San Francisco 49ers Forever

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.

Here we are on the edge of a Super Bowl. Yes, we got past the pesky (and pesky for the foreseeable future) Packers, and now face the Dan Campbell-led Deetroit Lions. A team that hasn’t been in an NFC Championship game since before we won our last Super Bowl. As sad as they’ve been, our playoff record is a mess since the 1994 season.

And, as much as our offense struggled this last game, at least we have a much better game weather-wise. Sunny and 70 degrees for this one. The late start will dry the field out just that much more, so Brock and Co, with or without Deebo, better score early and score often.

Mainy because I have stark reservations about our defense. The $ billion defensive line is not getting home near enough lately. And Wilks seem very reluctant to dial up blitzes. We played the LBs pretty deep to start the game, and GB picked us apart with absolutely NO pressure on Love. This has to stop. Watching DeMeco, or Saleh-led defenses and you see a lot more blitzes and stunts. I didn’t see any early, and I haven’t rewatched the game yet to see what we did in the 2nd half, but this vanilla defense is maddening when you see Green bay simply getting 6 yards a play and marching down the field.

Say what you will, but the Niners lucked out big time on the dropped pick and the spot on the 4th and 1 that Green Bay didn’t get. Those 2 plays change the game big time, and our deficit is a lot more to overcome.

I really don’t understand why more isn’t being asked of the D line. Simply rushing 4 with no stunting, no blitzing, and no disguising things just pisses me off to no end. Why? Because Goff isn’t gonna get more than 12 yards running the ball, and if you rattle him early he’s worthless for the rest of the day.

Goff should be good for 2-3 interceptions if we can rattle him. Playing the milquetoast soft defense to start the game pretty much guarantees that Deetroit scores a TD on their first drive and gives Goff confidence. For all the talk about how good we are defensively, as the teams get better, our base D isn’t generating game-changing plays. It took until halfway through the 3rd quarter before we got meaningful pressure on Love, and it resulted in 2 interceptions.

Wow. That game aged the shit out of me. In a game very reminiscent of the 2021 divisional game that the Niners won despite playing bad, the 49ers yesterday played terrible on offense, on defense, special teams, and coaching.

Purdy came out looking like a rusty rookie, and the game-saving play of the game may have been the drop by Darnell Savage in the 1st quarter that would have been a pick 6. Purdy spent most of the game not going deep, and missing his check-downs on the way to a mediocre 86.7 rating and many missed opportunities.

The defense got little pressure, slipped and fell all over the place, left guys wide open, gave up huge pass plays, got hit with penalties, and offered little resistance but for the big 4th down stop in the 2nd quarter.

Special teams? Well, after spending the entire 1st half trying and finally catching Green Bay, the Packers blocked a field goal attempt that looked like Moody would have shanked anyway.

The second half was more of the same. A 3-and-out was followed by a 10 play-all pass drive by GB to take the lead. The offense finally kicked into gear and scored quickly on a 35 yard swing pass and run for Kittle and a 40 yard run by CMC.

Special teams reared their head again, giving up a 75 yard KO return to give GB an easy score and a 7 point lead.

Then, shit started to change. Dre Greenlaw picked off a tipped pass from Love, Nick Moody kicked a 52 yard FG, Green Bay’s own rookie kicker hooked his 41 yard kick, Purdy went 5-6 (Kittle dropped a 1st down pass), and CMC scored on a 9 yard run to take the lead.

Dre Greenlaw sealed the deal with his 2nd pick on a very ill-advised Love pass to close it out.

There you have it. Pretty much outplayed on all sides, but still managed to pull this out. On to next Sunday against the improbable Lions.