Forty Niners Forever

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.

Amazingly, the team bus didn’t crash on the way to the airport today and injure half the team. Instead, the team arrived safely in Philadelphia after spending the week in West Virginia. Because, well who knows? Maybe they got a little rafting in. Beats all the flying and possible plane related injuries.

Anyhow, on to the game. The betting line on the Eagles this year is 6.5. Pretty fucking low, and I bet no one had them beating the Falcons. Which they did pretty handily 32-6. Then again, the Falcons win number is 7.5. We are 10.5 for those of you counting. I’m not too knowledgeable about the Iggles. Just that Jalen Hurts looked pretty good last year, and now this year, he has a stable of very fast WRs. Including the Heisman winner Devonta Smith. Do they run well? Doubt it. Is their defense any good?

We of course have a lot of injuries. Emmanuel Moseley still hasn’t played, Jason Verrett is done for the year, and we have some lukewarm bodies we signed in Dre Kirkpatrick and Josh Norman to fill the gaps. Both excellent signings. In 2014. Dontae Johnson has been yoyoed, cut, practice squadded, and jerked around so many times, they are calling him boomerang.

And that’s my worry. That they are going to come out throwing early and throwing often. Which puts pressure on our fragile DEs in Bosa and Ford. I know they got a lot of rest last week, but they will make up for it today. We usually struggle with mobile QBs, and that was when we HAD Dre Greenlaw. AA could be out as well, so we are depending on a lot of backups, like Azeez Al Shaair, Kent Street, and Diminius Finnius-Farfignugen (whatever his name is) and Marcell Harris. Oh yeah, he’s questionable as well. Me?

So, the offense needs to get off toa fast start. Our run game looked decent enough last week, and the passing game played well enough, but I would like to see more play-action on 1st down. This game looks to be a track meet, and we need an early lead to force the action. Make them play from behind.

I think this is another high-scoring affair, and I think we should prevail given our offensive firepower.

38-27 Niners.

. . . Cornerback. Here we are, week 2, and we are down 3 starters, and 3 more are questionable. Plus a back up.

DOUBTFUL:
– CB Emmanuel Moseley (knee)

QUESTIONABLE:
– DT Javon Kinlaw (knee)
– DT Arik Armstead (adductor)
– S/LB Marcell Harris (oblique)

By the time we face Seattle on October 3rd, we should be decimated even more.

Perusing the injured list, there are 438 players listed as out, doubtful, or questionable. I don’t know if this is high for ONE WEEK, but is sure seems very high. I’m sure some of this has to do with COVID, but some of this also has to do with curtailing the amount of live practice these guys go through, no more two-a-days, and less hitting and on-field time in every phase of the preseason.

One would think this would lead to less injuries, but it doesn’t look that way. Throw in the fact that the NFL in its infinite (greed) wisdom, added a regular season game to the mix, and here you have it. A league and a season strictly determined by how many players can survive. Good luck if you play on fake grass. This ratchets up the risk just a tad bit more.

The 49ers, among a lot of teams last year (hi, Dallas), had their 2020 season waylaid by injuries. One week in, and there are SEVEN teams with over 20 guys on their injured list, and we aren’t even on it. They are the Ravens, the Browns, the Cowboys, the Raiders, the Patriots, the Saints, and the Titans.

The Niners have ‘only’ 17. The new NFL is looking like simply a battle of attrition.

. . . on the injury front. Yes, game one saw the 49ers lose two starters as both Raheem Mostert and Jason Verrett both suffered season-ending knee injuries. Both appeared to be non-contact injuries, as once again, an artificial turf field seems to be the culprit. Needless to say, both players are extremely frustrated as both have fought back from previous injuries. Verret with a torn achilles and a laundry list of injuries over his career, and Mostert with knee, ankle, and arm injuries.

To a man, the team has nothing but respect for Verrett and the battles he has gone through his whole career, and it really did affect the outcome of the Detroit game. The team completely lost its mojo and the defense lost their focus.

Beyond any more screeds by me for the ultimately cheapskate motherfucking owners who continue to force their players to play football on unnatural grass, the league needs to mandate real grass. Indoor stadium or no. Just watching football these last couple years, with shortened practices, less preseason build-up, and now COVID restrictions, I’d say around 25% of the injuries are non-contact ones where the players simply break instead of the field giving way.

We’ve gone past the days of Candlestick Park, and the old Veterans stadium in Philly, among others, in which the fields were basically painted concrete with ankle-breaking seams everywhere. So, let’s move on from the newer version of the same shit. The rubberized shaggy shit is better than the concrete, but it still grabs too hard at players’ ankles and knees, causing these non-contact leg injuries.

Baseball has nearly phased out artificial turf. The NFL should.

Meanwhile, it looks like Trey Sermon will be on the squad this weekend as he and Brandon Aiyuk were both mysteriously unused during the season opener. Sermon was a healthy scratch, for fuck’s sake. Brandon Aiyuk has been dealing with a hamstring issue, and I guess Shanahan felt that Sherfield, who blew past Aiyuk during the preseason, would give the Niners a better chance to win. Strange, as Aiyuk had such a strong season last year. Sermon however, was maybe a victim of the numbers game with Mitchell, Mostert, and Hasty all performing well. Mostert as we all know is done, but it appears that Sermon is now fighting for playing time behind Hasty. Odd.

Definitely weird scenes inside the 49ers gold mine. Don’t know WTF is really going on, but it appears to be some sort of issue with the two guys and the coaching staff. Stay tuned, I guess.