San Francisco 49ers Forever

CMC’s fumble. Trent Williams hold. False starts. Missed XP. Muffed punt. The screen that lost 8 yards on 1st down. Greenlaw going down. Kittle’s disappearance. Iffy blocking schemes. And finally the playoff OT rule no one seemed to know about except for KC.

We made too many mistakes. The OT deal is inexcusable though. Shanny inevitably trips over his dick.

Main issue with this team are pretty much the same as the last couple seasons. No O line depth.  Purdy was under fire most of the night. and the braintrust doesn’t pay enough attention to it. Even with Trent Williams coming back.

That and Shanahan not going to the ground more in the 3rd quarter.

The good news is this team is still young and under the paltry rookie contract for Purdy. We should be good to great for a couple more years.

But Wilks has to go. The defense did pretty well last night, but the 3rd and 4th down failures were many and varied. He was not nearly aggressive enough.

The prognosticators have prognosticated, the talking heads have talked, the nattering nabobs have nattered. All that is left is the 14 hour pre-game show, and the actual game. Strange that Vegas has us as the favorites (-2) when everyone under the sun, moon, and stars is picking KC.

I really thought the Green Bay game was gonna be the toughest of these playoffs once the Ravens went down. And I still feel the same. KC’s defense is aggressive and they pressure. But Brock Purdy has played very well under pressure this season. KC does not defend the run very well, and their linebackers are not good in coverage. The 49ers can exploit that all evening. Plays over the middle are our bread-and-butter, so I think Kittle has a big night.

KC’s O line is a bit leaky, so the hope is the D line can get pressure right off the bat. But my biggest issue is Steve Wilks and his passive defensive game plan. Most games see the LBs 6-8 yards deep and the corners playing back. The 49ers CANNOT let KC get the jump early and put the Niners in the hole. It may very well happen, but if it is because we are playing soft, it’ll piss me off no end.

Special teams? Eeeep. Just tell Moody to kick everything out of the end zone. Our K/P coverage is a crapshoot. Let’s not leave it up to them.

31-20 Niners. # SIX!!!!!

Pretty cool. The AP wire named CMC Offensive Player of the Year, beating out Tyreek Hill among (Purdy, Lamar Jackson) others, and Patrick Willis, one of my favorite players of all time was inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame.

I’m a little shocked because his career wasn’t very long and was sidelined by injury, but when he was on the field, he dominated. Very very happy for him. There’s a video out there of BY breaking the news to Willis that is just awesome.
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In other news, in addition to the field shenanigans, the 49ers got an early wake-up call in their hotel, with a fire alarm going off at 6:03 am yesterday. Thing is, they wake-up call is at 6:10, so it was 7 minutes early, but it is yet again another stupid sidelight to the supposed tight ship that Jolly Roger purports to run. The field situation is a joke, as the league can’t get a suitable practice field ready and available for one of the teams in the biggest game of the year? Total joke.

Remember last year’s Super Bowl in Arizona? Players were slipping and sliding all over the place? George Toma, our “sodfather”, said the field was overwatered and not left out to dry long enough, leading to the sloppy conditions. Once again, there’s a issue with a field on the biggest game of the year.

Neither are huge deals, but then again, it is a terrible look for Goodie Goodell, the $86 million man, to have these amatuer-hour things happening on his watch.

This’ll be used as fodder by Shanahan, so this will hopefully give the team a little more fire in their collective souls to dismantle the chiefs.
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Huge congrats to Patrick Willis. I am so happy for him. Would love to see NaVorro Bowman go in next.

The was an issue with the practice field the Niners are using this week, and then there wasn’t. Apparently the practice facility the Niners are using is an artificial turf field with a grass field installed on top of it at the UNLV campus. They are supposed to use a barrier of some kind, but they didn’t. Meanwhile, the Chiefs get the Raiders gleaming new training facility in Henderson. The players were complaining about it so naturally Jolly Roger held a ’press conference’ (invite only) to talk shit about the 49ers and that the field was fine.

Given that a switch in fields at this point would be a logistical nightmare for the team and the league, the 49ers decided to suck it up and avoid embarrassing the shit out of the league for not prepping a proper field for its fucking grand overblown orgy of corporate greed, gambling, and oh yeah, football.

So, that was kinda odd. But did you guys catch Shanahan last night talking to our ex-fullback Michael Robinson? I’ll post it if I can find it, but it sure looks and sounds like Shanny had a few.

Good on him. Any way to get the guy to lighten up is good in my book.

Got to say, I’m very baffled by the defensive effort in these two playoff games. No one setting the edge. Not playing through the whistle. Missing tackles. The clips are there for all to see of Chase Young barely trying on the Jameson Williams 42 yard TD run. Green Bay had WRs blocking Young and washing him out repeatedly. Wide receivers! Very disappointing that Young isn’t playing for a contract at the least. He should be going balls-to-the wall at this point.

That being said, the onus next week is for Steve Wilks to get his guys in the right places. I really do NOT want to see yet another game start with our linebackers playing so deep. So many games this year seem to start with the opposing teams simply marching down the field and getting points. It is a testament to the red zone defense that we held GB to two opening drive field goals. Pittsburgh scored on their opening drive, Deetroit got 2 TDs on their opening drives, the Rams did as well off the top of my head.

Wilks seems to wait until the base defense has been beaten soundly to even start throwing stunts out there. Let alone blitz. Funny thing is, the blitzes usually work. The 3rd down bugaboo also came back to bite these guys HARD. 3rd and 18? We go soft and the Lions runs a screen toss that gets 20 yards. 14 after the catch. 3rd and 12? 8 yard pass over the middle that we don’t stop. 3rd and 8? Another Their success early led to 24 points. The only reason they didn’t go up 28-7 was because they ran out of time.

This shit won’t fly come next Sunday.

If the 49ers win the Super bowl, I’m gonna have to follow my mom’s suit and get a ladybug tattoo. Hard to make a ladybug look bad-ass, but why not? Maybe something like this:

After Brandon Aiyuks’s good fortune proclamation after seeing a ladybug land on his shoe before the NFCCG, 49ers cheerleaders saw numerous ladybugs on the sidelines and crawling on the NFC Championship Game padding on the goal post and in various other places before, during, and after the game. 

Might as well run with it. The quiet before the week of madness. Not much to say, but I hope the dfense comes out aggressive, and the 49ers force the action with a dominating run game. Keeping Mahomes off the field is the best way to slow down KC.

The wait is interminable though.

And it sure aged me. I guess we can at least say that the team as currently constituted can make a comeback. The Green Bay game was a cake-walk compared to yesterday’s Jeckyll/Hyde performance.

It started out bad and and got worse. The vaunted 49ers run defense was gashed often for 10-12 yard gains. Jared Goff was pretty much perfect through the first half. The Niners were missing tackles, giving up huge 3rd down plays, and basically offfering no resistance to the Deetroit Lions. On offense, Brock Purdy looked scared and skittish as he missed checkdowns and threw a pick. He did engineer a couple good drives, one which resulted in a missed FG, the other a TD.

24-7 at the half.

I was pretty bummed, but my only consolation was the fact we got the 2nd half kickoff. If we could do something with that, we could try to shift the mo. And whatever Shanahan said at half time, that should be bottled up and saved for future generations. Because nothing could really prepare the world for what happened. Purdy led a decent drive with some nice passes to Deebo and some dolid runs by CMC but the drive stalled and Moody hit the 42 yarder.

Then, shit got weird. Dan Gamble Campbell made a pretty monstrous error (in my book anyway) ignoring the 41 yard field goal and the 3-score lead and instead going for a 4th down and 2 call. More amazing is he didn’t run for it! Detroit was running through our line like shit through a goose and Goff threw a duck to Josh Reynolds that he dropped. The crowd erupted. They had been hoping against hope for something to cheer about.

Brandon Aiyuk stepped in to make the circus catch of all circus catches as what could have been a pick instead resulted in a 51 yard completion to the Lions 4 off of the aptly named Kindle Vondor. Cue the 3rd down TD to BA. 24-17 Deetroits.

First play on the ensuing drive? FUMBLE by Jahmyr Gibbs. Purdy led that drive with a 21 yard scramble to set up CMC’s 1 yard TD. Tie game!

The D got into the act, forcing a 3 and out, which led to a long frive that led to a Moody FG, Niners up 27-24. Deetroit finally got rolling in the 2nd half and got to the SF 30. Once again, Dan Staley, uh Campbell eschewed the tie, instead going for it again on 4th and 3. Again he passed. Again he failed.

Cue the game-sealing drive with CMC running, Purdy passing, and Elijah finishing off the scoring (after CMC landed on his head) with a 1 yard plunge. 34-24. Detroit got a meaningless TD late, and there it was. An earned trip to Super Bowl LVIII.

Maybe this finally exorcises the demons of playoffs past for Shanahan. If so, it sure help to have Deebo, CMC, Aiyuk, and Kittle. They all played exceptionally and the non-existent defense decided to wake up and stop the Lions. What is nuts in the 2 sacks that Bosa got were both easily overcome by Deetroit in the 1st half.

Surprisingly this was a fairly penalty-free game. There were only 5 called, and it was a refreshing change. On a side note, the last time the Lions earned their way to a championship game, (in 1957 at Kezar!!!) they beat the 49ers 27-24. After the 49ers led 24-7 at the half. Deja vu all over again.

A tough gritty with, with kudos to Dan Campbell for turning down 6 points.

Need to win this. And one more. That is all.

Well, according to the man himself, Deebo is ready to go with no restrictions. “Right when I figured out it wasn’t the same thing as the Browns game, it was kind of a relief because I know it wasn’t a fracture. It was just like a deep bruise or whatever. But I’m talking about timeless hours in here, day in and day out, just to get where we at right now.”

When asked if there might be a need to protect himself on Sunday against the Lions, Deebo said “I ain’t protecting nothing”.

I’d still avoid the runs up the middle, and let him ease himself into the action, but it sounds like balls to the wall.

Bring it!!!

Snappy-Khaki is back!! Jim Harbaugh has run from the issues that will dog the Michigan Wolverines college football program for the next few years, up to stripping their newly minted national championship? Who knows, but he’s following the Pete Carroll path of doing whatever it takes to win, including ignoring the rules, to get that chip, and then cashing in as an NFL coach.

Not that the NCAA is any paragon of virtue. They are the biggest greed-heads in the land as they lay waste to tradition and let teams jump to the wealthiest conferences. But that’s a different thread.

We are here to discuss the NFC Championship Game. A game that the 49ers have had by far the most appearances of all the NFC teams at 19. Unfortunately, our record is 7-11. The Cowboys on the other hand have 14 appearances but are 8-6.

But that is that. Deetroit comes into the game with a coach that has a take-no-prisoners approach, while Kyle Shanahan is aggressively cautious. This bothers me because our philosophy appears to be bend-and-not-break on defense. Against a guy like Jared Goff that is a bad strategy. He is always good for some wayward throws, but those wayward throws become more prevalent when he is under pressure and seeing ghosts.

GET ON HIS ASS EARLY!!!

The idea of keeping the check-downs in front of you is OK if you are up by 3 scores in the 4th quarter. But to start out the game in a prevent-style defense is asking for trouble. As we have seen over and over this season, screens and dump-offs kill us when the LBs are playing a mid-zone defense. One missed tackle and it is a 14 yard gain. We saw this all over the Green Bay game. And while we did stop them in the red zone just enough, to rely on that over and over is bad football. We need to generate 3-and outs on their side of the field.

Offensively, we ARE gonna come out throwing. Deetroit’s CBs are about the worst in the league, so I see a LOT of blitzing on the part of Dan Campbell. He isn’t going to allow Purdy to throw deep unless we beef up the pass protection. I noticed last week that we had Juice and Kittle in the backfield on a few plays, and that would seem to be a great idea on plays to Aiyuk deep.

They have a good run D so we have to gear up to get CMC some running lanes,. But for good or ill, this game will weigh heavily on how well Purdy plays. Protect him and we should be fine.