Forty Niners Forever

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.

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.