Forty Niners Forever

Buffalo vs the 49ers. This used to be a very popular Super Bowl pick back in the day. It never happened, but one of these two teams WAS in the Super Bowl for 8 of 11 Super Bowls from 1984 to 1994, even if they never did play each other. Not much history between these 2 teams. Historically they are 5-5 vs each other dating back to 1972, when Dennis Shaw (8-20, 105 yds) outdueled Steve Spurrier (10-25, 171 yds) 27-20.  Oh, yeah. O.J.SImpsonm had 138 yards rushing. The last time they met was 2008, an epic 10-3 Niner win when Shaun Hill beat out the two-headed QB of JP Lohsman and Trent Edwards.

Sunday? Well, on paper this is one of those games that you’d think the Niners would crush Buffalo. Buffalo lost to a Jets team that dropped 48 points on them. The same Jets that never got into the red zone vs SF. And Buffalo’s so-called revamped defense gave up 45 points to NE. In the 2nd HALF. They did manage to beat the Chefs and the Browns, 2 teams hardly mistaken for anything resembling competent, but as the Niners showed against Minnesota, bad schemes can lead to bad games. Still and all, I think this is another tune-up game that shouldn’t be too difficult. Buffalo doesn’t defend the run or pass particlularly well, and thier offense goes through CJ Spiller. A little guy who uis dinnged up, and shouldn’t be too hard to stop. If they go with Minnesota’s strategy of short passes and WRs going deep, the Niners NEED to bring the pressure. The 49ers let Ponder off the hook by not pressuring him enough, and he picked the Niners apart with the underneath stuff. Pressure Fitzpatrick, and he’ll throw picks. He’s got 7 already.

I’m thinking 28-10, Niners.

The 49ers finally get their 2nd game in the muddy confines with the Buffalo Gals, uh Bills. This is week 2 of the let’s play-all-the-NY-(NJ)- teams-in-the-league-in-three-weeks deal. Not sure if this is some kind of NFL record or something but I ain’t looking it up. The NY round-up got off to a rousing start with the shellacking of the J-E-T-S 34-zip. The D pitched a shutout, and the offense racked up nearly 250 yards on the ground. Fodder for Alex to take another load of shit for his performance, but whatevs, as my kids are wont to say. The Niners won convincingly and, at least to me, seemed to stress throwing longer passes to stretch the defense and open up the running game. If that was the plan, it worked. Smith didn’t connect as much as I would have hoped, but he didn’t make any mistakes, and had a good day. The mid-range passing game is a work in progress. This is Crabs’s 1st year in camp, and Manningham/Moss are still getting up to speed with Alex, so this would be a good game to keep this work up. The Minnesota game plan failed as all the underneath passing clogged the running lanes, there were few yards after the catch, and the Niners appeared out of synch. Can’t say enough about the D, so I won’t say anything. Other than they stifled the Jets. A team that laid 48 on these same Bills.

Buffalo spent the offseason retooling their defense. To the tune of $100 million on Not-So-Super Mario Williams. He of the 1.5 sacks 4 games into the season. So much for that. In their two losses to their AFC East rival Jets and Pats, they’ve given up 100 points. Does that mean we walk all over them? One would think. But then again, we should have beaten the Vikings.  Could this be a trap game for the Niners seeing as the New York Football Giants wait on the horizon? Possibly. but even then I don’t think this team will come out flat at home. I don’t see Spiller being that big a factor either. Ryan Fitzpatrick leads the league in TD passes, yet he leads the league in interceptions with 7. Seeing what happened with Minnesota, the Niners need to Shake up Fitz early and often. Something they didn’t do to Ponder and the Vikes. I’d throw some early blitzes in and really work on rattling Ryan. The Niners should prevail easily, 28-10.

Well, there you go. A shutout on the road, no matter who you snuff, is pretty good. The Niners came into Joisey and played very well. 200+ rushing, no picks, and a stifling defense demoralized and obliterated a very weak New York Jets team. 34-0 wasn’t even a true indication of what the score should have been. David (Wade Richey) Akers missed 2 FGs, and Cappy Capperson took a knee on the 2 yard line to close out the game (classy move BTW. No needless KO or additional plays to run. Just kill the clock). So, it could have been 50.

Encouraging to me was the fact that Manningham had a very good day. Smith and Crabs didn’t connect as much as I would have liked, but the game plan worked. Sending WRs on deeper routes opened up the running lanes. Even if they didn’t connect as much as they would have liked, the strategy was sound, and it spread the Jets defense out for Gore and co to run rampant. The pisser in the Minn game is how everything was too close to the LOS to open up the underneath passing routes, or to open up the run game. Lesson learned. The D came off one of it’s worst performances in the recent past to pitch a shutout. The Jets 1st drive was their best all day, and it netted them 24 yards.

Buffalo is next. At the muddy confines. If the Jets can plant 48 on these guys, and 0 on us, does that mean we score 96?

For real or not? Riding the accolades of last year, or living up to the preseason hype?

These questions, and more will be answered today, on As the Harbaugh Churns . . .

This SHOULD be a not-very-difficult game, but as we know, on any given Sunday.

touception

Or (Dennis will like this one) Seattle Screw . . .

Anyone watching the MNF game last night saw an example of what is wrong with the replacement refs in the NFL. They dare not make an unfavorable call in a hostile environment. When these guys started 3 weeks ago, they appeared to be to throw flags on any given play. Or they came up with completely weird interpretations of rules. 2 illegal blocking penalties on KICKING teams? Ball spotting problems, Not being able to count the number of timeouts used, missing a ton of false starts, on and on. The results weren’t greatly affected. Week 2 saw players taking a lot more chances and getting away with brutal hits. The 2nd MNF game saw a near riot on a fumble and subsequent recovery that was determined about 5 minutes after the fact. Alex Smith got a shot to the head while in a slide.

This past weekend saw even more brutal hits. DHB of the Raiders was knocked clean out on a play right in front of an ‘official’ who decided to eat his flag. Texans QB Matt Shaub lost part of his ear to a particularly nasty hit. At least it was called for a penalty. Yet, you have calls like Russell Wilson scrambling and getting tackled as he threw the ball. Roughing. Dashon Goldson hits a TE going over the middle with his shoulderpad to the TEs chest. Roughing. Sidney Rice facemasks and covers the eyes of the DB covering him, and the DB does not initiate ANY contact, yet gets called for PI.

And then we get the kicker. The last play last night. Waylon Jennings clearly catches the hail Mary pass and clutches the ball to his chest while he falls to the ground. Golden Showers Tate has one arm near the ball while the other arm is clearly off the ball. No simultaneous possession. The back judge signals INT. The side judge signals TD. THEY were simultaneous. But they don’t matter. The players rolled around for another 45 seconds and Tate eventually ends up with the ball. I guess, based on this, that gave him the score. They did a cursory review, and if they couldn’t see the lack of possession by Tate then, why bother? Green Bay got screwed, and there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it. Even more funny is Tate blatantly pushed another DB out of the way before jumping for the pass. 3 refs right there to make a call, and they all ignored it.

In the end, this won’t likely have too much impact on the playoff hunt. GB should win their division and get in regardless, but Seattle gets a pretty big boost by this. They should be in the thick of the WC, if not the NFC West race, so this may end up deciding who wins.

Frankkly, I think this is the tipping point. This has already become a major issue. I mean Kim Kardashian tweeted about it. Goodie and the owners really have to stop and think about how flagrantly awful this makes the league look. The refs’ demands are seemingly a little out there for part-time guys, but when you look at the money everyone else makes, their piece looks positively miniscule. And, these refs are an absolute abomination to the integrity of the game. Word is 3 of these’officials’ were fired from the Lingerie Football League for incompetence.

Beyond the fact that it was an eminently interesting day in football yesterday, the 49ers seemingly forgot that there WAS football yesterday. After giving up a very easy scoring drive that burned 7:40 to lead off the game, and included a 3rd and 10 conversion, and a 4th and goal on the 1, the Niners sputtered their way to 3 points to start the 2nd quarter.  The Vikes then ran off another 6+ minute drive for a TD. Galling was the 3rd and 11 Minn converted with a short pass and run for 11. Then Ponder scrambled untouched for 6. Another decent Niner drive was halted by a blocked FG attempt. Minn added insult to domination by driving for a FG of their own to close the 2nd quarter. 17-3 Vikings.

2nd half almost looked good for a bit. KW led off the 2nd half with a 94 yard kickoff return. Unfortunately the Niners couldn’t get the additional 14 yards and settled for a FG. After the D forced a quick (and their only) 3-and-out, the Niners scored on their only sustained drive of the day. Ending with (gasp) play action in the red zone for a 1 yard toss to VD. At 17-13, the Niner D needed to stop the much maligned Vikes. Instead, they gave up another long sustained dink and dunk drive surrounded by 2 very questionable unnecessary roughness penalties and an imaginary holding call on a legal jam within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage. The 4th quarter devolved into a 3 stooges affair as Harbaugh was granted a challenge without any timeouts, was given a timeout back, and was able to challenge again on the seeming 5 fumbles by ex- Harbaugh acolyte Toby Gerhart, and a bunch of other stupid crap.

By far, this is the worst game played by a Jim harbaugh led 49er team. They started out flat, and strayed away from what got them their first 2 wins. Control the line of scrimmage on offense and pound the run to set up the pass. Gore wasn’t given very many touches in the 1s thalf, and the offense sputtered. Defensively, the 49ers couldn’t stop the dink and dunk attack of Ponder and the Vikings. AP had a pedestrian for him 86 yards rushing, but Ponder had his 23 yards scamper, and Minn ended up with 146 yards rushing. Unheard of in recent memory. Percy Harvin and co took advantage of the underneath routes all game. The biggest problem I saw was since the WRs were running deep routes, it cleared the midd of the field for 5-8 yard passes. Since the safeties were off, they couldn’t provide help fast enough to prevent 1st downs. The Niners on the other hand DIDN’T run deep routes, which clogged up the middle for their short-range passing game, and thus didn’t get the 1st downs that Minn was getting.

Troublesome to me is the Randy Moss situation. He’s barely getting any meaningful time out there, and judging by his lack of effort on that crossing route, he may well be on his way to checking out. The amazing pisser is the fact that Moss got a 12 yard cushion EVERY time he went out for a pass. The Niners should have gone to that EVERY time. 8 yard out, 8 yard out, 8 yard out 8 yard out. Do it til they STOP it. Harbaugh sometimes seems to get caught up in his own cuteness with these jumbo packages and such. Again, what annoys me is the WR routes. I love the fact that they have more weapons. But USE THEM for God’s sake. Use them for more than 8 yard passes. The Niners barely ever stretch the field with deep sideline passes. Unless it’s VD one on one. Which is nice when they do it, but they need more than their TE for home runs.

So, all in all, a bad effort by every phase of the team. They were outcoached, outhit, pushed around by Minn’s O and D lines, and they had a special teams screwup in the blocked FG. The lone bright spot was Kyle Williams and his 2 kickoff returns for 144 yards. Taken by itself, a crappy game in a long season of football. How they respond to this will be a pretty big deal as they go to NY for their game with the J-E-T-S. Yeah. it’s a road game in a tough environment, but if ever there was a team that was ready to roll over to a superior team, thy name is Jets.

Stop AP and you stop the Vikes. Funny thing is, I think Ponder comes out throwing midrange passes to try and put the Niners on their heels.  Stopp Jared Allen and you comtain their D. This shouldn’t be too hard. This is game 3 vs an NFC North opponent. This should be win 3 vs an NFC North opponent.

Smith should go prety big today. Over 250? That is his high water mark. 250 in the air, 150 on the ground and all is good.

Or would you prefer “I’m looking California and feeling Minnesota”? There’s much media ado around Randy Moss returning to his old stomping grounds in the land of 10,000 lakes, but for the most part, Moss is merely trying to get ready for the game. He aknowledged playing with some great teammates in Minnosota, and was very happy to see Randall McDaniel and John Randle go into the Hall of Fame, and had nothing but good things to say about the organization. We’ll see how the fans treat him, but I’m sure he still has some fans out there.

Mike Florio, Mr. J-E-T-S lover himself, is trying to stir the pot by insinuation that Moss’ lack of significant playing time is irksome to Randy. Moss’ take is, it isn’t my call. Moss has been a big help to the young WRs on this team, has been a coach on the field during the preseason, and his playing time, while not a ton, will likely increase as the season goes on. He’s made some plays, and as appearances goe, he’s fully on board. I guess these media types feel like they need to make news instead of report it.