Forty Niners Forever

Maybe ‘shootout’ wasn’t the best choice of words for the last thread but our 1st round pick Ricky Pearsall has returned to practice. Granted, with the signing of BA and the emergence of Jauan Jennings, it’s gonna be a real crowded WR room these days. He’s gonna need a couple weeks, but still, with these trades starting to ramp up, it might make sense to offload someone. I’d hate to lose either BA or Deebo, so that leaves Jennings to get an offensive lineman or safety from Pittsburgh. The teams has made some bold moves before in getting CMC and Chase Young in recent years.

I don’t know. I’m really confused about this team and its direction. They are 2-3 plays from being 5-1. But also a couple more plays from being 2-4. The defense seems hell-bent on bending and breaking. Special teams are a disaster. We’ve lost 2 kickers in 5 days because they are the last line of defense on kickoff returns.

At least last week the defense played with some passion. And the rookies Green and Mustapha stepped up. But still, the 3rd down conversion against is atrocious. We gave up a kickoff return for a TD. Wishnowski’s punts aren’t very deep or effective. And FGs are gonna be an adventure with being forced to find our third kicker in a week.

Irregardless of the offense and their struggles to reach the end zone. Gone are the imaginative plays and different schemes to get the ball in the end zone. Yeah, not having CMC makes it harder, but we were scoring before we had him. This team surte looks like it thinks it can run a basic offense and defense and our opponents are supposed to fall over and succumb.

This team really needs to find its mojo and get on a roll. How they do that remains to be seen.

I’ll say this, the game against KC means MUCH more to us than it does them. They are 5-0 riding their Super Bowl high. We are in a dogfight to gain relevancy. They are playing a non-conference game on the road. We are trying to stay atop our struggling division. KC has skated through a few sketchy wins, just as we have gagged up a couple tough losses.

Any given Sunday and all that. We will see.

OK, the Santa Clara corrall. Uh, the Milpitas mudflats??? Here we go.

We’re Number 1! In the NFC West. At 3-3. Meanwhile Green Bay is in last place in the NFC North at 4-2. Weird year. Green Bay did their part in beating the Cards. Something we should have done, but that was then. This is . . .

Now. Now? We have the perennial thorn in our pride Kansas City Swifties coming to town this weekend. Yes, just the chef’s kiss of extra bullshit with the Taylor Swift contingent coming to the Shoot Out at the Great America Parking Lot! KC has been a mixed bag of weirdness and struggles themselves, and have had some injury woes to boot, but for their issues, they’ve managed to right the ship instead of capsizing like we have. They are 5-0 and coming off their bye week. We are 3-3 coming off our mini-bye weeklet.

I will give the defense a little credit as the D line did pressure and rattle Geno (I’m not really Alex) Smith into 2 easy interceptions. A little credit. The pressure was pretty much all on the shoulders of Nick Bosa as the bookend guy on the other side, Leonard Floyd, is playing like door stop. Sorensen is doing his best George Seifert in rotating the interior guys to keep them fresh. Which helped Sam Okuayinonu get pressure late in the game. A nice wrinkle, and they have been moving Bosa around and stunting. A little.

Still and all, 358 yards, and 9/19 on 3rd/4th downs is abysmal. Believe it or not, Sorensen ratcheted DOWN the blitzing last Thursday. If not for the picks, it could have turned out much different. Problem is, teams KNOW they can throw short quick passes against our soft zone. And they do. Unfortunately, we can’t stop the deep pass as well, and run defense is an issue, so as I’ve said before, the defense is solely predicated on perfection as every level, and that is hard to come by for 60 minutes. Especially against the weirdly sputtering and mistake-laden KC Mahomies.

KC barely beat the Bengals and Chargers along with the Falcons, Ravens and Saints. I don’t know. ‘Barely winning’ sure beats blowing 4th quarter leads.

And I’m sure, Sorensen is already getting the cold sweats thinking about how soft he’s gonna play KC since Mahomes usually does well against the blitz.

Barring a wholesale change in defensive philosophy, I don’t see us winning this game. I’m fine with 4-4 at the break, though. This team needs a defensive identity other than Mr. Softee.

We took care of business. Now it’s time for Jordan Love and the Packers to take care of the Cards on temperate tundra. Wouldn’t be surprised to see AZ take a dump after their emotional win last week. GB is currently about to be in last place at 3-2 as the Bears are beating the shit out of the god-awful Jaguars. So this is a big game for Green Bay to keep pace with the 5-0 Vikes, the 3-1 Lions, and the 4-2 Bears.

Speaking of good news, here’s a crazy stat. As of the conclusion of the Seattle game, the 49ers played 6 games in 31 days. In the next 30 days they play 2. So this is a good time to healthy up and get to work to fix the myriad problems. Franky, 1-1 in those 2 games is the likely outcome. I don’t really think we will take KC, even at home, given they are coming off their bye and Andy Reid is 23-3 coming off the bye or some shit. We are still tripping over our dicks on defense. Then again, any given Sunday and all that. I just don’t understand how and why this team seems hell-bent on playing the softest coverage and fielding the worst special teams unit in the league. Six weeks in and we haven’t done anything to address these issues.

Every week we get teams into 3rd and long situations, and every week we play a soft zone and give up the 3rd downs. 3rd and 4th downs, teams convert 45.3% of these situations. 6 games into the season and how have we adjusted? We haven’t. 3rd and long is has got to be flat terrible. Looking at last week, Seattle converted SIX 3rd downs longer than 5 yards including two 3rd and 10s and a 3rd and 12. Seattle was 9/19 on 3rd and 4th down. We are fairly lucky to win that game. The defense did get the turnovers, but these long drives we give up over and over are gonna kill us against good teams. Even shitty ones like LA.

Good lord. The good news is the 49er ground out a win amid yet another 2nd half that saw all kinds of fuckups. Self-induced and ref related. Our defensive 3rd/4th down stoppage rate continues to be horrible at 9/19 yesterday. Our DC just is playing scared. He flat refuses to bring pressure on obvious passing plays. 2nd and 23? Hmmm. Bring pressure? Nope. Instead we lay back and give up a 15 yard screen pass. A later 3rd and 8 saw Geno Smith hit a 37 yard bomb.

Looking at the play-by-play of Pro-football-reference and you see 6 3rd/4th down conversions of 5 yards or more, 3 of those 3rd/4th and 10 or more.

This is untenable. Sorry to repeat this, but I don’t hear anyone talking about this. You simply can’t expect EVERY player to play EVERY down perfectly. It can work at times, but as we have seen over and over this season, we aren’t consistently stopping short passes, long passes, or the run game. Walker is a good back and we stopped him, but Geno was winging the ball al over the place. Yeah, we got a little pressure, and Geno helped by overthrowing his first pick, and Renardo Green made a great play on his late TD to seal the game, but still and all we gave up 300+ yards in the air and got ONE sack on 52 passing attempts.

But the point is, we had a 20 point lead on the Kittle TD in the 3rd quarter and proceeded to stop playing yet again. The TD giddiness lasted all of 30 seconds as special teams reared its warty head as we gave up a KO return. A quick drive-killing holding call leads to a 13 play 77 yard driveby Seattle. Yay defense! Don’t give up the big play! 23-17 and our 2nd half el-foldo looks to be nipping at our heels.

Someone somewhere in the building HAS to tell Sorensen and Staley that the key to stopping a pasing game is to pressure the QB. Bosa is the only guy consistently getting pressure. Leonard Floyd is a bigger nothingburger than Chase Young was last year. He’s gone from a 10-sack guy to a sackless bystander. IS it scheme?

Point being, Geno Smith is no Patrick Mahomes yet Seattle ate us alive on 3rd and 4th down. KC is beaten and battered, but how can we win playing this way?

The team better use this mini-break on dialing up pressure and getting a fucking handle on special teams.

Here we are at the crossroads. A fairly important junction in this season. This was supposed to be the easier part of the schedule, but we have let two games, two division games, slip from the jaws of victory into the abyss of doom.

Lose this game and go 2-4 with the Chiefs coming to town would be kinda sucky and likely lead to a 2-5 record and last place. Win the game and we are (for at least 3 days) in 1st place. With a little cushion to soften the KC game outcome.

Like last week I thought we should be able to win pretty easily. We are getting 3.5 on the road. In SEATTLE! Vegas has faith in us. I wish I had faith in us.

Players gotta play. At some point these guys have to get fired up and finish a game.

We win 27-17? Make it so.

The good news? We get a game real quick to try and erase the bad taste of this last one.

The bad news? We are going to Seattle banged up and licking our wounds from the last game.

Mooney Ward is questionable. You know, the guy who regularly shuts down DK Metcalf. But the rest of the guys available, short of our kicker, are off the list. including George Kittle and Fred Warner.

But Elliott is out, Hufanga as well, and Flannigan-Fowles didn’t practice as well.

So, this doesn’t seem to bode well for the Red and Gold.

Given the malaise the team is playing with, you’d think going to Seattle facing a team on top of them might motivate them to play a full game.

Then again, who knows? Both the Ram game and AZ game, the team seemed to simply mail it in late and poof, game over, man. it’s easy to pick these losses apart, and trust me, we all saw the writing on the wall as the team hosed itself over and over.

Is it the coaches? The players? The play calling? The schemes they run? The lack of in-game adjustments? Special teams failures? Red zone fuckups? Sun spots?

Sure. At various times all of these are true. But at some point, the guys on the field need to make plays. Fred Warner is damn near DPOY based on 5 game this season, but where is Bosa? Floyd? Winters? Ward? These guys are out there going through the motions it looks like. This is no way to get the the Super Bowl. Is shanahan losing the team?

A desultory loss here could very well spell the end of this run. If they can’t pull this one out, it could very well signal the demise of Kyle Shanahan as the driving force behind this team. I don’t foresee Shanahan getting fired if we lose, but we are staring at 2-5 with the non-hung-over 5-0 Super Bowl champion Chiefs coming, then the pissed off Cowboys come to town. A team more beat-up than us. Then mercifully the bye week.

This was supposed to be the easy part of our schedule.

Meanwhile. I’ll be sittin’ on the dock of the Santa Clara mud flats.

Well, like I mused a couple weeks ago, the Jets fired Robert Saleh. Are we in panic mode yet with our defense? I think y’all know what I think. And that is a resounding YES!!! I think the players would be down with it as well. Those Saleh defenses were much more aggressive and much more disruptive than the lay back and wait for offense to get a rolling head start before trying to tackle anyone.

We may not be in dire straights yet, but a loss this Thursday would put us at 0-3, and in last place in the division. Or, we could be in 1st with a win. Yeah, it’s still early, but this defense isn’t getting better. It is just not in position on any given play. Yeah, Greenlaw being out has hurt. But our safety play has been awful. Too many TE drags and screens go for 15 yard chunks. The 3rd down success rate is through the roof. Our corners are doing OK but with little pressure, they can’t cover for 5-6 seconds on a given pass play.

We do so little blitzing that teams pick them up with ease. The 2 biggest plays were the 4th and 5 AZ faced down 23-21, and the 1st and 10 as the Niners were trying to get into FG (uhhhhhh) range after falling behind 24-23. We sent pressure, and Murray floated a duck out to the flat that Marvin Harrison caught for a 1st down, Purdy of course was pressured and got hit before he could get his pass off to kittle in the flat. Int. Game over.

I would make the switch NOW just to be able to adjust to the new defense faster. No sense waiting around.

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)