San Francisco 49ers Forever

Kyle Shanahan has a dislocated brain.

I tell ya, Shanahan seems hell-bent on shit-canning his rep as an offensive genius these days. Or even as a good coach. His play calling all season has been iffy. The Detroit game started fine, but the offense cratered in the 2nd half. The Eagles game saw the offense go nowhere for most of the 1st half. Green Bay? Same thing. 3 and outs, punts little offensive flow for the 1st half. Seattle? Ditto. Granted Jimmy G is not what they thought he was. Then there’s the AZ game. Trey Lance’s first NFL start.

What does Shanahan do? Put the entire game on his shoulders to do whatever it takes to win. So now he’s sacrificing his (the team’s at least) most coveted new player all for an early season win. Are wins important? Of course they are. But Lance ran 16 times. Most of them designed runs. Yes he got 89 yards. But he also suffered a sprained knee that will keep him out of action for a couple games. And he nearly got killed on that goal line run as he was put in harm’s way repeatedly by Coach Don’t-give-a-fuck. Eli Mitchell had 9 carries! 9 fucking carries!

Is this how you ease your new QB into the league? FUCK NO. Shanahan had him running all over the place. The routes didn’t have any outlet receivers as they were blocking for the most part. Kind of irksome to me was the way Trey got the Niners close, and instead of taking the early points, he had Lance roll out. Sure, if he was a little more seasoned, he could have held the ball a tick more and waited till the LB committed to Lance and hit Mitchell in the end zone. But he didn’t, and we all saw what happened. Instead of us getting points and Lance getting credit for a scoring drive, AZ took the ball and got a FG of their own.

Speaking of blocking, the line play has become a HUGE issue with this team. Brunskill and McGlinchey did little to stop JJ Watt or anyone else lined up against them. The 3rd quarter saw 5 holding calls on a couple drives. That Trey was able to overcome those and even get ONE score was pretty amazing.

I’m no fucking head coach, and I’m no goddamn GM, but I’ve watched the game for a long time, and what I see now in the NFL are quarterbacks like Russell Wilson, Kyler Murray, Lamar, Jackson, and Josh Allen. All these guys have excellent arms. They are also mobile. Christ, we had Steve Young for fuck’s sake. The prototype for all these guys. Can they run? Yes, they can run, but they are NOT used as running backs! Why? because they end up like RG III. A guy who Mike Shanahan used and abused till he broke.

Did Bill Walsh design run plays for Steve Young? Sure. Maybe a sneak or 2 or a naked bootleg a couple times a year. Shanahan seems to believe he is the be-all end-all for offensive coaches in the NFL, but he frankly is dropping like a stone in game preparation and getting fucking points on the board.

The good news? The defense once again held a team averaging 450 yards and 33 points to 305 and 17.

Offensive genius my wrinkles white ass. If I’m Jed, I seriously think Shanahan gets the boot after this season. This is year 5 of his tenure, and there is little to show for his time here but a huge pile of injuries, and a clock-mangled Super Bowl loss.

Christ. This team played like this is season one of a new regime, rather that year 5 of what was supposed to be the christening of the Super Bowl contenders. Penalties, mistakes, more penalties and some really shitty play calling led to yet another loss in yet another winnable game. Trey Lance looked like the raw rookie that he is, firing high passes (one for a pick) and missing guys. He ran well.At least on the plays that weren’t really designed for him to run.

Once again we outgained out opponent, 338 to 306, And once again we were behind the whole time. The 49wrs were an astounding 1 for 5 on 4th downs. Mainly because Kyle Shanahan seems very inept at creating a mismatch somewhere on the plays. Most involved trying to stuff it up the middle. The Cards must have watched the recent tapes, because when Kyle Juszczyk came into the play, 2 linebackers followed him and stuffed him at the line.

The biggest play of course was the roll out that Lance got stuffed about 2″ short of the end zone. The pass to Mitchell wasn’t really there, but he could have waited a tick to let him get open, but he made the charge. If he went high he might have gotten in, but woulda coulda shoulda.

Speaking of Lance, he had 16 carries for 89 yards. Shanahan doesn’t seem to think that he should maybe protect the investment. Much like dear old dad did with his mobile QB, Robert Griffin. Lance was all over the place, 15/29 for 192, but there were drops, and missed passes.

Most troubling to me is the fact that Shanahan is fucking hard with Brandon Aiyuk. Mohamed Sanu AND fucking practice squad guy Travis Benjamin somehow jumped over Aiyuk on the depth chart. So our most versatile playmaker was on the bench for the first few drives.

The defense played great and should have won this one. They even got a turnover. Something not seen for a while.

I’m starting to lose my good feelings for Kyle Shanahan. He is turning into his father in being very inflexible and pig-headed to the detriment of the plays called and the outcomes of games.

There’s a new sheriff in town, and his name is Trey Lance. Kyle Shanahan decided not to follow last year’s path of throwing an injured and ineffective calf-inflicted Jimmy G into a game and watching him throw picks and flail and lose. Of course, now we have Lance, not The Beater or BDN. As usual though we are down a tight end, George Kittle is nursing a calf injury of his own that will sideline him for 3 weeks. And of course our kicker also hurt himself warming up.

Too much ice time? Our former NHL training staff doesn’t seem to be helping the cause, but who knows? Jeff Wilson blew out his knee in the locker room for fuck’s sake. Maybe they should rethink their personnel there.

But, on the field we have our new quarterback getting his first start. The recent track new guys so far is not very heartening.

Trey Lawrence: 0-4
Zach Wilson: 1-3
Justin Fields: 1-1
Mac Jones: 1-3

The wins of course are Tennessee, the Jets, and Detroit. We are playing the 4-0 Cardinals. But we nominally have a better foundation to work from. Trey Sermon is running well, and, uh, Samuel has had some nice games. The offense is struggling badly though. AZ is bad against the run, so I don’t expect to see a high-flying aerial attack, but Shanny HAS to take advantage of Lance’s deep ball ability.

Teams are playing us just like the bad old days of smash-mouth drop-your-pants football of Gore left, Gore right, Gore up the middle, punt. 9 in the box. 10 on the line. Samuel has already caught a couple nice deep passes. Do it 3-4 times a game, not a season.

The D is doing well enough to win games. Barring the fucking Green Bay debacle. ButKinlaw is questionable, Greenlaw is still out, and Warner is the only guy that can keep Murray under some kind of control. We NEED a pass rush from the outside, and we can’t lose contain on the edges. Like we always do with mobile QBs. The Rams did great on controlling Wilson by doing just that. Set the edge so there’s a long way to run just to GET outside, and have the LBs pursue.

We’ve done fairly well against Murray and Kliff Klavin, so we’ll see.

And we are going the wrong way. The Niners started the season well enough, winning two roadies. Granted, the Lions and Eagles are a collective 1-7, and are dogshit, but I digress. I am a little surprised by the Eagles, but whatevs. Who gives a fuck about them? Coming home to the friendly confines of the Great America parking lot, with fans no less, the Niners shit the bed against two guys that have been thorns in our side for quite a while in Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson. Both games were winnable, both games were affected by turnovers and dumb mistakes, and in the end they were simply avoidable losses. The worst kind. Better clock management and Trenton Cannon simply laying on the ball and we could very well be 4-0.

But we aren’t. We are in last place at 2–2 looking up at the 4-0 Cardinals. Our next opponent.

We get to see if this team has any guts. I’m banking on Jimmy G getting the 3 week break, so Shanny gets to devise an offense around his new quarterback, Trey Lance. My hope is last week wasn’t a precursor of the style of play with Lance, because it looks eerily similar to the Jim Harbaugh/Colin Kaepernick 2-back clog the box offense. I don’t want to see read-option, short passes, and the packing of the box like that was. Lance has an arm and we NEED to exploit it. I don’t want to see Kittle getting killed on crossing routes, or Aiyuk ignored because he exited the limited range of Jimmy’s arm. Or bubble screens that don’t work because there are 10 guys up on the line.

You know, the good old days.

Well, that sucked. We have become the team that can’t afford to make mistakes. And yet, we made mistakes. And lost. Jimmy G is proving to be a turd on ice as we know he can’t hit the long passes, and now he can’t hit the short passes. After the obligatory injury to Crystal Jimmy, Trey lance came in and underwhelmed. He did direct 2 TD drives. but missed passes, got them batted down, hurried shit, and basically looked like a guy who does not have a lot of game experience. Not so worried about Lance yet, as he has time to grow into the job. Albeit, he’s now on the front lines.

More galling to me is the inability of Shanahan and company to get people open. We have a lot of weapons in Aiyuk, Samuel, Kittle, and Sanu. Dwelley even, who scored our first TD. Our run game however is back to the scrap heap as once again we are down to practice squad guys and no-names. Yes, part of this is the trickle-down effect as teams know we aren’t running well, and this means they KNOW we will lean heavily on the short passing game. Sermon though had a pretty solid game with 89 yards on 13 carries.

Which means they play us close to the line and take away all the effectiveness of the misdirection runs, the jet sweeps, and anything within 10 yards of the line.

Still and all, for all the 3 and outs and general ineffectiveness, the game came down to the usual. No created turnovers, a pick by Jimmy G, and the horrendous double fumble of a punt by last week’s hero Trenton Cannon. Those 14 yard drives are real back breakers.

The defense played well enough to win,. Dee Ford had a couple sacks, but he also had a motherfucking retarded offsides penalty that negated a 3rd down stop and instead created a 3rd and 1 that Seattle converted. A la the 2018 AFC Championship game. There was another critical penalty on Fred Warner. A PI call that was utterly ridiculous as Warner briefly touched the WRs shoulder pad on a 3rd down incompletion. No impeding or slowing or anything. That of course gave Seattle 20 yards and a 1st down to keep the TD drive alive.

Back to the offense though. Shanahan amassed 457 yards to Seattle’s paltry 234, but the Niners were the ones down 2 scores in the 4th quarter. The first half saw the Niners marching up and down the field but getting no points but for the opening drive TD because our kicker got hurt playing hacky sack before the game, or some shit. Our punter came in and stunk up the joint, missing a FG and an extra point.

So, here we sit, 0-2 at home, and in last place. We had a chance to put a pretty decent sized nail in the Seahawks coffin, but we gagged badly. And to top it all off, Trent Williams came out of the game with a shoulder injury. Huzzah. Once again the team is reeling from injuries and ineffectiveness. Next comes Arizona, the buzzsaw that is currently chewing up the NFL. But hey, we are 2-0 on the road, so maybe we can pull this off.

In much better news the Giants look care of the NL West and won their 107th game to force the Dodgers into a one game WC play-in. Fuck yeah!!

Another week, another slew of injuries. Kittle is questionable with a calf injury after playing the whole GB game. His value this year seems to be more as a blocker, but whatevs. Seattle is last by a big margin in defense, so we’d better start fast.

Don’t let them hang around and just overwhelm them.

Winning the division starts here and now.

I fully blame Demeco Ryans for this terrible showing so far this season. Our defense has much better players than last year, but we are 17 in yards allowed and 17th in points allowed. Horrible. Much worse than last year. No aggressiveness. The goal line stands have been nice, but drive by drive, GB was doing whatever they wanted. The Eagles had a lot of yards as well. Dee fucking troit took it to us in the 2nd half.

This is WITH Dee Ford, Nick Bosa, and DJ Jones back. Robert Selah had lesser players playing much better. Yes, this is a learning process for Ryans. But the cardinal sin against Rodgers is to let him feel comfortable in the pocket. He was very comfortable on that last drive. What Ryans should have pressured Rodgers with blitzes. Instead we dropped deep and protected the sidelines. Which left the middle wide open. Which Rodgers took advantage of easily.

And, stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Kyle Shanahan has a real glaring fucking issue with clock management late in games. Even with GB having no timeouts, I was screaming for Shanahan to run the ball. Burn time. Give Rodgers as little time as possible. But no, he went pas happy. 4 incomplete passes on that last drive gave GB the time needed. Out of the 2 minute warning on GBs 36, we needed to burn time. Instead we burn ONE second on an incompletion. This isn’t 20/20 hindsight. I was telling my son, RUN THE BALL!!! ONE stinking running play. 1st and goal from the 12 with 43 seconds left. RUN THE BALL!

Maybe Reid pulls a McCarthy and lets us score. Who knows? But all I know is we left Rodgers too much time and he did what he usually does.

And sure let’s get into the fucking inability of the offense to do anything for the first 20 minutes. THIS is when the defense shone. Like the Eagles game, the offense looked like the 1976 Buccaneers. The saving grace of the 1st half was Trenton Cannon’s 70 yard KO return which set up the 1st TD.

The 2nd half was played well enough as we took the 2nd half kickoff and scored 6 on a 83 yard, 14 play drive culminating in a TD to Brandon Aiyuk. Apparently fully out of the dog house Brandon Aiyuk.

Anyhow, this far along in the Shanahan tenure, and I’m still worried about how Shanahan seems to fuck up a lot of these close finishes. Ryans I’m less concerned about as he’s new to this, but he HAS to understand that his base 4 man rush was beaten by 2 rookies and a 3rd string tackle. Come up with something else to disrupt the opponent’s passing game.

Mainly because we have arch-thorn-in-the-side Russell Wilson coming to town, and there 2 things that cannot happen that usually does. Wilson getting 50+ yards on scrambles, and our offense starting slow.

Do that, and we are 2-2 and looking up at everyone else in the west. This becomes a huge game. Seattle is reeling a bit with their 2 losses already, and them being 1-3 would seriously hurt them as the rest of the west would be 3 games up on them.

One way or another it feels like the Niners and Packers play every year. And then meet in the playoffs. It has been a back-and-forth affair, with the Niners dominating the Cheeseheads in the playoffs these last three meetings. Sure, they beat us last year, but that is the outlier. Throw in the intrigue of the 49ers trying to GET Rodgers last year as Rodgers fought with the Packers front office, and the other fact that Rodgers was snubbed by the 49ers and Mike McCarthy WAAAAAY back in 2005, and you have a nice bunch of subplots.

The game? Well, we will have Trey Sermon starting, Elijah Mitchell is doubtful, Kinlaw, AA, and Moseley all are questionable but should play. The Packers have issues at their left tackle spot as Serra boy David Bakhtiari is out, and his replacement Elgton Jenkins is out, they are starting their 3rd string undrafted tackle Josh Noggin (?), and they are already starting two rookies on their line.

Look to GB to try and establish the run, throw quicker passes, and try to negate our pass rush. I think we can dominate at the point of attack and keep Rodgers off the field.

We have our usual concerns. No mistakes from Jimmy G. No fumbles. At least we don’t have to worry about 40 yard scrambles with Rodgers, but he is elusive enough in the pocket to get his passes off. Our recipe for victory is constant and unrelenting pressure. And to keep Jimmy G clean in the pocket. The Packers aren’t putting much pressure on QBs in their first 2 games, but they did get better in the 2nd half of the Detroit game. Their first 6 quarters were disastrous defensively.

Should be another good one. 35-27 Niners.

The good news is we are on grass again. Yay. Still and all, guys got hurt in Philly.

OUT
Kevin Givens (ankle) – Heading to IR
JaMycal Hasty (ankle) – Heading to IR
Elijah Mitchell (shoulder) – Day-to-day
Arik Armstead (abductor) – Day to-day

LIMITED
Emmanuel Moseley (knee) – Day to-day
Trey Sermon (concussion) – Day to-day
Javon Kinlaw (knee) – Day to-day

There’s hope for Mitchell. His injury was ‘a little worse’ than a stinger, but he’s on a wait-and-see approach. There’s hope for Sermon as well. But AA is out for this game. He had the play of the day on the Philly Special, and also forced one of the sacks by Bosa. Moseley is looking good to play, so there’s that. Issues with the CBs notwithstanding, our safeties Tartt and Ward have been pretty solid. Shit, Lenoir played well but for the stumble on the 91 yard pass. He broke up a couple, including the 60 yarder. Norman had 2 tick tacky calls but was otherwise not thrown on.

Then again, this is Aaron Rodgers we are facing. Once again though it will be about the pass rush. Get consistent pressure and we should be OK. The offense needs to get rolling much earlier than with 1:52 left in the first half.

We’ve owned Green Bay recently, let’s keep this shit rolling.

Well, that was brutal. In true grind-it-out fashion, the 49ers managed to escape this 10 day camping trip in Deetroit, West Virginia, and Philadelphia with a 2-0 record. Yes, there were more casualties among the walking wounded, and the offense took 28 minutes off in the first half, but the niners, behind some monumentally solid defensive play, eeeeked out a 17-11 win over the not-so-pushovery Eagles.

The hero of the game, among many many guys, very well may be Alex Mack. He provided enough push to allow Jimmy G to get 5 first downs on the many 3rd and 4th down and 1 scenarios. Speaking of Jimmy, the voices in my head were starting to clamor for Trey Lance as Garoppolo spent the first 4 drives sailing his throws over open guys, and clanging short passes off others. Sure, Juice and Aiyuk dropped them, but the 49ers had 0 first downs in the 1st quarter, and their best drive to that point was negated on a completely bullshit crackback block call on Mohammed Sanu.

To that point, the 49ers had 3 first downs and 64 yards, and Philly had 8 first downs and 204. But, by sheer determination on the part of the defense, the score was 3-0 Philly. Javon Kinlaw made me forget about DeFoBu for a day as he was the key force to stopping the Eagles run game as he forced a 2 yard loss on 3rd and 1, and then blocked a field goal on the next play. The Eagles next drive saw them hit a 91 yard pass play from their own 3, and NOT score anything despite getting a soft PI call on Josh Norman, and 7 plays within the 5 yard line. Philly tried their famous Philly Special pass play to J Hurts on 4th and 1 but K’Won Williams stayed at home and covered Hurts while AA forced WR Greg Ward to throw the ball out of bounds.

That defensive stand seemed to wake up the 49er offense as Jimmy G directed a 12 play, 97 yard drive to put the 49ers up at the half 7-3. The 49ers were not having much luck on the deeper routes, so they dinked and dunked themselves down the field amid some tough inside runs by Jimmy G of all people on a few scrambles, and QB sneaks. The big play being a nice dart by Jimmy on a 12 yard crossing route that Deebo took across the field and down the sideline for a 40 yard gain down to the 11. The Niners then took advantage of Philly overplaying Deebo and Kittle for an easy toss to Jauan Jennings for the score.

Philly to me wimped out amazingly by taking a knee with 12 seconds left in the half. Dumb. Shades of Mariucci against TB back in the day.

The 2nd half saw the 49ers use up 9 minutes of clock on a 16 play 85 yard drive. It was more of the short passing game mixed in with tough runs up the middle, ending with yet another quarterback sneak on 2nd and goal from the 1. The defense held again, and the Niners went on another drive punctuated by TWO negated fumbles. One on JaMycal Hasty, whose fumble out of bounds for a 12 yard loss was negated by an unnecessary roughness call on Philly, and Trey Sermon’s fumble on his first NFL touch, a 10 yard run up the middle that resulted in two shots to his head, a likely concussion, and a personal foul on Wallace. That saw the Niners go a little too conservative on the 3rd and 3, but they got the FG and had a 17-3 lead.

The one TD drive by Philly late in the 4th was a result of our man coverage on the outside guys, deep safeties, and the subsequent vacating of the right edge. Hurts had 52 of the 60 yards on the drive by running down the right side on runs of 9 and 42 yards. They got the 2 point conversion, so the lead was down to 6.

The last drive was gut-check time as the 49ers could not afford to let Philly have the ball back. Philly had used their timeouts earlier in the quarter, so all the 49ers needed was one 1st down. They got it on an 8 yard pass to Juice, and the last QB sneak to seal the win.

Yes, road wins are tough to come by, and to get these first 2 is something, but man, this was a tough game. Sermon, Hasty, and Mitchell all went out with injuries, but Mitchell was able to return as we were down to Terryon Cannon.

The big takeaway was the outstanding play of Javon Kinlaw. Bosa had a solid game despite being double-teamed all day as well as he works his way back from his knee injury. He had 2 sacks, and some decent pressure and some nice runs defensed.

His most telling comment was: “Any game on grass is better for everybody.” Amen to that.