Forty Niners Forever

The oddsmakers and naysayers are having a field day breaking down the 49ers, their tough schedule, and the fact that they are not favored in any of their games so far, uh, before anything has really happened. Take the grains of salt, or boulders if you will, but this is putting the cart about 120 yards in front of the horse. The thought process for me goes like this: We will get a fairly big bump in offensive production , say 500th place to around 15th. Something middle of the road. The defense on the other hand, should be able to play more consistently with a better coaching staff, and more depth. This of course is predicated on avoiding all the injuries that have waylaid the team these past couple years.

So ARE we a .500 team? It certainly isn’t unprecedented. Harbaugh did it. Albeit with a stocked team that Hammerin’ Highball Scotty built. We  certainly HAVE talent, and in all hopes a decent coaching staff, and turnarounds in the NFL happen every season, so it could happen. Will it? I say sure. I don;t think we are a playoff team like I thought the 2011 team was. Mainly because it was so stocked with talent. We aren’t quite there yet talent-wise, but a good season that shows the team is on the right track, and maybe a good draft next year, will assuage the creeping fears and doubts.

All this hoohaw over the schedule doesn’t take into account the fact that the NFL is parity’s bitch and year to year, teams rise and fall like the tide. I think AZ is on a downtrend. Carson Palmer was a trainwreck in the playoffs, and I think that trend follows him into this season as he’s one year older and slower. The Rams are the fucking Lambs until they actually prove they are more than their endless hype. They’ve been on the rise for 10 years now and have not reached the playoffs in the last 11 seasons.  Seattle remains the cream of the division, but even they are getting weaker defensively, and now that Beast Mode is gone, we’ll see how that affects their season.

I see the Bears, Dolphins, Bucs, and Bills as winnable. Two from the Rams, and one from AZ, and throw in the overrated Cowboys, and there’s 8. Hey, maybe lightning will strike and we take one in Seattle.

And NoFear, glad to have you back in the land of the living.

Well, the Niners have signed all their 11 picks from the 2016 draft as Joshua Garnett signed a 4 year deal about ah hour ago. Nice to do since camp starts tomorrow.

Not much else to say, but we are getting close to actual practice games. I really wonder how this QB thing works out. The hope is Kappy is laying off the weights and doing some mental gymnastics. Beyond that, there’s a lot of position battles to be won. Especially in the defensive backfield.

For those of you not prone to vomiting, here’s a starry-eyed view of the upcoming season.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Could-Kellys-49ers-Go-From-Worst-to-First-387470902.html

I don’t subscribe to this outcome of a winning season, bit I certainly think something around 8-8 is a possibility. The offense has to improve, due to the fact that the Blaine Gabbert era has come and gone, and the theory Colin Kaepernick plays with more confidence than these last couple seasons. It could happen. Shit, the fricking Redskins made the playoffs last year, and the usual turnover of 5-6 playoff teams will usher in some new teams.

Us? Not likely. I[m simply looking for incremental improvement. The offense and defense are both huge questions, what with the offensive line being unsettled, the WRs being a fairly untested group, and a TE corps that is middling at best.On defense, the linebacker corps is thin, what with the Aaron Lynch 4-game suspension, Ahmad Brooks’ status, Wilhoite and Harold’s inconsistency, and uncertainty in the defensive backfield, as well as the shakey special teams unit. Not a recipe for success.  Ol’ Chipper has his work cut out for him.

The big issue on defense is our pass rush. We now have book-end Ducks on the D line, and we’ll see how they get after it. Buckner should be an immediate impact guy. If not, we may have growing pains for the year. Bowman is Bowman, but he should be better with a full year of rehab and health under his belt. But the rest of the LBs are iffy.

. . . erball . . . but it was tiresome scrolling past 200 videos.!

Anyhow, keep ’em coming. Rather than talk politics or regurgitate the same shit for 3 years, I give you . . . Maggot Brain. Eddie Hazel’s masterpiece. Story was, George Clinton was tripping on acid and told Eddie to ‘imagine that you were told your mother died, but then found out it wasn’t true.’ The 10 minute solo is the result of that . . .

The football landscape has not changed, and we await the start of camp at the end of the month with nothing more or less than about 1000% uncertainty. As it stands now we have a new offense which may or may not lead to 40 punts a game, a defense that may be required to play 100 snaps on defense, a waste-of-a-5th-round-pick punter in Bradley Pinion, who ended up 27th in average, and a 41 year old field goal kicker in Phil Dawson.

All in all, a recipe for 6-10. Shitty as that sounds, that would be an improvement. I can’t even feel very much excitement for preseason games, as we all remember (tinfoil) Samurai  Mike Singletary going 4-0 in 2010 preseason games. The got him a whole lot of squadoosh. Granted, I’m curious to see how the offense works in real-time, but since we wouldn’t be playing the starters for any length of time, it will be very hard to grade these games out.

And, on a sad note, there’s the distinct possibility that one of the contributors to the madness here, NoFear49er, may have passed away in January. I don’t have any personal info for him, and I wouldn’t even know where or how to start to verify this, but Skeebers from the 49erOutsider has reason to believe he may have passed. I’m going to search the logs here and see if I can find anything, but if you folks know anything, please let me know.

Ho hum, the Bay Area loses two game 7’s in the span of 6 days. One can hope that the Giants continue to chug through the season and keep their even-year dominance intact. Johnny Cueto and Madison Bumgarner are certainly holding up their end of the deal.

Other than that, not much to report in the wide wide world of sports.

Well, the NBA got what it wanted. More Finals games. After the ludicrous ruling against Draymond Green, the Warriors ran out of gas without their 2 best defenders on the court, and faded to a game 5 loss. Of course this isn’t the first time these accusations have been floated.  We all remember the ‘isolated case’ of Tim Donaghy, the ref with a gambling problem who was manipulating point spreads to the best of his officiating ability.

He of course laid the scenario that two other refs were in on the fix for Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference finals between the Laker and the Kings. I mean really, do you think the NBA wanted the Kings in the Finals? No. Surprisingly, the Lakers shot 21 free throws in the FOURTH QUARTER to the Kings three. Donaghy also said that “top executives of the NBA sought to manipulate games using referees”.

It also said that NBA officials would tell referees to not call technical fouls on certain players, and states that a referee was privately reprimanded by the league for ejecting a star player in the first quarter of a January 2000 game. Stern denied the accusations, calling Donaghy a “singing, cooperating witness”.

Donaghy may not be the most squeaky-clean guy in this mess, but the speed and obfuscation that which the NBA out forth to make this a ‘lone wolf’ scenario was pretty funny. Still feel a little badly for the Kings, who were screwed out of the chance to play in the Finals. My hope is that the Warriors don’t suffer the same fate. of getting screwed from a game and losing in the end. But it sure looks like the top brass in the NBA are actively skewing results to fit their liking.

Draymond isn’t innocent in all this, but then again teabagging someone on the court might garner a reaction from most players. Bron can go fuck himself. He wimped out and took it off the field of play.

Hey, since there’s no football news to speak of, and I’m not really into hockey, the talk of the Bay Area is the Golden State Warriors.

Frankly, the Cleveland Cavaliers must be thinking, what the fuck? We hold Steph and Klay to a combined 8-27, and a combined total of 20 points (lowest all season) and still get blown out? James, Love, and Irving scored 66 points compared to Stpeh, Klay, and Green combined for a paltry 36 and the game is basically garbage time most of the 4th quarter? Disheartening to say the least.

Tale of the game was the benches. 45 to 10 was a giant advantage for the Dubs. To lose that handily has to be a tough pill to swallow for LeBron and Co. Funny thing is, Andre Igluodala had his own Steve Adams moment when St. Mary’s alum Matthew Dellavedova smacked Iggy in the jigglies. After the common (really?) foul, the Warriors, up 3 at the time, went on a nice run starting with Iggy hitting a 3 right after the play and never looked back.

Needless to say, there are a couple ways to look at this. BronBron called out his bench after the game, saying they have to do a better job. They can hang their hat on the fact they shut down the Splash Bros, and think they can shut our bench down as they played out of their minds. Problem with that is, it is a rare occurrence when the rainmakers get shut down 2 games in a row. Both rarely get shut down at the same time, so there may be something to that, but I’d be worried if I was Cleveland about those two. The Warriors will likely not get 20 from Shaun or 11 from the Brazilian Blur, but Iggy wil contribute, and the Splash Bros should combine for about 60 next game.

Most encouraging thing to me was to see Harrison Barnes contributing inside and making shots. I said it before the series that the Cavs are not in our class. I think Portland is better than the Cavs. OKC as well.

I need a ladder to see the sun  . . .

Well, Vegas certainly isn’t giving us the love. They give us 5.5 as our win threshold. Down in the dregs of the NFL also-rans. Not that we haven’t been there before, but even this year is different than the pre-good times of the 2011 preseason. Vegas back then said 7.5 was the number.

I certainly thought they’d do better than that, but not the eventual 13-3 they became. Not too many people did. But back then we had a team full of talent,  a front office full of turmoil, and a brand new coaching staff.We had a bunch of players who were not even sure if they were going to see the field, let alone play, as the strike was staggering to its conclusion. So, what does that mean for this year? No one knows. we don’t have near the talent that the 2011 team had, we still have a front office full of turmoil, and again we have a new coaching staff. 

But, how this year plays out remains the big butt. Can Chip’s offense withstand the scrutiny that appears to have taken the wind from its sails? Can Colin Kaepernick regain some of his previous glory? Can the defense get out of the basement it fell in to last year? Can the offensive block? Will any of Baalke’s recent draft picks, including 35 UDFA WRs and CBs, actually do anything? Can these new draft picks actually play?  Can the latest injured draft choice get healthy?

I think we will get at least a 2 game bump from last year. I don’t think the team can play much worse than it did with Jimmy T and the knothole gang coaching it did in 2015. The thing is, though, the team was two missed FGs from 3-13. Some say that would have been nice to get further up the draft board, but that is neither here nor there. This is about win totals for this year, not the spectre on meaningless wins late on a disaster of a season.

BUT, one could say that the 2 wins we did get late last year were gifts, and that our win total this year will likely be the same. And there’s a certain amount of truth to that. 5-11 is a distinct possibility given the strength of schedule, and the lack of WRs, and a front line in flux. Let alone a defensive corps that has had a revolving door at CB due to injuries and defections.

Still and all, I’m going fairly optimistic and saying 9-7. No playoffs.

I think the rest of the NFC West is coming back to us, and not improving.

Seeing the clusterfuck that we are, you have to wonder if ol’ Chipper is counting his blessings to be out of Philly. Sam Bradford had the gall to complain about the Eagles drafting of Carson Wentz. Poor Sam and his 2 year/$35 million deal is butt hurt over the  fact he has to compete for his job. So he split non-mandatory workouts so he could collect his thoughts. Or money and thoughts. Whatever. Wentz will take over at some point, or he proves to be a bust. Bradford can only hope to hold things down until he;s replaced. But $35 mill leaves a pretty nice cushion to land on.

http://www.csnphilly.com/blog/700-level/sam-bradfords-situation-eagles-nothing-complain-about

Michael Bennett replied by saying he almost puked after hearing this. Good for Michael . . .

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000663210/article/michael-bennett-slams-bradford-for-trying-to-leave

Who says the NFL isn’t fun?