Forty Niners Forever

Not dogs or cats. Purple people. Worried about this one. Minnesota is certainly much more talented than the Jets and they have legit playmakers. Short week. East coast flight. Early start time. Road game. Madden curse. CMC on the IR.

A game like this should be fairly easy, but I think we struggle. A positive last week was we didn’t commit the usual boatload of penalties. No turnovers. As ever these are key.

Then again I really don’t know much about the Vikes defense other than DC Brian Flores likes to mix up coverages and he blitzes a lot. They lost Hunter and got Van Ginkel?

In other news, trade Brandon Allen to Miami for RT Austin Jackson. I don’t think Tua is gonna play anymore.

. . . on the road. And I just found out Ricky Watters was a rookie the last time the 49ers won in Minnehaha, and Roger Craig WAS a Viking. 1992 to be exact.

But whatevs. Here we are and now we are.

Don’t like the short week / east coast flight / early kickoff as well. But this is the Jolly Rogers NFL. Fuck you and your safety. Thursday games? You get TWO. Games in the southern hemisphere on a slippery nightmare field? Check. Games in Antarctica coming soon! No turns unstoned.

The Vikings? Sure they dispatched one of the two shitty New Jersey teams as we did. Hard to say who or what they are as they shify from Kurt Cousins to his younger doppelganger Sourdough Sam Darnold.

Thing is, they have actual weapons in Justin Jefferson and Aaron Jones. They did lose WR #2 Jordan Addison. So, as usual, the pass rush is essential. Even Sudden Sam can look good given time. I’ll lay off the defense for the near future if they can hold up against a better team that has a solid line and a decent RB. I still don’t like the bend-not-break aspect of this but hey. Maybe we can just beat ’em with our base defense and never do anything risky. Like a stunt. Or a blitz.

Hate to call this a trap game, but this game worries much more than the Jets game did. I think Minnesota has a good young team that could ver well cause us problems on the short week.

We of course aren’t gonna play CMC as turf and Achilles are not a good mix. The injury report:

Limited Participation: S Talanoa Hufanga (knee), LB Dee Winters (ankle) Full Participation: G Aaron Banks (finger, calf), DE Yetur Gross-Matos (knee), WR Jauan Jennings (ankle).

Nice to see Hufanga back. We can ease him in slowly. BA needs to get with the deal and stop dropping shit.

Talk out of the HQ is that CMC is already a ‘longshot’ to play vs the Vikies. Fine. Leave him out the next 2 games at least. Don’t want him on turf. In fact, I’d keep him off any game played on fake grass the remainder of the season. Regular that is. And that is the next two games vs Minn and LA Lambs.

Don’t get me started on ‘fieldturf’. Fucking Seattle can’t grow grass? LA? Fuck them. Fuck all of them. TB plays on grass. The Bills don’t. Green Bay plays on some sort of abomination of real grass and synthetic fiber called hybrid grass. Better than all-fake I guess. Dolphins and Cards play on grass as well. And the fucking Cards play indoors! Like the Raiders, they roll the field outside to catch the sun. My perfect job. Driving the field around.

The NFL preaches ‘player safety’ and lets the owners cheap out on the surface they play on. Get with it!

Anyhow. The Vikies. They are another middling to poor team looking to enhance their present by taking a flyer on a vet QB that hasn’t had a ton of success, a la 1/3 of the NFL teams this year. That QB of course is Sourdough Sam Darnold. A guy who comported himself pretty well here playing backup to Brock Purdy, and parlayed that into a $10,000,000.00 one-shot one-year deal with Minnehaha.

Granted, they have some nice weapons in Justin Jefferson, ex-Packer Aaron Jones, WR Jordan Addison, and, well, that’s about it. Even Addison missed practice today and is the big Q for this weekend. Their defense? Fairly unheralded, but they are full of young vets that are a solid unit. ANd they added CB Stephone Gilmore. Not a group to take too lightly.

But, again, like the Jets, we should be able to run the ball down their throat. Thought we would have used Kittle more last week, but the game plan was solid, if not for the problems getting the ball across the goal line. Not a huge worry. Yet.

All inal, this isn’t a defense to look past. The Niners were great at not turning the ball over, and getting a couple themselves. This, and pass protection, is the key to winning games. We did give up 3 sacks to the lowly Jets, but they have a pretty strong pass rush with Quinnen Williams.

Us? One lowly sack against the least mobile guy in the league and a makeshift line.

I’ll say it again, we need to do more than simply run our base defense all game and expect to walk away with a win.

Given all the adversity and bullshit this offseason and preseason, plus the scary thought of losing CMC for an extended time, the 49ers comported themselves very well. They shut down the mediocre Jets offense and rad roughshod through the vaunted Jets defense to the tune of a 38:00 to 22:00 TOP win. 8 straight scoring drives after the initial 3-and-out led the way.

Yeah there was rust, as BA did his best to show that he’s got a little contract hangover with his 2 drops. One of course costing the team a TD right before the half. But overall a solid win after a summer of weirdness. Jordan mason had an outstanding day as the replacement for CMC. But stalling in the red zone 6 times is a fairly wasted effort despite Nick Moody going 6 for 6.

And yeah, the defense shut down the vaunted Aaron Rodgers. But please, the Jets have a makeshift line, no run game, and little in the way of weapons for Rodgers. For all the passing, and Rodgers playing from behind, the pass rush got one sack and a few pressures.

What startled me the most is our defense last year was called to task late in the season (by me and millions of others) for being too soft on the run, gave up too many screen passes, failed on a lot of 3rd and longs, and didn’t bitz enough. Well, I saw the same thing yesterday. The LBs were 7 yards back in a soft zone. The one good drive by Rodgers saw them convert three 3rd and long situations with NONE of them having Rodgers face a blitz.

Yeah, great win. Season opener. But I thought Nick Sorensen/Brandon Staley would be ratcheting up the pressure on the opposing QBs with stunts, disguised blitzes and schemes to throw the opposition off balance. Instead I saw nothing but the base defense rushing 4 and dropping the LBs into soft coverage all game. Little to no stunting, and maybe 2 blitzes. Aikman even commented on that during the Jets only meaningful drive for a TD that we were in a soft zone.

Sure, it was enough for the woeful Jets. But even a guy like Sudden Sam Darnold, especially with a guy like Justin Jefferson to throw to can do well playing against what looks to me like a very vanilla defense.

Color me optimistic. After a huge turd of an offseason of dithering with contracts, and yet another draft of not addressing the RT position, let alone LT, we are poised on the brink of the 2024 season. Against of course the guy who would be the Niners QB at least a couple of times. Once in 2005 with the draft (where we picked Young Sir Alex), and again in 2021 when Not-So-Jolly Rodgers was cranked about his contract in Green Bay, we stuck with Jimmy G and drafted Trey Lance.

Funny we had Mike McCarthy in-house as our OC way back then, and very well could have had Rodgers. My thought around 2007 (IIRC) was we should have kicked Nolan upstairs to be GM and have elevated McCarthy to head coach. But who knows? Even the 2021 deal could have netted up a championship. I’ll never figure out the reluctance to pull the trigger, even on the se old QBs.

Same thing happened with Brady FFS. But digress.

Now? Now we are fully immersed in the Brock Purdy era. The offense is a well-oiled machine, and the defense is full of talent, but we have a new DC in Nick Sorensen, and his sidekick Brandon Staley. The preseason offered little to determine how these guys are playing together, but I sure didn’t like the defensive formations we were using. These looked a lot like last year’s bend-and-break defense.

I’ll reserve judgement until this shit goes for real. Meaning tonight.

• 6-3 is Rodgers’ record in the reg season

• 0-4 in the playoffs

So, despite the hold-ins, hold-outs, random shootings of 1st round picks, and even CMC’s possible achilles injury, I think this team has already overcome a ton of adversity. I think we will come out hard and fast. The Jets are a talented team, but I think we can out-man them in just about every spot.

We overwhelm the Jets, 31 – 17.

Entertaining game last night as the fucking Chiefs, who seem to have Baltimore’s number as well as ours, won their game by half a toenail as Isaiah Likely had the unlikely fate of stepping OB on the game-tying (or possibly game-winning) TD as time ran out. Balt was lining up to go for 2 as the replay wonks got a look at Likely’s big toe being over the line. One toe over the line, sweet jesus, one toe over the line.

In even more important news, Taylor Swift refused to sit with Brittney Mahomes as apparently she is a Trump supporter, and The Big Swifty isn’t. Oh what strange bedfellows and all that . . .

And, there’s a football game in Brazil tonight? There’s no turn unstoned for Jolly Roger and the greed machine that NFL Football is. But, hey, there’s football tonight! 5:15 even, on the west coast, as the Green Bay Packers face off against the Philadelphia Eagles. Should be another great game. I think the Eagles are overrated as fuck. This is a good test of their reality. Nick Sirianni is very much in line with Jim Harbaugh in that he’s a whole lot of bluster and bravado without a lot of football smarts.

But that’s why they play the game! Should be fun.

The 2025 season kicks off with a resounding start as the AFC championship game foes meet once again as the always-close-but-not-quite Baltimore Ravens try (again) to knock off the Kansas City Chiefs. You know, the team we seem to have a few issues with ourselves.

Anyhow, should be a great matchup and a fun kickoff (what’s up with the kickoffs anyway?) to the new season. We got the band back together and for now everyone is healthy.

Bring it!

Hey, we did get BA signed. Ricky Pearsall had a bullet magically pass through him with what appears to be very little damage. And, hey, the shoulder gets more time to heal as someone noted. A win-win? I think his playing after he’s off the pup list is pretty slim, but the fact he was released so quickly says a LOT about the nature of the injury. In that it is likely there was no lung damage or any major arteries hit. Amazing to say the least. Here’s to hoping he fully recovers. Regardless on his status with the team.

Still, the big but is Trent Williams as his big butt is not signed. To help, they re-signed tackle Brandon Parker. He was one of the cuts on cut-down day last week so he knows the system. Other than that, pray he can slow down the Jets pass rush,

In an offseason full of distractions, shit just got crazy with the shooting of 1st round pick Ricky Pearsall. He was in Union Square for an autograph signing session and a 17 year old kid attempted to rob him of his Rolex. As they struggled with the gun, multiple shots were fired, both were hit, and Pearsall was shot through the chest with what were called serious injuries. He’s in stable condition. Luckily he survived, but his football future is certainly up in the air.

Regardless of the national hooraw now coming that San Francisco is now Beirut by the Bay, this just throws another major distraction on the team that seems to be courting them by the dozen. All the talk of Super Bowl Hangover is just the diarrhea frosting on the shit cake this season is becoming. And it hasn’t even started yet.

The 49ers, as they neglected their offensive line yet again, are now being held hostage by Trent Williams, their 36 year old all-pro left tackle. Not signing him would be a major blow to an offensive line that already isn’t very good at pass protection. Jaylon Moore is the answer to the question ‘which backup sucks the least?’

One would think Robert Saleh is salivating over the possibility of facing a Niner front without Trent. We seem to be he team everyone nationally loves to hate. Purdy is regularly slammed as being a system QB, Shanahan is wearing the crown of not being able to win the big one, and now this latest debacle with Pearsall just reaffirms the perception that California, and San Francisco especially, is a lawless shit hole run by Communists. You can bet Trump is warming up the meme machine as this is all Harris’ fault.

Brandon Aiyuk signs a 4 year / $120 million contract extension. That is all the details I have for now.

I suspect Trent Williams signs in a matter of hours.