San Francisco 49ers Forever

The venue looked great, the weather was perfect, the turf even held up after the haftime lip-synch-a-thon. The commercials were even fairly decent. Although the puppy-baby-monkey thing was stupid beyond belief. The baby trying to shoot out of her mom to get some Doritos was clever if not odd.

All that being said, I must say this was the worst Super Bowl of them all. I vaguely remember Super Bowl V where the Colts beat Dallas 16-13 on a last second field goal, but this one was bad. Neither offense did anything all day, and the stats bear this out. The winning team had 194 total yards of offense. Lowest ever for a winning team. Both teams combined for 15 punts, and were a combined 4-29 in 3rd down conversions (Denver an astonishing 1-14, or 7%). A whopping 14% conversion rate. 7 fumbles, 2 picks, and 18 penalties for 153 yards.

Sloppy, boring, and dull. Kinda like watching the Niners play this year. These defenses are great, but Carolina had a ton of chances and wasted them. At least they moved the ball occasionally. 315 yards is nothing spectacular, but it did show some offensive consistency. However, they fumbled, missed FGs, dropped passes, and committed a shitload of stupid penalties to stop themselves at every turn. They came in ill-prepared for the defensive onslaught, and appeared to be showing up to win the game, and looked like they took Denver way too lightly.

Kudos to Denver’s book-end pass rushers Von Miller and DeMarcus Ware. They harassed Cam Newton to the point of utter frustration and pouting. Very reminiscent of how the 49ers made Dan Marino look like a chump. I’ve never liked Denver, and Manning has never been my cup of tea either, but they at least took care of things and didn’t make near the mistakes that Carolina did. Their defense took it to Carolina, and they had no answers. So Carolina’s feel-good season crumbles amid their own hubris.

This one was one for the dogs.

Jed York’s uncle, you may have heard of him, was finally elected to the Hall of Fame, as a ‘contributor.’ Say what you will about him and his flawed character and eventual downfall, he was a fiercely proud and determined owner who stood by his players way above and beyond most of these other guys. 5 Super Bowls, numerous Hall of Famers, and millions of fans around the league and the world, he drove the team to heights never seen before or since. Granted, it was a pre-salary cap, and mostly pre-free agency NFL, but Eddie set the standard for treating his players right, and making sure the team was prepared and ready to play.

The players to a man would run through walls for Eddie D, and to a man they still would. Nice to see it get announced right before the Super Bowl in his team’s stadium. And in lame HOF news, the Hall of Fame voters waited till the Snake died to let him in. How he isn’t in and a guy like Namath waltzes in is ridiculous. Glad to hear it, but it was about 15 years too late. Also, Anquan Boldin wins the NFL Walter Peyton award. Nice job Anquan. Class guy and a role model for players all over the league.

It was cool to see  Eddie D last year at the flag football game to close the Stick last year. He made the game winning catch thrown by Joe in the exact opposite corner where Dwight Clark.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but there’s word on the street that our once-and-future quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, is fed up with his current situation, and is looking to be traded. Funny how this recently happened way back in 2013 when Alex Smith was not affordable as our backup, and wanted to be a starter somewhere else. He of course got his wish and went on to slightly greener pastures in Kansas City. They got some crazy little women there I hear.

Anyhow, the story was broken by the New York Daily News, and the report goes on to say that Kappy wants to become a Jet. Of course there are no names associated with this rumor. Just the usual innuendo. The Jets of course are in the middle of negotiating a deal with Ryan Fitzpatrick, and are intent on signing him. The Niners of course have recently changed coaching staffs.

Odd timing to say the least, but then again, this team is never bereft of swirling innuendo. Did the Jets start this in their negotiations with Fitzpatrick to let him know there we other options? Is this from Kappy himself as a straight plea to get out of here? Is it from the Niners HQ to foment an already ambivalent-to-angry fan base? Who knows? I’d think someone of the three parties involved will speak up soon, but as of now, there’s nothing from the Jets, Niners, or Kaepernick.

Seeing as this is Super Bowl week in San Francisco, it begs the question even further. Who the fuck is leaking all this shit? Paraage gets one last dig in before he’s shit-canned after the Super Bowl? Tomsula is already on to greener pastures, so he’s out. Jed? Is he really that stupid? Christ, this organization is pissing me off with this rumor shit.

Hey, I have to avoid the copyright infringement issue with using a certain phrase. Luckily Jolly Roger couldn’t trademark the phrase ‘The Big Game’ as the denizens around here know, that phrase has been in use since the turn of the last century. The NFL didn’t invent that phrase in 1967.

Anyhow, all the talk is about Cam’s pants, and Peyton’s last stand. Other than that, it’s a fairly bland pile of orgasmica around the corporate sleaze-fest in and around the Bay Area. They did media day (well, night) in San Jose, just so they can feel like they are a part of the corporate jerk-fest. Of course they had a giant replica of the Golden Gate Bridge in there, not the 280/101 interchange that sat idle for 7 years. Super Bowl City is what you’d think. Long lnes to get into makeshift buildings selling some shit. Walked around there Sunday with some friends who are Bronco fans, and security was tight, slightly onerous, and ever-present. Sign o’the times, I suppose. The City looks kinda cool with the Embarcadero buildings painted with 20-story high Lombardi trophies, and the like. They are having concerts and shit for free around the Ferry building all week, and there’s all the overpriced beer you can drink at your leasure, but I didn’t venture into the paid area down near Moscone Center. Sorry, Roger, not gunna do it.

Anyhow, there’s 6 more days of breathless questions around Manning’s impending retirement and the like. Cam Newton seems to be a magnet for criticism for being a little too demonstrative or something, but really, the NFL is stodgy enough. Taking away celebrations is the height of lunacy. I don’t see him doing shit much differently than the Discount double-check, or whatever. I mean, Aaron has made an advertising career of that celebration. Manning sells everything under the sun. No cries of oversaturation about him? Whatever. I think he goes down in a hail of pressure anyway.

Here are some pics of the fun.

Well, the Jimmy Bag-a-donuts era was short-lived and disastrous. Next up? Chip Kelly and his brand of high-speed no-huddle offense. Yes, we finally get the pedal-to-the-metal offensive-minded coach we haven’t has since the Mariucci days, and yes, Chip draws comparisons to guys like Mad Mike Martz (he of the JT O’Fuckmeagain and Shaun [over the] Hill gang) and even the old Mouse Davis run ‘n’ gun college/pro offense of the 80s. But this is a different league now, and everybody is fast. Not sure how this plays, but Chip did reel off two 1-6 seasons before sabotaging himself amid a bunch of questionable moves to build the Eagles in his distorted image.

Which brings us to this season. As of now, the team is a mystery as the Niners are in a very friendly cap situation, but have shed talent like a lizard sheds its skin. According to Spotrac, the adjusted salary cap is $154 mill. The Niners current salaries are at $105 mill. So as of now we have close to $50 mill in cap space.  And that is without the minor hit but major cap savings of close to $10 mill the Niners would get should they jettison Colin Kaepernick before the 4/1/16 salary kick-in deadline.

Heady stuff. But then again, we have Trent Baalke, the architect of the steady talent drain for the past 4 years, at the helm of the Titani, uh Good Ship Forty Niners. Chip has promised not to stick his nose into the personnel side of things, but what of it? Do we have Baalke drafting in a void? Surely he knows that Chip is moving the team is a much different direction than Harbaugh was. Which is why it was so baffling to me to see Baalke drafting little WRs when his trend was for bigger possession types. Even LMJ and Hunter were off the usual pattern of Baalke. Harbaugh’s power run game certainly didn’t fit with these draft picks. Were they outfoxing each other?  Was Baalke drafting random guys? I don’t get it.

Will it get better with Chip and Balke? We will see. The decision to keep or lose Colin and or Gabbert will have been made when the draft rolls around, so we should have a little better idea of where Trent will draft. As if that ever made a difference.

Bob Seger had it right.

Shit. Denver? Man I don’t like that team. The reasons are varied and multiple, but mainly it was because I lived in Colorado for 3 years, and every other radio ad, print ad, or television ad was John Elway’s car wash, John Elway’s Launromat, John Elway’s Jeep dealership, John Elway’s Chevy dealership, or John Elway’s dildo emporium and sex shop. Beyond that, you had the Rocky Mountain news posting daily updates on John Elway’s travel plans, eating habits, and bowel movement schedule.

It was enough to make one sick. Plus, their fans are annoying as hell. Orange Crush? Please. A pass rush named after a soft drink? Laaaaame. It was also more onerous because the Rockies didn’t exist yet, and the Nuggets have always been an afterthought anyway. To make things worse, the local TV stations would often pre-empt the national football games and show the Broncos on 2 separate stations! Fuckers. Many a time the 49ers would be knocked off the national schedule so 2 different local stations could show the game! Ass hats !This forced me to hunt down a bar who would show the game. Fortunately there was a bar in town called Little Annie’s whose owner was a 49er fan, so he’d show games that were pre-empted locally.

So, needless to say, I was highly disappointed that the Broncos didn’t choke that game away yesterday. The Broncos defense held Brady in check for large parts of the game, but still nearly choked it away as Peyton Manning was ineffective and largely a non-factor. Denver’s defense gave their offense a ton of field position advantage, yet couldn’t seal the game til the botched 2 point conversion. No huge love lost for Tom Brady and Belichick, but I guess I’ll take solace in Peyton manning being thoroughly embarrassed again in the biggest game.

The Carolina game? Yikes. Carson Palmer went from a shit game against Green Bay to an epic sewer dive yesterday. Any time the Cards would do something positive to even get close to making it a game, Palmer would throw into triple coverage for a pick while standing calmly in the pocket. Blehhh. Too bad, so sad.

I think Carolina wins in a runaway,  38-13

A couple very interesting games are on the docket today.

In the AFC, you have the 17th meeting of Peyton Manning (5 wins) and Tom Brady (11 wins). The last 10 years, the rivalry is 5-5, and their playoff matchups are 2-2. The caveat being Manning has won the last 2. Likely the last hurrah for Manning as a relevant QB, but you never know. Brady marches on through the AFC East yet again as he coasts his way to another deep playoff run. He looks to have a couple more seasons left in his arm.

Denver would seem to have the advantage due to its punishing defense, and Manning is having a fair-to-middling season, but he’s a lot like Aaron Rodgers. Able to pull himself together as the situations become dire. Still and all, betting against Brady this late in the season would be a fool’s bet.

New England 30 – Denver 24

The NFC is featuring 2 teams that each have a Super Bowl loss to their credit. The Panthers of course are an expansion team that came to life in 1995 and reached the Super Bowl in their 9th season, only to lose Super Bowl XXXVIII to the Patriots and a young Tom Brady 32-29 in one of the better Super Bowls in recent memory.  AZ on the other hand has been around since 1920, and haven’t won a championship of any kind since 1947. They however were 34 seconds away from a victory in Super Bowl XLVIII over the Steelers in yet another exciting Super Bowl. They lost only for a fantastic catch by Santonio Holmes in the back of the end zone. A big part of that Pittsburgh win came at the hands of a 100 yard pick 6 by LB James Harrison as time ran out in the 1st half. A 14 point swing to close the half as all AZ needed to do was get him out of bounds, and couldn’t.

Today? Most of this game depends on Carson Palmer. He played pretty badly last week, and they couldn’t put away a mediocre Green Bay team. One that was only in the game for Aaron Rodgers’ strength of will. Palmer threw a completely awful pick in the end zone, and short-armed another throw for a pick. He played like he didn’t want to make mistakes, and failed. If he can settle down and shred the questionable panther secondary, they can roll up some points. Cam Newton showed he can shred defenses with the best of them, but their problem is getting and blowing leads. If Carolina can run, I think they take AZ pretty handily. I think they do, and Carolina wins a high-scoring affair.

Carolina 37 – AZ 28

In a move that shocked no one, Eric Mangenius was just fired as DC. Not surprising seeing as they tried to hire Mike Vrabel a couple days ago.

And in more earthshaking news, the Niners hired Curtis Modkins (yes, THAT Curtis Modkins) to be their new OC. He was the Lions RB coach previously. Modkins actually did get results as he was promoted to address the shitty run game last year, and got five 100 yard games out of Ameer Abdullah. Kelly says he’s looking for different schemes to utilize in his running attack. Interesting in the fact that Kelly is a zone blocking guy, and Modkins is a straight-ahead power blocking guy. Here’s Chip:

“I’m really looking for diversity, someone that comes from another system so that we can continue to add and make what we do better … I really want to bring some people in that have some different viewpoints, have some different ideas and have done it differently. Then we, collectively, as a group, come together and (do) what’s the best based on the personnel we have for us to be successful offensively.”

Chip will be calling the plays anyway, so there you go.

They also hired Derius Swinton as their new special teams coach. He of the Bears, For someone who’s been called a casual racist, he’s hiring black guys as his coaches.

DC? Who knows? Most candidates are already scooped up, so I wonder who this will be. Per my moles inside the building, in-house candidate Jason Tarver, who coached the outside linebackers last year, is being considered for DC, as is Ravens linebackers coach Don (Wink) Martindale.

I suppose I should wait until after the Chipper presser, but what the hell. The 49ers are in the midst of the regime change being brought about by the hiring of Chip Kelly. Reportedly gone are offensive coordinator Geep Chryst, quarterbacks coach Steve Logan, receivers coaches Adam Henry and Ronald Curry, secondary coach Tim Lewis, defensive line coach Scott Brown, defensive assistants Ejiro Evero and Aubrayo Franklin, and offensive assistants T.C. McCartney and Joe Scola. Not too surprising about the offensive coaches.

On the defense, Eric Mangenius is still here, but his time likely can be counted in hours as Chip is interviewing Texas assistant coach Mike Vrabel, long-time New England NFL linebacker, and acolyte of Bill Belichick, a close friend of ol’ Chip as well. Makes more sense than one of Belichick’s mortal enemies in Eric Mangini, he of the spy-gate whistle-blowing controversy.

Beyond that, we may get a sense of which quarterback on our roster will be the go-to guy. I certainly feel that Colin brings a lot more to the table than Gabbert, and as I said earlier, this could be a sticking point with the front office and the coach, but you’d thin this came up in the interview. but with these guys, you never know.

Kaepernick and Kelly met on Monday to talk things over, and I suppose we’ll hear something about what they talked about later today, but in Chip’s words, he’s looking for is ‘repetitive accuracy.’ the knock on both our quarterbacks could very well BE repetitive accuracy. Both had some success with short shit, but both struggled (last year anyway) with deeper balls.

Thing is though, when the 49ers had a strong line, CK played a lot better. the line did improve somewhat by the end of the season last year, but the run game was flat (being down to 4th string guys might have something to do with that), but not enough to turn Gabbert into anything more than Alex Smith 1.5.

Greg Cosell had this to say.

I COULD EASILY SEE GABBERT BEING MORE EFFECTIVE IN CHIP’S OFFENSE THAN KAEPERNICK. NOW ONE OF THE PROBLEMS THAT CHIP HAS HAD IN THE NFL IS HE LIKES TO GET FIVE (PASS CATCHERS) OUT, WHICH INCREASES THE PRESSURE ON YOUR QUARTERBACK. AND THAT’S NOT GABBERT’S STRENGTH. AND YOU NEED A REALLY GOOD O-LINE, WHICH HE DID NOT HAVE IN PHILLY AND WHICH HE CERTAINLY DOES NOT HAVE IN SAN FRANCISCO AS WE SPEAK RIGHT NOW.

Tom Brady has yet again rolled his way into the AFC Championship, alongside Peyton Manning, who represent the AFC in the Super Bowl for the 9th time in the last 13 years. Throw in Big Ben, and you have 12 of the last 13 AFC QBs.

• Brady has 5
• Manning has 4
• Ben has 3

Yeah, that’s 12, but one of either Brady or Manning will represent this year for lucky 13. That is flat nuts. The outlier of course is Joe Flacco. Urk.

• Anyhow, KC lost a fumble and lost their game. KC once again was waylaid by injuries.
• Green Bay Hail Maryed themselves into overtime, yet fell to AZ on 2 completions to Larry Fitzgerald. Unreal. GB has a shitty team that is beat-up as well but they nearly won through the force of Aaron Rodgers inability to give up.
• Pittsburgh got out-FGed by Denver, and their game turned on a late fumble by Fitzgerald Toussaint. Kind of a blehhh game.
• And in a thrilling game of two halfs, Carolina beat Seattle 31-0 in the 1st half, and Seattle beat Carolina 24-0 in the 2nd half. Nutso game that was nearly the biggest collapse since the 32 point Houston collapse vs Buffalo back in 1993.

Next week?

I think AZ gets beat, and Brady holds his spell over Peyton Manning. The rivalry stands at 10-4 Brady; 8-2 in the regular season, and 2-2 in the playoffs. Curious though is that Manning has won the last 2 meetings, once with Denver Jan 2014, and once with Indy Jan 2007. Brady hasn’t beaten Manning in the playoffs since January of 2005.

Odd, that. But I still think Brady wins.