San Francisco 49ers Forever

You gotta have something if you want to be with me . . .

I guess all we have left is for Jauan Jennings to get to 1,000 yards and surpass Deebo as our #1 guy. Until BA comes back or dies trying. Pearsall had a nice game getting open as Kyle seemed to figure out overnight how to scheme players open. Orrrrrr, Deetroit is doomed to a one-and-done playoff scenario since their defense is so decimated with injuries.

Seeing as we laid a pretty heavy whupping on them, for a half anyway, Minnesota looks to out up a 50-spot on them. Their defense actually dials up pressure, so they look to have the advantage.

If Deetroit doesn’t get the bye week, they are doomed to an early demise. Especially if they play the high-scoring Rams.

Us? I hope we play our usual game of being close for a while, then shooting ourselves in the feet 6 or 7 times for the loss and the 11th pick.

Some early talk around possible 1st round steal, Michigan’s DT Christian D’Andrea.  Big at 325, and fast, he woulf provide a solid push up the middle and is a great run defender.

Funny thing is, a lot of other mocks have us taking his line mate Mason Graham.

We all knew the defense was aweful, and we knew special teams has been a pretty big disaster, but the concerning thing to me has been the interceptions thtown by Purdy coming down the stretch here.

These last three games saw very bad throws that were picked to destroy any chance of a comeback. Graned, Moody missed a bunch of FGs, the defense is as stout as wet paper towels, and our red zone offense has been inconsistent to bad.

But yesterday, the offense at least was back to humming along at a furious pace, and but for the missed FG at the half, and a fairly painful OPI call that killed a 1st and goal from the 2, the Niners could have been up 28 – 13. But alas the killer penalty drove up backwards and Moody was moody and missed his first of 3 kicks.

Up 28-24 in the 3rd, Purdy overthrew Pearsall for the 1st pick. Deetroit takes the lead as the defense can’t stop anything. Ensuing drive sees another Moody miss. Deetroit falls down an a few plays and kicks a FG and is up 34-28. Not outlandish. No need to panic or force things.

Deetroit on their part sees that Pearsall is gertting a lot of action, and Purdy loves going over the middle. Purdy misses Kerby Joseph playing centerfield, as he was on the earlier pick, and jumps the route for his 2nd pick. Deetroit scores another TD agasint the vaunted Charmin defense, it is now 40-28 and the game is over for al intents and purposes.

Should Pearsall have cut the route short due to where Joseph was? Not sure, but it was an easy read for Joseph to pick it off, and a very bad read for Purdy to not see Joseph. Is he pressing due to a bad defense? Sure, could be as well. Or he’s being outed more and more as a mid-range passer who only throws over the middle.

I’m not gonna jump to any conclusions with Brock, mainly because he’s getting a huge deal regardless (unless his arm is truly fucked up), because this is the natural order of things in the NFL. The 5 highest paid QBs in the league (Dak, Joe Burrow, Trevor, Tua, and Love) all have nothing on Purdy as far as playoff success goes, and none of the top 10 paid guys has a ring.

. . . if man is still alive.

. . . if football can survive . . .

Ahhhh, Zager and Evans. They used to have that song on the juke box at one of the original Round Table Pizza parlors on 3rd Ave in San Mateo and I played the shit out of that song. Funny enough, it swapped out to North Beach Pizza about 25 years ago, and is still there.

As for 2025, who knows? I saw in the Green Section that gee, maybe out defense isn’t that good, and that Sorensen is on the hot seat. Really? 15 games into the forgettable season of missed opportunities, little to no defensive scheme other than rushing 4 and dropping the LBs every play 99% of the time?

Our early effort did produce some turnovers, but those dried up by week 8. Our numbers are terrible across the board, and to blame this on injuries is a fool’s errand. Watching Minnesota put 5 on the line nearly every snap was simply a reminder of how you can be aggressive on defense without blitzing all the time, but showing different looks up front and moving LBs around.

But, whatevs. This season was an utter waste of time. The front office did their best to sabotage the season by dragging out the negotiations with BA and Williams, Shanny’s insistence on prsying for CMC;s return and revival of the team’s woes simply prolonged the agony of being terrible in the red zone and Shanny’s shortcomings as a play caller. when his team isn;t at full strength.

Oh well. Wait till next year!!

Hope you all have a happy and safe new years, and let’s hope against hope this team can figure out how to get out of this current mess.

All I want for Christmas is some winning teams in the City. We know al too well about the 49ers. How they deal with this latest setback will likely not be my cup of tea, but we will see. The draft is off a ways, and trades/contracts (hello Brock) remain t be dealt with.

The Giants got a big boost hiring Buster Posey as the Pres of Baseball Ops, and signing Willy Adames. If they get Corbin Burnes, I’d be thrilled. Find a Josh Bell type for 1st base to hold the spot for Eldridge and I’ll be excited about the upcoming year.

The Warriors? They suffer the same fate as the 49ers. An aging roster that doesn’t have enough complimentary players to close out games.

Hope y’all have a fun time with family and friends or however you celebrate Christmas! Laying low this week, and took some time off.

Two disappointing teams wracked with injuries playing out the string. I’m sure I’ll watch some of it, and I will tape it, but since this looks like a complete bad penny year with the most likely re-do for most of these guys, I guess I just want to see us play non-stupid football for a change.

I mean, we might as well start some time.

Into the valley of death.

Forward into the breech, me scallywags.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Riding into the valley of pina coladas and cocaine aplenty, the 49ers charge into Miami. Not as conquering heroes but as a team, much like Miami, with its tail between its legs and falling well short of expectations.

Unfortunately, in the NFL these days, teams fall off the top of the ladder regularly. Cincy rode right down into hell with the Cowboys, 49ers, Dolphins, and Browns. Teams like Minnesota, Washington, San Diego, and Denver sprung out of oblivion (and weak scheduling) to vault into the playoffs.

Not sure where we go from here, but we are gonna keep on keeping on. I’m merely resigned to the fact that we will keep doing the same things that got us to this point. Soft defense, poor special teams play, too many penalties, and scoring problems.

It seems pretty obvious that this team will lose out the string. And that makes me sad. Everyone will write this off as 2020, another injury-plagued season. But I see much bigger issues with the coaching staff and front office.

Nothing but garbage time for these last 3 weeks. Realy don;t know or care what they do now. This was an abject waste of a season. I have no more faith in the coaching staff or the front office to do the right thing. They are simply gonna call this season a bad one due to injuries and overlook the complete failure of Shanahan and Co to make any kind of adjustments to the plays called, the schemes run, and the coaching staff itself.

I’m sure they’ll jettison Brian Schneider, the special teams coach, because, yeah, special teams were special. Problem is, they should have fired him in September when all the ugliness started.

Our brainless two-headed DC? Staley and Sorensen? Blutarsky and Unclutch? Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dumber? Whatever the fuck, Sorensen has to roll. Without even a scintilla of doubt.

And you know me. I think Shanahan should be gone. 8 years of blowing big games has finally infected the regular ones as well. We should be 5-0 in our division games as we had leads in all of them in the 4th quarter, and instead we are 1-4. And this is why the season is lost. Because Shanny cannot fogire out a way to close out games in the 4th quarter.

I think he still has nightmares about the 25 point blown lead with the Falcons against the Patriots.

Hmmmmm. I said it before and I’ll say it again. If this team loses out, which is very likely, does 6-11 engender the brain trust another shot? Yes, they’ve had a lot of success. Success that teams like the Jets, Cowboys, Raiders, Chargers, and countless others would kill for.

But we are who we are. We are supposed to WIN Super Bowls. Not choke them away in the last minutes. Bill Walsh was wildly successful yet clashed constantly with Eddie D to the point of him getting fired and hired back a few time before Bill said ‘fuck it’ and left the reins to George Seifert due to the stress of it all.

Seifert of course has (at least with the 49ers) the second highest winning percentage at 98-30, or .766, in NFL history. WITH 2 Super Bowl victories. A year after winning our last Super Bowl in 1994 he was unceremoniously fired. Mooch wimped out to close the 1st half in a Tampa Bay playoff game and was tossed for his trouble.

Harbaugh? Well, he dictated his demise with the team by openly mocking Jed and the owners, and tanking games when Brady Hoke resigned from Michigan. He was tossed a year after HIS Super Bowl loss. Then the front office tossed all the good players.

Kyle? Lynch? I get that they have been successful and they brought us out of a dark time, but that was because the front office was a bunch of dithering idiots hiring Jimmy Farts-a-lot, and Dr. Kedorkian was running the team on a shoestring budget. You want water? You gotta pay for it, guys.

These guys have ONLY been saved by the back ends of a lot of drafts. The Trey Lance debacle should have ended their reign, but for the absolute luck of drafting Brock Purdy. Most of their impact picks are from rounds 4 and down, not at the top of the draft.

Shanny has a pretty impressive coaching tree. Thing is, the saplings are growing faster than the mama tree. Yeah, weak analogy, but the point remains, I hope they move on from at least Shanahan if not Lynch. Shanahan hired him, not the other way around. Which may be why they stick with Lynch. I can live with that.

Hire Bobby Slowik. He’s the OC for the Texans. DeMeco Ryans brought him to Houston from the Niners, and was on our coaching staff for 6 years. His last position was as the passing game coordinator.

This trainwreck of a season staggers merrily along this holiday season as the 49ers face the newly resurgent LA Rams. They of the 1-4 record, and had we beat them back in September, they’d have been 0-5 and likely would have traded Cooper Kupp and gone through a rebuild.

But alas, we impregnated the canine, and let them off the hook to now be one game ahead of us. Well, the dog had puppies and we are now the ones staring at a post-season on the outside.

Funny how that works. The Rams don’t defend very well, so we have to score early and often. No dicking around with field goals. We also need to desperately get pressure early and often on Stafford. The defense needs to sell out and shake him up and get him skittish and gunshy.

Otherwise they’ll drop a 40-spot on us. Our glaring failure on defense has been our lack of sustained pressure on opposing quarterbacks. Stafford is no Mahomes, so simply collapsing the pocket around him is the way to go. No stepping up and getting passes off. We should pressure hard early.

The main byproduct of no pass rush is no errant passes. No fumbles. No forced errors. This defense NEEDS to create turnovers. We’ve had one pick and one fumble recovery in the past FIVE games while we have turned the ball over NINE times. That is absolutely pathetic. The main reason why we are so far down in the standings.

Looks like it’s gonna be a wet rainy night so ball security is paramount yet again. That isn’t Purdy’s strong suit, but it ain’t a snowstorm.

Well, the 49ers have backed themselves into a corner this season. Injuries, bad coaching, bad schemes, bad special teams, bad parking at the stadium, bad karma, bad contract negotiations, take your pick.

Plenty of fodder for the grist mill, but we are at win-out or go home time. And of course this starts with a short week vs our rivals, the Lost Angels. Talk about mixed bag. They are a bigger conundrum than us. They got shellacked by the Cards, lost to the 2-win Bears, Packers, and Lions, while seemingly finding their way against the Vikings and Bills, the Buffalo game being a major shootout.

Us? Well, we got a nice win over those same but different Bears. Other than that, as we must, we all sit with baited breath for the injury report. Who plays? Greenlaw? Bosa? Williams? Guerendo?

Our earlier game was the one that very well could determine whether we sit on the outside of the playoffs. Like the Seattle game that we blew, we blew that Ram one as well. Fucking up the division games is a cardinal sin.

We may not make it, but take this one, and at least we will give the other division opponents pause.

Until Miami and Deetroit. Weeeeee!