd half drive for a FG. Including a goal line stand. And we got 3 sacks on a gimpy Rodgers.

The bad? Well, the penalty on Sherman was a killer. Ticky tacky or no, they call that shit every time. The pick. Green Bay started picking up our blitzes and gave Rodgers time to throw (and run) just in time to steal the game away. Shanahan’s play calling to me left a lot to be desired.

To me, the players played as well as they possibly could. And the coaching was very good this game. For all the atrocities in the first half, Saleh adjusted to the maelstrom by going man-to-man and pressure. It worked for a while. So, while the offense was racking up points in the 1st half, the defense was sucking. Then the defense stepped up, and the O started sucking. By the end they both sucked just in time to give it away.

The main problem I had with the play calling came after the goal line stand. EVERYONE knew we were going to run left on 1st down, as it had been a very successful play all game. That would have been a PERFECT time for play-action. Fake the run left and roll-pass to Juskdydfyu or Kittle for 12. Instead it was 3 and out. We even stopped them after that series, but as we all know, giving the ball back to Aaron Rodgers is a pretty silly strategy.

And then there’s the pick. Admittedly it was a ballsy call on 3rd and 3 to go for the win. Maybe for Jimmy G though. I don.t know. CJ hit Goodwin on that deep pass in the 2nd quarter that was a thing of beauty. Goodwin was behind the coverage when the ball came out, and he simply accelerated to the ball, beating both defenders for the TD. However, the pass to Goodwin on 3rd and 3 was woefully late and underthrown. Sure, it was basically a punt, but a pick got the crowd, and the Packers, fired up. Of course we gave up a 21 yard scramble to a guy who was wobbly as fuck to seal our fate.

Here we are at week 6 and we are already playing out the string. Sad? Yes. Depressing? Yes. But hey, at least we aren’t the Raiders. Jon Gruden, he of the 10 year/$100 million deal, has already alienated the team, the fan base, and has dismantled a promising Raiders team. All at the altar of his own hubris. The Raiders, who were looking to give their Oakland fans at least a couple solid seasons before they wing their way to Sin City in a couple seasons, are instead 1-5 and in complete disarray offensively and defensively.

But I digress. Here in Ninertown, we are suffering the slings and arrows of multiple injuries and a fairly porous defense that has left defensive coordinator Robert Saleh on the proverbial hot seat going forward. The offensive scuffling is understandable as the 49ers have lost to injury their starting QB, their starting WR, their starting and #2 running backs, and have suffered dings and injuries to just about all of the offensive linemen. A line thin to begin with.

Tonight we are traveling to the unfrozen grass of Green Bay. Site of some recent success a few regimes back. But again I digress. The newly constituted and semi-turned over lineup of the current team is game enough. Our backup QB is suddenly fighting for his very NFL life as his last game was a comedy of errors and strip sacks. The 49ers racked up yards and stats but failed in the end to even keep the game close. Of course the pass catchers did their best to not help CJ Beater by dropping the obligatory 1 or 2 passes to kill drives and cause turnovers.

So, this season has once again become an extended training camp for the current roster. The defensive backfield, which had such promise a short few weeks ago looks terrible as Ahkello Witherspoon becomes the target of unrelenting pressure as no one wants to throw to Richard Sherman’s side of the field, and we cannot get anyone near the opposing QB.  Our safeties have been an exercise in frustration as they are nearly always out of position on screen passes, and get burned deep regularly. But again I digress.

Not sure how we win tonight. Green Bay does at will what we don’t defend well. Screens and broken plays. The ONLY way we win is to discover that missing pass rush. Rodgers isn’t exactly at the peak of health, and is nursing injuries of his own, so we won’t be chasing him around the field, but he is a master at throwing from outside the pocket.

Pressure must come from the edges and we MUST hold the middle to get to Rodgers. Otherwise it’s a bloodbath.

We as usual keep it close but fail in the end.

24-16 Packers.

We got injured. Again and again and again. In today’s NFL, it is getting harder and harder to field a team that can survive the rigors of a typical season and stay healthy enough to reach the playoffs in good shape. And go from there. Even harder, although Philly just did it, is the ability to pick up the pieces should your quarterback go down.

We of course are in the middle of this with the injury to Jimmy G. Our backup, CJ the Beater, seems to be able to keep us in games, but can’t get us over the hump the way Jimmy G did. Last year. For all the hooraw around Garoppolo, and I was firmly entrenched in the love-fest, Jimmy G was 1-2 to start this season before getting hurt. Funny thing is, with CJ’s next start, both CJ and JG will have 8 starts under their belts. Jimmy is of course 6-2, and Beathard is at 1-6, and more than likely to not be able to beat Green Bay on the road for a 1-7 start to his career.

Looking at the Beater’s numbers last week, and they look like a team that was playing from behind. Which they were. But they shouldn’t have been. 34-54 for 350 and 2 TDs is a good job, and the 150 rushing is also very solid. We statistically dominated the game. Josh Rosen was 10-25 for 170. 75 of that came on the first AZ play. Ooops. So Rosen went 9-24 for 95 yards the rest of the way. AZ rushed for 56 yards and was 2-12 on 3rd down conversions to our 10-17.

And they had a 16 point lead with time running out.

The big problem with this game of course was the turnovers. FIVE in total. Pierre Garćon provided AZ with their first one on our revolving brand of our usual customary whiff on a catchable ball that was then picked off. CJ was responsible for three more as he was strip-sacked twice, once for the backbreaking TD the other way that salted the game for AZ as we were behind 2 with 4 minutes left, once on a promising drive early in the 3rd quarter, and a pick on a desperation pass on 4th and 19.

The worst turnover however, was the fumble by Robert Mostert, the guy replacing the guy (Brieda) replacing the guy who was supposed to be the starter (McKinnon). The Niners were driving quickly down the field and would have taken the lead. A lead they held for all of 10 seconds this game.

For all the shit the defense has been getting, this was a solid effort by them. Granted, it’s the Cards, and AZ dropped a shitload of passes, and generally looked like a winless team, but the tackling was better than in recent games. Rosen had some pressure, but 1 sack ins’t enough.

So, once again, we are at the point where we need to lessen the turnovers and make plays. Good luck in GB . . .