San Francisco 49ers Forever

Tell ya one thing, these guys are sure finding fun and exciting ways of ripping my heart out and stomping it flat. Yet another seemingly easy victory was fumbled, picked, and out-coached by an AZ team that was fairly DOA after a blocked FG led to a TD, and Nick Bosa provided a nice pick on a wayward screen pass.

Unfortunately, the 49ers forgot how to get into the end zone. Kyle Shanahan has a really weird oenchant to throw on 3rd and 2 on the goal line. Ive seen this fail at least 5 times this season, and that doesn’t include the stupid fucking 4th and 1 throw on the goal line vs Minnesota.

A study in contrast is John Gannon. Coach of the Cards. He made halftime adjustments and started running James Connor to great success. He did it until we stopped it. Well, we didn’t stop it til AZ had taken the lead.

Shanahan? Yep. 3rd and 1 on the goal line and he goes to the pass play, which hasn’t worked. Guess what? It didn’t. Of the 5 passes inside the 5, Kittle did score on a quick slant kind of thing, but the other 4 saw Purdy running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

There’s repeating success and there’s repeating failure.

We are a Thursday loss away from being an afterthought for this season. Mainly because losing to Seattle wouldm. put us 0-3 in the division, and we’d have to deal with KC after that. Meaning 2-5 and we are looking up at a lot of teams.

Fortunately, everyone in our division is varying flavors of shit, so we could regroup and make a second half push after the bye, but This team is Steve DeBerg. They are doing just enough to lose games in fun and mysterious ways.

Well we have some good news on the injury front. S Talanoa Hufanga, LB Dee Winters And DL Jordan Elliott have been removed from the injury list.

I just don’t know if the defensiuve improvement was because of the shittiness of the Patriots, or we are scheming different looks up front. I did see a little more stunting, and Bosa was getting more consistent pressure. A game like this really begs the presence of Dre Greenlaw. He pretty much covered the field containing running QBs, and Murray certainly qualifies for that.

Murray isn;t exactly lighting up the league this year, but as usual, if you don;t pressure the guy, he’ll hit his marks. Snd they rum pretty well. I’, glad to see Elliott back, and hope theuy get Oyuahinonu (sp) in there as well. His 19 plays last week saw a lot of disruption.

I swear, Elliott plays better than Hargrave based on the eye test. Stopping the run is paramount. We do that, we should be able to outscore these guys. Dont want a shootout. Want a 35- 20 type game.

So far the injury bug has hit just about every team in the NFL this year. The struggling Eagles have lost their 2 starting WRs in AJ Brown and Devonta Smith. They also lost their newly signed stud LB Devin White before he even hit the field. Fucking Dallas has lost just about half their starters to injury. Trevon Diggs, E Elliott, Micah Parsons, DeMarcus Lawrence, Brandin Cooks, Jordan Philips, Nathen Thomas, and Ryan Fiorney, among a few others are out or Doubtful.

Some other major guys are QB Tua Tagovailoa, Cheifs WR Rashee Rice and Isiah Pacheco, Rams Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua, and even Russell Wilson, even though the Steelers are 3-1 with Justin Fields.

Some teams Like KC and Pittsburgh are doing fine dealing with their injuries. Dallas and Philly aren’t. Miami isn’t. The Rams are struggling as well. and so are we. Thing about us though, is our early injuries were to the offense, and they aren’t the issue. CMC, Kittle, and Deebo, have missed time. CMC of course may be out for the month of October. but last week’s game saw the biggest del with Fred Warner and his ankle injury. Our interior defensive loine has been wiped out, but really, Hargrave has shown little, but we also lost Givens, Elliott ,and Kalia Davis. LBs are without Dre Greenlaw of course, Winters is dinged up, as is Flannigan Fowles.

This is a very bad time to have TWO divisional games in the span of 5 days. Winning both may be a bridge too far, but really, our biggest issues this young season have been the special teams fuckups.

Those that didn’t practice include:

WR Chris Conley (oblique)
WR Jacob Cowing (shoulder)
LB Demetrius Flannigan-Fowles (calf)
DE Yetur Gross-Matos (knee)
TE George Kittle (ribs)
LB Fred Warner (ankle)

Limited were:

DT Jordan Elliott (knee)
DT Kevin Givens (triceps)
S Talanoa Hufanga (ankle)
LB Dee Winters (ankle)
CB Isaac Yiadom (thigh)

Full practice guys were:

DT Kalia Davis (knee)
FB Kyle Juszczyk (shoulder)
LT Trent Williams (not injury related – resting player)

The good news is we have another home game. The bad news? Well, AZ seems to be a huge thorn in our side. They seem to match up well against us, but maybe I’m still in shock from the game I saw in 2021 when the Cards rolled us 31-17. Thing it, the Niners are riding a 4-game winning streak and none of them were close.

AZ is 24th in yards allowed, and 28th in point given up. Glaringly, 28th in run defense. Something we just might want to stress. The one thing AZ does well is run the ball. As I saw in 2021 when James Connor ran down our throats repeatedly. He and Kyler Murray lead the way with the 5th best rushing attack.

The one thing we haven’t faced this season IS a mobile QB like Murray. Fucking Sam Darnold got the better of us on some scrambles, so the impetus will be once again to get pressure on Murray and keep him contained. And yeah, AZ is 1-3, but they’ve had a pretty tough schedule to start the season. Their losses are to Deetroit, Buffalo, and the surprising Washington Generals. Their lone win was a crushing of the Lambs.

Play clean and we should be fine. But we haven’t had anything resembling a clean game this year. Too many pre-snap penalties, too many missed assignments on the back end of the defense, and too much porous run defense.

Playing the Patsies sure makes our defensive numbers look better, but this game will be a big test to get our guys in the right places. If special teams becomes an issue again, this team will be wasting their talent to no avail. Losing our first 2 division games would be a very bad precedent to boot.

Hey, at least the Niners did it. The hapless Giants couldn’t quite seal the deal and finished up the season 80-82. Disappointing enough for Greggie Johnson to fire Farhan Zaidi, and promote Buster Posey to President of Baseball Operations. I’m a little shocked, but the real question is, will the owners let Buster spend money? Or will this be another exercise in pinching pennies while the real estate around the stadium flourishes. And whither MoTel? Will he get the axe? I’d generally say yes, but this is no ordinary organization.

But that’s baseball.

The 49ers returned to their home field yesterday, and sort of laid to rest issues with the team and its fortunes. At least we put away a shitty team. Unlike Dallas, who struggled mightily to beat the woeful New York Giants. Or Philly, who got their ass handed to them by the Bay Bucs. Weird start to the season to say the least when you see Washington, Seattle, Minnesota, and Tampa Bay as the early NFC division leaders. I would have picked none of these teams to be in 1st at the quarter pole.

But yeah, too many pre-snap penalties. 2 TDs called back. A huge special teams fuckup. A fairly stupid INT. And the obligatory additions to the injury list.

The good news? Mason continues to run like a man on fire. Purdy had a solid day (minus the pick) hitting Deebo, Aiyuk, and Jennings on deep balls, and throwing a perfect jump-ball to Kittle in the back corner of the end zone. The pass pro was a little weak, as Purdy did a lot of scrambling, but it served him well getting a couple key 3rd down conversions.

The defense put a lot of pressure on Jacoby (I’ve been everywhere, man) Brissett and we stuffed NE’s run game. But even early on, their first drive saw a lot of early 3rd down conversions until they stupidly went for it on 4th down. Add in the softy defense to close the half, this allowing a 63 yard (!!!) FG before swinging the comeback door open and fumbling the 2nd half kickoff, and the rout that was to be was not to be yet. But the play to get the whole thing going was the electrifying 45 yard pick 6 by Fred Warner.

The D did show different looks and did a nice job of stopping the Pats, but they are the Pats. Basically the Jets with a younger QB. My hope is Robert Saleh gets canned and we get him back. This team needs to healthy up. Not sure what the deal is with Warner and his ankle. Elliott as well. I’ll update as the news comes out.

Big game. Bigger than it should be. The hapless Patriots, without Brady OR Belichick fly across the country to face the injury-riddled and question-filled 49ers team reeeling from a couple really ugly losses. Yeah, it’s early, but the faster we right the ship, the faster we have to stop worrying abour WC scenarios and who needs to do what to get us where.

The Pats bring Jacoby Brissett and the 32nd ranked passing game to Levis. They can run, so there’s that, but come on. If we don’t crush these guys, there IS a problem.

Per David Lombardi, the 49ers are 26th in defensive pressures on QB dropbacks. 26th for this $ billion D line. One that was just set back by Javon Hargrave’s season-ending triceps injury. But really, what are we missing? His numbers last year were a pretty big drop from his last year with the Eagles.

And Leonard Floyd? 1 sack in 3 games? Bosa’s 2 in 3? Where are these guys? It sure looks like everyone knows that we are doing nothing to disguise our intent. We run our base 4 wide 9 defense and it isn’t fooling anyone. We are getting run on, and we are getting passed on. We don’t stop the short passing game, and we have given up a lot of big plays. Last year it was Chase Young who came in and underwhelmed.

Yeah, special teams has reared its ugly head in these losses, but the overarching problem IS the defense. This scheme put NO pressure on the QBs we’ve faced. And we haven’t even faced a mobile guy yet. Fucking Darnold had over 40 yards rushing against us. Stafford was sacked a few times, but other than that suffered little pressure.

This team gives up 3rd downs at a better than 50% (53%) clip. Good enough for 30th in the NFL. I feel like I’m pissing in the wind here regarding our defense. This scheme is soft and provides little resistance to any NFL QB.

Gone are the days of the max pressure DeMeco Ryans. Or even Robert Saleh and his sideline histrionics. We are wasting the abilities of our linebackers. They simply play 10-15 yards off the line and sit in a soft zone most of the time. When we DO blitz, it is easily snuffed out as we so rarely line up more than 4 on the line. Very little stunting.

The problem there is that our opponents seem to easily get to our 2nd level on runs and since the LBs are back, it’s usually 8 yards before any contact. Throwing in front of the zone is a simple task, and even still, guys get deep as there has been a lot of miscommunication on the back end. Odum being a big issue.

I’d hate to lump us in with Dallas but we are very close to being the most overrated defense in the NFL. The Cowboys struggled to beat the Giants, ffs. We can’t stop a thing.

Like I said, a win would go a long way to helping the cause, but really this shouldn’t even be hard. The only ones stopping us is ourselves.

The thing I really hate about football is these losses leave that bitter taste in your mouth for a week. Coming off that fucked up Minnehaha game, it’s now two weeks. But hey, last year we had a 3 game losing streak that we overcame. That streak was predicated by injuries, questionable play calling, spotty protection, and shakey defense. You know. Same-old same-old.

So, yeah they are at home this weekend. No, on one is coming back from injury. Well, at least as far as I know. And funny thing, the banged-up offense was not the problem.

So, I guess the best idea is to simply learn from this if possible. Move on. We have a good patsy in the Patriots so this shouldn’t be too hard, but on any Sunday and all that. Still, it WOULD be panic time should the 49ers lose to the Pats at home and start out 1-3.

Sick and tired of stating the obvious about this team. They need to scheme better on defense and actually get this D line involved in the games. Not sure how we turned Leonard Floyd into a paper weight but he has done little to nothing in 3 games.

Shanny needs to figure out how to score from the 2. We have kicked way too many FGs in close. Special teams? Punt every fucking ball OB. Kick every kickoff out of the end zone. Fucking pay attention to the fake punt.

Fucking Aiyuk should be benched, but that would lead to Ronnie fucking Bell. Get Cowing and Conley out there.

I’d have to go back to 1977 to come up with a game that was blown so spectacularly. Or even the 1957 Western Conference playoff game. Or those Super Bowls. Or NFC Championship games. Or worst ever. This one was special because there was only a select few ways to actually cough that one up.

And of course we did.

This should result in some major changes to the coaching staff as special teams and the defense were severely lacking today. Shanahan for his part called one of his better games. I didn’t like the run on the goal line, it should have been the Juice push, but the rest was enough to win.

And fuck Ronnie Bell. Cut his ass tomorrow. Moody is just flat not trustable. Control the game for 59 minutes and 59 seconds. And lose.

Sigh.

Well, i guess the good news is we are playing in Levi’s South but holy shit, the Niners have lost 3 of their top offensive weapons, and their 4th is still being slowed down by the bag he was waiting to get.

Kittle is the latest to hit the injury wire so on’;’y Aiyuk is gonna play out of the big 4 weapons. Jennings should be able to pick up some slack, and I really hope they get Cowing in there, and yeah Mason is doing fine.

Just got to have better defense. Bosa is knicked up as well, but we do get Hufanga back. Got to get these easier games in the Rams and Pats as we have AZ, Seattle, KC, and a very angry Cowboys team coming.