Forty Niners Forever

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!

Well, the consensus was the Bears defenese was pretty good. But having just fired Everflub (whatevs), the Bears were reeling pretty bad. I was very surprised that the Bears were hell-bent on throwing the ball so much, as our run defense was as stiff as a pre-Cialis noodle. Instead, they sputtered in their passing game while we actually had an effective pass rush. Gross-Matoss had 3 sacks by himself and Leonard Floyd chipped in with 2 of his own.

Purdy on the other hand looked like Cool Hand Luke. He had a perfect rating in the 1st half and the forgotten TE had a huge day going 6 catches for 151. Our new #1 WR Jauan Jennings went 7 for 90 and 2 TDs. Pearsall and Deebo are pretty much providing nothing, but Purdy was 20-25, 325, and 2 TDs with no picks.

Unfortunately, Isaac Guerendo, who was having a great game with 78 yards on the ground and 50 in the air, sprained his foot and is day-to-day. But our 5th string guy, Patrick Taylor managed to score a TD himself in this rarity of a laugher.

There WAS a pretty important turning point in this game however. With the Niners having given up a 2nd half opening 10:00 minute drive to close the score to 24-6 (missed the 2 pt convo), the Niners promptly committed a penalty and went 3-and-out. Chicago resumed their march on our defense, going 35 yards to our 30. Caleb Williams then tried to hold on to a throw, but instead threw it backwards, and it was ruled a backward pass recovered by the Niners.

Atypical of the scared Shanny play calling, Shanny took a shot (gasp!) downfield and hit Jennings for a 40 yard strike to set up our 4th TD to make the score 31-6 instead of 24-13. He even went for it on 4th down and converted it!

The rest was garbage time, but Guerendo still managed to get hurt. Shanahan needs to learn how to protect his resources. I thought he was untill they showed Guerendo waking off the field.

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PS. Shout out to Dave Parker, Dave Stewart, and Dick Allen. Bad asses all. They all played when standing in the box took a lot courage and you were never quite sure when a guy like Stew would decide to play a little chin music. Parker was simply a tough mofo who took no prisoners and played the game right. His all-star game throw is forever etched in my memory. Dick Allen was little before my time, I do remember his last few seasons with the Phillies though, but he was as feared a hitter as there was in the league during his career.

Until otherwise noted, this team is playing out the string. Will they respond? Can they respond? I still think Shanny’s head is in the nooose should the team lay down like dogs and lose to the Bears, among others.

The team appears to be all-in still with Shanahan so that’s something, despite Kittle’s questioning why he was only targeted twice last week. Curious to say the least. Only Jennings is putting up numbers. Deebo is really disappointing as he has done nothing before or after the injuries. And wer are back to Guerrendo as our lead back.

The defense? Fuck it. They appear to be happy with simply giving up 350-400 per game and not pressuring anyone. Weeeeeeee! Why change what is broken? Maybe we’ll miss a few more FGs to boot.

I tell ya, it’s a tough time for Bay Area sports. The 49ers are a walking disaster as they trip and fall down the laundry chute to oblivion. Speaking of laundry, our injury report is a laundry list of starters. The good news is Lenoir, Hufanga, and Greenlaw are set to return, and our D line gets Okuayinou and Elliott back. Lose to the Bears though, and losing out is a real possibility. Time for Purdy to have a game.

The Giants are calmly sitting on Buster’s thumbs as nothing is happening in the free agent market for them. The Giants brass famously said that they need to cut payroll. Cut payroll from a team that has been out of the playoffs 7 of the last 8 seasons? That’s encouraging. Not.

The Warriors, who came out of the gate looking like a well-balanced team that was realy to hit the upper echelon of the NBA again, was waylaid by the injury to De’Anthony Menton, nagging injuries to Steph and Dray, and a suddenly inconsistent bench. Buddy Hield was looking outstanding early, but lost his shot, and Brandin Podziemski has totally lost his 3 point touch. Wiggs and Kuminga are the picture of on-again/off-again players.

If we could transplant GP IIs heart into those guys, we’d be World Champs 3 more times.

Then again, if the Niner defense had GP II’s heart, THEY’D be World Champs 3 more times.

So, there you have it. The Bay Area sports blues.