Forty Niners Forever

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.

Been out of touch for a while here but I’m back in the saddle again. Apparently the offense looks better but the defense has been lacking in consistent pressure. Sounds familiar.

The question with the Seahawks is, are we the French fried garbage that gulls feed on after games, or are we majestic chicken Hawks feeding on the flying rats?

Thing is I still think this team is still finding its way. Lots of inconsistency on both sides of the ball. And special teams as well. The good news is the Niners are at home. The bad news is, as bad as Seattle is playing right now, they look better than us.

Granted I’ve seen nothing of the last 2 games, but the O must have been doing something right to score 52 points these last 2 weeks.

Sure, we can win. Wilson hasn’t been killing it this year. 21-13 Niners.

Sorry folks. Been out of pocket and country for the past couple weeks! Forgot to tape the damn games as well.

Italy is beautiful and we are returning tomorrow.

Well, the travel weary Niners came back from their 2 game roadie, I should say the defense came back from their 2 game roadie. The offense is circling Turlock in a holding pattern. A pattern where no one gets open and no one catches shit. In a game that saw very solid pressure from the base D, the 49ers befuddled and harassed Aaron Rodgers well enough to win this game. Unfortunately, the offense is circling the drain amid more sniping from T Smith, and ineffective blocking. Teams are daring us to beat them through the air, and since we can’t block, we are struggling mightily to even get first downs, let alone touchdowns.

CK had another underwhelming day, and the blocking was it’s usual porous self, but VMcD had a big drop on what would have been an early 1st down, the refs got CK on a call that was ludicrous at best, we had the 1st Packer drive stopped but for a ticky-tack illegal hands, and a missed facemask call on BJ Raji.

Granted, those are little things that decent teams can overcome. But not us. As the game progressed, there was less and less time, more and more pressure, and dwindling confidence offensively as a whole. CK did hit T Smith on a nice deep pass, but that ended in a 4th and 5 play where an all-out blitz was met with the usual slow-developing pass play that had zero chance of working.

This offense is struggling with the same things that they were last year. Poor line play, and no help for the relentless pass rush CK faces all the time. I’m not even going to mention screens, because they won’t work against teams playing us so close to the line. How about a slant? A play that gets the ball out in under 3 seconds?

Either CK isn’t able to do this, or we just don’t have this shit in the playbook. I hate to belabor this point, but the Previous QB suffered the same fate. No quick hitters. No hot-read passes. No slants. I can’t profess to know, but I know Reid throws quick passes, and Young Sir Alex can make that throw. No reason to think CK can’t do the same.

But until the line play improves significantly (shuffle the line already) and the team comes up with a different strategy to slow down the relentless pressure, we will continue down this path.

Hmmm. This one is a real head-scratcher. The best offense goes against the leakiest pass defense? Aaron Rodgers gets to shred our ineffective pass rush and mysteriously non-existent defensive backs? Our suddenly crappy passing game tries to unbury itself from the dregs of the worst game in oh, the last 10 years? 20? And that’s saying something seeing as some the stiffs that have wandered through the team lo these past 10 have been terrible.

I think these guys will play a better game. And I think they can even win, given the fact that they aren’t as bad as that AZ game, and they ARE at home. Realistically though our D is swiss cheese, and the cheeseheads want to exact revenge. We’ve been the bearer of a lot of bad news to GB in recent memory, knocking them out of the playoffs a couple times, and smoking them in the regular season as well. All with CK as the QB to win those games. (another hmmm) So they want to hurt us.

No there no moral victories in football, but really now. If this team gets smoked in another disastrous-type game like the last two, there will be some major grumblings around 4949 Centennial Blvd. For all everyone’s talk about the goodness or badness of the team, another blowout will be hard to stomach. Yeah, the line is banged up and shakey. At some point though, you’d think the coaches would say move Boone back to RT, or get Shareece Wright at least somewhere near the field. They need to work on the line to get CK some time in the pocket. GB is 11th in pass defense, so maybe we can run to set up the pass. I don’t know. I see a better game, but not enough to win.

Here we go. Carlos Hyde, he of 3 games of NFL experience, has called out his QB for giving the game away last week. Yeah, Kappy had the wort game of his life, but Hyde is a bit premature here in selling out his QB. After all, Kappy has been to the Super Bowl, and Hyde has one good game under his belt.

Then you have Honey Badger saying Kappy’s dumbed-down offense was easy to read and attack. Then again, if Kappy doesn’t throw off his back foot and leave those wounded ducks out there for easy pickings, then that shit doesn’t happen.

Point being, this team has a tough schedule, and even the 2 softies coming up, the Giants and Ravens, both have decent to fair QBs. At the start of the season I thought we’d be at 2-1 for the GB game, but at this point 1-3 looks like where we will be. They HAVE to take the Giants and Ravens to be even remotely considered a decent team. After that, it’s Seahawks, Rams, Falcons. 1-2? I don’t know. We do get the Browns, Lions, and Bears later, but by that point Kappy better have a handle on this offense, or we will be in full Gaine Blabbert mode.

Which is not a good scenario. If Tomsula starts playing QB roulette, then the team is in deep shit. But if Kappy keeps playing like he did last week, Tomsula will have no choice. We are back to the Harbaugh scenario of teams stopping the run, or getting so far ahead we can’t run, and putting the game in Kappy’s hands and beating us. Granted some of this has to do with a shit line, but Kappy made some terrible throws last week.

Again, the only bad game of his this year. He needs to move on and show he can play a clean game. GB is not a good team to be trying to find you way against. Although Kappy’s recent success against them must be tickling the backs of their minds a little bit.

Well, a divisional game that was supposed to be a measure of where this team is came to pass with a major thud. Colin Kaepernick’s first 4 passes netted 14 points for Arizona, a team that needs little help to get rolling. Kappy’s worst day as a pro was flat awful as he threw late and off his back foot for the 2 1st quarter picks, or simply didn’t get enough behind his passes on the other 2. Both of those picks would have been completions had Kappy put more on them. Throw the guy open, in other words. 4 picks in his first 11 passes. Another game that was over by halftime. Can’t even blame the pass protection, as Kappy did have time, but missed badly The defense wasn’t terrible, but again we saw the 3 man rush give Palmer plenty of time to find wide open receivers. Again, the biggest target, Larry Fitzgerald, was often wide open 15-20 yards downfield for easy chunks of yards. And with little pressure whether rushing 3, 4, or 5, it is getting very hard to stop teams.

Then again, the team did lose a ton of defensive players. Still and all, I thought we had the horses to get somewhere close to these guys. Chalk it up to growing pains? Shit, look across the Bay. The Raiders laid the biggest opening day turd in their recent memory, and are now 2-1. Then again, Cleveland and Baltimore aren’t Pittsburgh or AZ. Curious to me are the Bills and their fast start. Tyrod Talyor is playing phenomenal football, and Buff’s defense is solid. On the flip side, Vic Fangio is in hell right now with a defense that can’t stop a snail. They are crippled on offense WITH Jay Cutler, and with him gone they are shit on a stick.

Is that where we are? No one is jumping the ship yet, but there appears to be little action on the sidelines when these terrible plays happen. No gleaning over pics of what the tendencies of the opponent are. There’s innuendo that the players are pissed at Kappy for his shit day, and he sure owns this one, but the game last week was all on the defense. They are not a cohesive team despite the very good first game vs Minnesota. A team that is now 2-1.

Something like that. Hey you never know. AZ is coming off 2 impressive wins, but at the expense of 2 of he worst defenses in the NFL in Chicago and New Orleans. The Niners on the other hand beat a Minnesota team that shut down the Detroit Lions pretty handily last week. Course we were folded, spindled and Rothlisbergered last week in Pittsburgh. No shame there. It just got away fast.

Which brings us to AZ. For all their recent success (sort of), they haven’t made much noise in the playoffs recently. Lots of bridesmaid shit. They have a decent defense and a fairly solid offense, if they can keep Carson Palmer upright. Kappy? Well, he’s 4-1 as a starter vs AZ with 9 TDs and only 1 pick. Seeing as AZs pass defense is Whaley, I see a continuation of the deep passing game.

As usual though this game will be decided in the trenches. Get a strong ass rush on Palmer and the DBs will be fine. No pressure means Palmer going deep. And as we saw last week, even the safeties got beat over he top. Over and over. Open up some running lanes and give Kappy time to throw and I think we get the offense rolling.

31-17 Niners.

Panic is for the pussies. The 49ers were folded, spindled, and mutilated yesterday by Ben Rothlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers. A game that saw the Niners make TWO 17 play drives that netted 3 points, and failed on two forth and goal situations, and you get the idea. Time and again, the defense generated zero pressure on big ben and he torched us repeatedly. Yeah, the uncoverable Antonio Brown was well, uncoverable (9-195???), but when you make DHB look good, you have problems in the secondary.

Much will be made of this game, but I attribute some of this shittiness to the schedule. Having 4 days off and a travel day is no way to recover from a game. Pittsburgh was coming off a tough road loss, was having their home opener, and were on 10 days rest. The Niners were coming off a Monday night win, and had to travel cross-country on a short week. Tomsula didn’t use the excuse of blaming the short week, noting that they knew about the schedule way in advance, but that still doesn’t mean that they can survive the quick turn-around without some ramifications.

Bad as it was offensively, there were some bright spots. The offense looked good til the red-zone issues raised their ugly head. Kappy and T Smith connected on a nice deep post pattern that Kappy got over the LB and hit Smith in stride. Smith had 6 catches for 120 yards. 10 different 49ers caught passes so Kappy was spreading the ball around. But the issues were many. Hyde fumbled an exchange early that Pittsburgh capitalized on. VD and Boldin had drops. Miller dropped a TD pass in the end zone. Kappy was under a ton of pressure all day (5 sacks-37 yards to 0-0 for us). The run blocking was non-existent.

The defense? Well, the numbers tell all. Worthlessberger was 21-27 for 369 yards. A whopping 13 yards per completion. The D held DeAngelo Williams in check, but that was because the Steelers were connecting on everything in the air.

Bad game? Sure. Reason to panic and act like the season is over? Hardly. Non-division game on the road against a top-tier team is no reason to get too down on this one. St. Louis might be a little worried though. Getting spanked by the woeful Redskins is a bit embarrassing. Especially after coming off their emotional win over the (now 0-2) Seahawks.

The AZ game looms large.

Week 2 of the Niners season is Jimmy T’s homecoming. Back to Pittsburgh. He’ll have a bunch of support from friends and family but not from the rest of river city.

As i suspect early on, and through ateast half the season, no one will take this team seriously nor give their opponents any points. The Niners get 6.5 for this one.  Actually smaller than I thought, given the 3 point home bump, and the supposed superiority of the Steelers.

hey, you never know. The Niners have won 5 of the last 7 meetings .