San Francisco 49ers Forever

Excuse me if I’m wrong, but I don’t get the Bears. They lose to the hapless Giants and beat the high-flying Rams. They beat Seattle but lose to the Phins. I just don’t know how real they are. They have scored a ton some days (41 vs the Bills, 48 vs the Bucs, 38 vs the Pats in a loss), and little on some days (16 vs the cards in a win, 15 vs the Rams in a win) so they have a good defense, except for the 31 they gave up to the Dolphins, 38 to the Pats, and 30 to the Giants.

Yes, they have Khalil Mack, a one-man wolf pack, but neutralize him, and there are points to be gotten. However, teams are doing it with their WRs, not TEs, so we need to get Pettis, Bourne and Goodwin more involved. Quick passes with the occasional deeper routes. Then go underneath to Kittle. They are tough on the run, as we just saw with Gurley and the Rams, so  this is going to be a tough game for the Niners.

I think we keep it close, but if BDN pulls this off somehow, he’ll be the new stud of the league. Win? Doubt it.

As the 49ers grind toward the end of yet another 10+ loss season, they once again have a glimmer of hope amid the wreckage. And that is free agent quarterback Nick Mullens. Mullens was so highly touted that he played free safety on the scout team last year. Yet, what he was also doing was studying the shit out of the playbook.

Mullens has been getting kudios up the wazoo for his work ethic and his study habits. Something that seems to have paid off in this misbegotten season. One that saw Garoppolo go down in week 3, and his back up, the Beater, going 0-5 and getting hurt in his stead, and Mullens stepping into the breach and guiding the team to 3 wins in 6 tries. If not the the scattershot defense, and the unreal amount of fumbles, we could have beaten the Giants at least.

Be that as it may, Shanahan is talking that the competition for backup QB is wide open. Sure it is. And that means nothing to say it now. The Beater may not even be on the roster by July. And that may not even be the issue. How about the starting QB job? Is that competition open next year? By the time next season kicks off, Mullens will have the same amount of starts that Jimmy G has. BDN makes all the throws, gets the ball out quickly, feels pressure pretty well, and can extend plays to move the chains.

Sure, there’s the fact that defense is wildly inconsistent, and can’t create turnovers to save themselves, but it is showing incremental improvement these last few games. Still, it isn’t helping whoever the quarterback is at any rate. And we are still a bit shy of a fully fleshed out roster despite the meteoric rise of Stone Cold George Kittle.

If the 49ers can keep Khalil Mack in check, and beat the Bears, it would really put some sauce behind a nascent quarterback controversy. One we haven’t seen since the likes of Joe Reed and Tom Owen.

Say what you will about the team, but apparently the curse of We’re the Hekawi is over. The 49ers exorcized a lot of demons by beating the Seattle Seahawks after losing their last 10 against them. And it was mainly at the strength of the defensive line. They bottled up Seattle’s run game, and actually got some pressure on Russell Wilson. Enough to make his day less than stellar anyway, despite the great game individually by a lot of Seahawks.

20-29 for 275, 1 TD, and 2 bad drops that killed drives. The run game was decent, except for the Wilson fumble, the passing game was solid, except for the drops, the defense was solid but for some really dumb penalties, and special teams finally made a huge contribution with the Rick James superfreak of a runback for the opening TD.

Draft pick be damned, I still think we can get a pass rusher in the top 5. And I’d like to see more of this defense getting more pressure. If they can become a solid unit by the end of the year, it begs to think they are improving. Saleh at this point is saving his own bacon.

How bout them (shut out) Cowboys!

Looks like another loss on our way to the top of the draft, but man, I hate the fucking Seahawks. Great city. Hate the team. The coach. The defense. Like Cleveland beating the Broncos, or the Chargers beating the Chiefs, I’d love to see the Niners beat the Hawks.

Funny thing is, we are 3-3 at home, 0-7 on the road. So there’s that. I don’t think we turn it over 14 times, but who knows? We looked like horseshit that last time we played them, so hopefully the team takes Kyle Shanahan’s “I’ve been sick of them for a long time” comment to heart and they come out and play a full 60 minutes tomorrow. Because that’s what it is gonna take. We can’t take the 2nd half off like last week and expect to win.

The usual things are important. Pressure, run stopping, contain Wilson’s scrambles. And hope against hope they can create a turnover or 2 on defense.

Offense? Look for Stone Cold George Kittle to see double and triple teams, so Pettis and Bourne should get some looks.  Goodwin needs to keep his hands on the goddamn ball.

Still calling 19-13 Niners.

So, did the Charger win over the Chiefs, their first in 11 tries, give anyone any hope that we can stop our prolonged 10 game skid vs Seattle?

No?

Why not? The defense played better than they had much of the season last week against a decent if not solid Broncos team. Maybe the kids ARE alright. Malcolm Smith rode the bench, Earl Mitchell as well, to make way for Elijah Lee and DJ Jones. The DBs were in the right places for the most part, safety Marcell Harris had a nice game, and we weren’t leaving guys wide open all over the place.

Encouraging for this game, right? Hey, we have to break this streak eventually. Why not now? Seattle is coming off an emotional win vs a strong Minnesota team on a short week.

I’ve been wrong before, I’ll be wrong again.

19-13 SF.

Is this a repeat of last year’s end-of-year resurgence? A rise to fame for our backup QB, BDN? A mirage? The ghost of Charlie Krueger taking a collective shit on NoFear and company? I prefer the last one, but I digress.

This game pretty much encapsulates what I thought the team was at the start of the year. Stout run defense, a bit leaky in the pass coverage, decent enough in the pass rush. This surely hasn’t come to pass this season. And despite the optimism, this season hit the skids with the year-ending knee injury to Jimmy Garoppolo. But at least offensively, they are showing SOME improvement over the last regime. And this is with the 3rd string QB and RB manning the skill positions. Garcon is a joke, Goodwin is a conundrum, Pettis is rounding into shape, but George Kittle has proven himself to be an absolute draft steal. He’s over 1,000 yards, he has stopped dropping passes, and he has show to be a bonafide weapon in our passing attack.

We aren’t burning up the world with this offense, but again, 3rd string QB and RB, fair to middling ground game, and the red zone struggles continue. But there is reason to be optimistic if this team can get healthy.

Defensively, this game looks like what I thought we would be when the season started. Thomas getting decent pressure. Buckner in the mix most plays. Armstead stuffing the line. Linebackers making plays. That it comes this late in the season is galling, but at this point, I don’t know what to think. The braintrust started mostly rookies and young guys last week, and they performed admirably. The coverage was solid, and the pressure was enough to disrupt Keenum. Yeah, Keenum. I know. But we did grind Lindsey into the ground without any damage. He of course has been tearing up the league recently. He has run for 340 yards his past 3 games. and we held him to 30, so there’s that.

I guess the proof is in the pudding this weekend. Seattle? Well, they are fully in the playoffs as of now,  and look to keep killing us. Their defense looked very good last night, but the Bears are not the greatest of offenses. And they are on a short week.

Chicago kept RW in check until that 40 yard run, but Seattle shut down Trubisky and their run game all night. As we saw last night, RW can be pressured into shit throws himself. His pick was terrible, and their protection is iffy at best. Pressure is ESSENTIAL to us going anywhere, and BDN will be under attack, so this looks to be another low-scoring affair. One thing I do like about BDN over the Beater is his quick release. We did a lot of quick passes and even a couple slants.

Young and fast seemed to work against Denver. While Denver is not as bad as the Raiders, Seattle is a whole other deal. We will see. All we really have to do is stop with the penalties and the turnovers. Get a pick or 2. We caused 3 fumbles last weekend, but didn’t recover any of them. Of course we also put the ball on the ground 4 times. No turnovers, but shit, Goodwin himself had 2 fumbles.  Got to stop that shit.

That was a bit of a shock. Big Dick Nick engorged himself on a defense that couldn’t stop George Kittle as the 49ers raced to a first half lead they didn’t manage to give up. Although the stat differential was more than crazy.

• Kittle. He had 7 catches for 210 yards in the first half, and 0 for 0 in the 2nd.
• The Niners gained 332 yards in the 1st half – 57 in the 2nd.
• The Niners scored 20 in the 1st, and 0 in the 2nd
• The Niners gave up 0 in the 1st, and 14 in the 2nd (and Denver passed up 2 easy FG opportunities)

The big difference? They closed a game out without blowing it. Granted, they were helped immensely by Vance Joseph. He turned down 2 opportunities to kick field goals in a game that the 49ers couldn’t restart their grounded offense in the 2nd half. they did go 5-7 on those 4th down conversion attempts, but those 2 they didn’t make were huge. They were also helped by a pick on a ball that was dropped by Trent Taylor.

And overall, this is what I thought we had on defense. The team was flying around making tackles, not giving up big runs, getting pressure, and causing enough mayhem to keep Denver’s recent successful run game slowed to a crawl. From what I gathered after the game, the defense especially went with the young players at the cost of guys like Malcolm Smith, Dekoda Watson, and Jimmie Ward. D.J. Reed had a phenomenal game as he was all over the place on his 12 tackles. Solomon Thomas had a lot of inside pressure,  Blair and Reed both got sacks, and the defense held Case Keenum to 186 yards in the air on 24-42 passing. Denver got theri run game going a little with Phillip Lindsey, but in the end it wasn’t enough.

Sure, we turtled up in the 2nd half. But we got the 1st downs they desperately needed in the end as they (almost) ran out the clock to finish the game. BDN even shriveled up a bit as he hiked the ball too quickly on the 4th down play and gave Denver one additional play, but it didn’t matter.

In the end a decent win against a decent team. And we still hold the #1 seed. Can’t ask for much else. And I think BDN has solidified his place as the backup. The Beater should shine up his jock and get ready to move along.

The march toward the no 1 pick continues at home today against the  beat-up Broncs. Don;t think we will win again this year, but this is the most winnable. The Raiders look to lose against Pittsburgh so we have to keep pace.

Well, that what their quarterbacks are doing. Talk about a team that has whiffed marvelously on their latest attempts to get a bona fide QB in their stable. I me3an, even Peyton manning was a bit of a trainwreck as all he did was try not to fuck up too bad as the defense rocked and rolled teams to their championship. Paxton Lynch is out of the league after 3 misbegotten seasons, Brock Osweiler? Trevor Siemien? Riley Dixon?

Case Keenum? Undrafted not-so-phenom from the 2012 draft? Well, at 53-50, you get the picture. 6-6 this year says much the same. Fair to middling. Even in Denver’s unlikely 3 game winning streak, his numbers are pedestrian. But they did beat the Chargers and Steelers. Not too shabby.

What does that mean for us? Well, they still have Von Miller, so, seeing that this is likely BDN’s last stand before the switch back to the Beater, Mullens looks to be running for his life.  Although there is the fact that Mullens threw for over 400 yards in the Seattle debacle. A loss that was due mostly to dogshit special teams play. But the 400 yard performance was something not accomplished by a 49er quarterback since the heady days of 2012. That was the opening day shellacking of the Packers by one Colin Kaepernick. The one guy that probably could have been the Broncos quarterback savior after the retirement of Peyton. I’m sure Elway is still kicking himself for that decision.

If we didn’t fumble a punt, fumble on the 4, give up a pick 6, given up a 98 yard KO return, or sleepwalk through the entire first half, we woulda had that one! Hah!

But seriously, this scrappy team hasn’t thrown in the towel. They may blow assignments and give up 50 yard swing passes like I blow my nose, but we actually got pressure on Wilson in the 2nd half for 3 sacks, and sorta made it a game. Till the 100 yard pick 6 kinda slowed our roll. Anyhow, as usual, there were some good things to come out of the shellacking.

Dante Pettis had another nice game to back up last week’s performance.  Jeff Wilson Jr ran 15 times for 61 yards, and had 8 catches for 73 more, and except thr that fucing fumble, would have been even better. Truth be told, that was a 50/50 call, and since it is the 49ers, well, we get 49, they get 51 and the call. Ties are supposed to go to the offensive player, as the fail mary was supposed to tell us.

Anyhow, Big Dick Nick stretched things out for a fairly monstrous performance and went 30-48 for 414 yards, a couple TDs, and that godawful 100 yard 14 point swing. So, like Jerry said, every silver lining has a touch of grey.

Hey, we are still number one, and the team hasn’t quit. But I sure wish Robert Saleh would.