Forty Niners Forever

For a team that had one of the top defenses in the league last year, the 49ers front office isn’t sitting on their hands. Gone is Steve Wilks. Replaced by Nick Sorensen and Brandon Staley. Gone are Javon Kinlaw, Clelin Ferrell, Arik Armstead, and Isaiah Oliver.

The recent signings are OL Ben Barch, DE Leonard Floyd, DE Yetur Gross-Matos, DT Jordan Elliott, and LB Eric Kendricks.

Kyle Juicechick restructured his deal to get back $1.8 mill in cap space, George Odum, Colton McKivitz, and Brandon Allen signed deals, and Jauan Jennings was tendered a one-year deal. So the Niners have first refusal rights to sign him should he get an offer.

All in all, I think the Niners did themselves well. Kinlaw and AA have been injury-prone and inconsistent. Although AA was a stalwart for a long time on the D line. Darnols is Darnold. We weren’t gonna keep him at $10 mill per. Floyd and Kendricks are bona fide studs and should fit right in with the reconstituted defense.

As usual I would like to see more action on the O line. The draft is coming, and there is still time to make moves.

Free agency is coming, and with it a LOT of QB moves. Some have already happened. Jac Mones is now a Jag. He was traded for a 6th round pick by the Pats!

Baker Mayfield is staying with the Bucs.

Really thought the Raiders would go hard after Russell Wilson, but he’s a Steeler now. Real curious to see how that works out. Real curious to see what the Raiders do at QB as well what with Jimmy being unceremoniously cut. Brilliant work by the Raiders front office BTW!!! Trade the better QB, get a lesser QB, keep the shitty coach, fire the shitty coach halfway thru the season, and can the lesser QB. If you didn’t see that coming, you must work for Prince Valiant.

The big deal that will determine a lot is Kirk Cousins. He of the 35 year old snapped achilles. He’s more than likely staying in Minn as he’s a $29 million cap hit if he’s cut/traded. He was playing well when he got hurt, but he has been the master of getting in to the playoffs, but nowhere once there. He has till Wednesday to make the call. Atlanta is the likely spot if he does move.

Speaking of Mac Jones, his compadre in that 2021 draft, Justin Fields, is on the skids in Chi-town and looks to play somewhere else. The Giants? They are off Danny Dimes as he’s throwing more bricks than coins these days and he’s hurt for at least a month of the 2024 season. But he’s a $48 million cap hit either way. Ouch.

Got to wonder if the Bears are looking to Sourdough Sam Darnold to be their bridge QB if they draft Caleb Williams. The Redskins and Pats look to draft Qbs at 2 and 3, so Darnold might get interest from a few teams to be a Steve DeBerg.

The 49ers did announce they signed Brandon Allen. Woo hoo. With all those picks, we’ll likely take another flier on a QB late in the draft if Darnold gets a shot to start somewhere.

And I’m waiting with baited breath to see if the Cowboys throw a dump truck full of money at Dak Prescott (ihopeihopeihope). Dak isn’t the sole reason for the Cowboys playoff failures, but he’s a pretty big part of it. Granted, the biggest issue in Dallas is the culture of instant gratification and headline-grabbing that starts from the rotted head down to the players. Micah Parsons spent the whole season complaining about being held, being the best defender in the NFL, about the Cowboys being the best defense in the NFL, about Dak not getting respect, and too many other things to list. And this is after playing the 49ers and getting 0.5 tackles while giving up 42 points. He disappears in the big games, and makes hay against the cannon-fodder that is the Giants and Redskins. Even the Eagles.

If Dallas somehow moves on from Dak, I wonder how long it takes for Trey Lance to pop back up on the scene.

Well, no room for sentimentality. Arik Armstead declined a salary restructure, so the 49ers unceremoniously released him today. Color me fine with this. He’s been a solid enough guy, but never really lived up to the high expectations as a 1st round pick (at 17), has had injury issues, and hey, in the old Bill Walsh philosophy. better to get rid of him now than pay all that $28 mill next season.

Strange though that he wouldn’t take a cut to remain with the team that stuck with him through a lot of injury-plagued seasons in 2022 and 2023, missing 17 games. But here we go. Get DJ Jones back at half the price.

Free agency is right around the corner so I’d think we’ll do something about this.

Well, I guess since ol’ Pete used to sign everyone off of our FA wire, we are doing the same with their coaches. The Nijers recently signed KJ Wright, a stalwart member of the Legion of Boom, to be their assistant LB coach. Throw in new DC Nick Sorensen, he himself a member of the Seahawks coaching staff for 8 years, previous DC Robert Saleh was an assistant for 3 years there, Richard Sherman, and there you go. The Seattle Solution.

Hey, whatever works. Seattle has been nothing less relentless on defense for a long time, so I like that direction.

Other than that, the combines are over, and we still need to beef up the O line. The Niners have 11 picks, so they should be able to work toward someone they like down the board. Tomlinson is out there. He’d be a solid backup should he so desire to be one.

Gonna be quiet for a while football-wise though.

Giants? (Got to keep Dj Loo interested!) Well, they signed Matt Chapman, so I wonder when JD Davis gets traded. I’d love to see us be able to find someone better than Slater in the OF. Got to live with Yaz I guess. The SS spot is suddenly weird with Fitzgerald, Luciano, and now Nick Ahmed vying for ABs. The rest is a mish-mash of platoonies and young guys. The pitching is about 6 guys from being good.

Still waiting for some kind of trade involving JD, Slater, Bart, and Villar for a bag of balls and 3 fungo bats.

The new DC candidate comes from our adversaries the Chiefs. KC DB coach Dave Merritt is the latest guy on the radar. He has been an underling of Steve Spagnulo for years, even with the Giants, and Shanny may be looking to incorporate more of the riks-taking into his defense.

Spagnulo certainly has our number. Hey, he sounds fine. As I’ve been saying, we need to take more risks on defense, and we need to avoid Brandon Staley at all costs.

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As far as baseball goes, the Giants are once again doing little to nothing to strengthen the team in any meaningful way. We have 2 starters in our rotation. Is Soler the RH power bat we’ve been searching for? Well, he’s 32 and we will see. He’s better than Haniger anyway. But we still have an anemic lineup full of Yaz’s and Slaters that doesn’t scare anyone, and our bullpen will be a bunch of tired arms by the break.

Oh yeah, that’s when all our IR pitchers will come to save us!

Not much going on with either the 49ers or the Giants. The combine starts this week so you’d think the Niners would want a defensive coordinator in place when that goes down.

As for the Giants . . .

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The Oaklandcisco GiAnts are fully ready to hit the season with ONE bona fide starter and a boatload of this in the rotation and the pen.

On your feet or on your knees, the baseball season is coming.

Jeff Ulbrich’s name seemed to come out of nowhere as our lead candidate for DC. He’s currently the Jets DC, so this would be a lateral move, but I guess it is something that is possible given his ties to the Niners, and our need to fill the spot. I’d be fine with that. Shit, I’d be fine with Riverboat Ron Rivera. He’s a known commodity and frankly I want a gambler on defense. As Vanilla Wilks proved, a soft defense gives up yards and points. But I have no idea if Ulbrich wants to make a lateral move. Albeit for more money.

The name I completely don’t even remotely get is Brandon Staley. He made bad decision after bad decision for 4 years in SD and should have been fired 2 years ago. Sure, he was a hot young DC for the Rams, but that defense was stacked. As this one is, but as proven by Wilks, coaching matters. Saleh and Ryans got much more out of this defense with lesser talent. Yeah, those were solid players, but Wilks had the best team to work with.

Which is why Staley should not even be in the convo. Belichick or Carroll? Too funny. Neither would want to go back to being an underling. Vrabel could, but why bother? He would be more likely looking for an HC spot as well.

The only other guy that makes sense to me would be current LB coach Johnny Holland. LB play was God-awful in these playoffs, and Holland, despite this year’s regression, has built an excellent LB corps. Greenlaw and Warner are top-notch, and Al-Shaair was excellent in his time here. Would love to get him back.

Other than that, the Warriors? They should open up a laundromat as they are the kings of folding.

The Giants? Well, they have 3/5 of their starting rotation already on the IR or undetermined, and have done little to add a 30 HR bat. Lee Ho Fook may very well be a star, but that isn’t a certainty, as well as all the marginal guys like Luciano, Harrison, Schmitt, and the rest.

Looks like a fight to be over .500 and a scramble for the last play-in spot. Huzzah. Shoot me now. I mean, the Dodgers, Padres, and Diamondbacks look much better than we do now, after hearing all about how aggressive Farhan will be. Blah blah blah.

Well, saw this one coming from a mile away, but Steve Wilks, recently of the booth, and pushed to the field, was pushed out the door. The defense, which was 100 shades of inconsistent this year, ultimately fell way short of expectations since the last 2 DCs did a much better job with less talent.

Granted, the defense did pretty damn well in this last Super fuckup until it really mattered, but there was no late stop on 4th down to end the game. There was no 3rd down sack to put KC behind the eight ball. Instead, Shanny was outmaneuvered by his own hubris and 2 huge mistakes to seal the deal.

That being said, the team is in good shape for the next couple years with most of the important guys signed to contracts. The only 2 that will be hard to keep are Brandon Aiyuk and Jauan Jennings. But Purdy is on his rookie deal, so he’s the bargain of the century,

Not ready to start worrying about the draft yet, but it will be a thing. soon enough At some point this team needs to get a TE that can produce, more O line depth, and a replacement for Dre Greenlaw. Corner depth would be nice as well.

I guess the rest of the league will be happy that the 49ers won’t get a draft pick or 2 for hiring and firing Wilks.

Shanny didn’t know the rule. I sure didn’t. EVERY player asked didn’t know the rule, so obviously it was not talked about by the coaching staff to the team.

That being said, it would be nigh retarded to take the ball first. Mainly because of exactly how it played out for SF.

Whatever the first team possessing the ball does, you know what your priority is as the 2nd team. Mahomes knew what he had to do. Get into FG range and then go for the TD. And Reid said, if the Niners get 7, I’m going for 8. Shanny’s talking analytics and probabilities, and blah blah blah. He sounded like Gabe Kapler. Utter bullshit. He didn’t know.

If the D forces a 3 and out, boom, you are pretty much set. Decent field position, get 40 yards, kick the FG. You give up a FG, all you need to do is get close, and take your shots for the win. You don’t make it, you tie the game. You give up a TD? Well, you have 4 downs to move the ball every set of downs to match or go for the 2 and win. Shanny didn’t know.

Beyond that, this fucking team has been constrained by the inability to contain a good pass rush. One deep shot to Aiyuk would have been 6 had Purdy been given time. Deebo was bracketed all night, Kittle was ineffective, but I never saw why. Only Jennings had a good game. Aiyuk had a couple catches, but Purdy was under pressure all night. And Shanny did his usual ‘I’m, so clever, I’ll stop running and give up a -8 yard screen pass’ play. Trent Williams had his worst game as a Niner.

And why does the team continually fuck up punts? It goes back to Harbaugh and Kyle fucking Williams. Or even Preston Riley. At least we didn’t give up a huge KO return, but we did have the XP fuckup. 55 yard FG? No prob. Chip shot XP? Nope!

Our own special teams have done more damage to this team than any other opponent.

FUUUUUUUUUCK!!! Build an O line! Fix the fucking special teams!!!!!

And we need a linebacker to replace Greenlaw. He’s out at least half the season with his achilles tear. That was yet another fucked up thing. This team is snakebit. They could have overcome any one of these fuckups, but add them up, and we didn’t. And I just love watching the twtter feeds of Bosa getting held all over the place. Same with Warner. FML This one fucking sucks.

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.