Originally posted by dj43:
Originally posted by AKfanster:
I had predicted 8-8 this season, but after watching the last couple of pre-season games I'm thinking 8 wins is a bit much.
We all know about the horrible pass rush, but the o-line's horrible pass blocking was kinda of a surprise. Can the QB get 3 seconds, just 3 seconds before having to run for his life? It's gonna be 07 all over again if Raye doesn't get this figured out.
Don't judge the OL by the Dallas game. The Cowboys have one of the best pass rushes in the league. They will make a lot of OLs look bad this season. Also Snyder and Baas were both out of the lineup.
Good points. I do have some major question marks heading into the season:
1. Medical Staff - how many times have we drafted a player and/or brought in key FA's and couldn't assess the health of players (see Alex Smith, Jonas Jennings, Marvel Smith, Michael Lewis, etc.). I think it's time to get a whole new staff Niners! What's sad is that when we signed Jonas, we all went to their fan boards and they told us to a T what we had. How can a professional medical staff not have that inside knowledge?
2. Pass protection - our o-line is suspect. They are terrible in pass protection and have caused both Smith/Hill to play in panic mode. They need to be able to sit back there with confidence and grow in their confidence. Without great pass protection, they will never develop consistency with ANY WR save for the TE & RB on dump-offs. This line appears to be solid in run blocking but fails miserably in short yardage and to me, this defines your o & d-lines.
3. Pass rush - when your entire 3-4 is banking on Manny Lawson instead of upgrading the NT position, you're in trouble. It'll be a long year for the secondary. Good thing we've got a lot of depth b/c there will be fatigue injuries.
4. Play-calling - I am very curious to see if Manusky continues to call vanilla defenses, if on offense, Raye will be just as vanilla and Singletary blows it using proper TO's, play reviews, etc.
5. Injuries - they've already happened to key player and they will happen again. Do we really have the depth? Injuries tend to happen more to teams that play on their heels. That is our team to date.
6. Schedule/away-games - we've got a pretty tough schedule and one thing (like the SF Giants) that has always stood out for me is that we're a terrible away-team. Can Singletary turn this around?
7. Management - are the constant changes in coaches (esp. the OC's), poor drafting (save for late round picks) and non-looks at key FA's going to catch up to us this year like they do every year? Keep in mind, this may be the worst offseason ever...we added ZERO starting draft picks to an inflated 7-9 team (including bad press withy Crabtree), two of the three key FA's we brought in are either hurt or retired and one may be beat out by Brown (Bly). So, in short, we did not add a dominant NT, proven pass rusher at the OLB positions and are now banking on Snyder at RT. So did we improve or regress? Did we only add depth? While our 2nd-4th stringers look better then most teams, did we improve our #1's at all?
These are my key concerns. Hopefully many of these can be rectified before the season but for now, these are the major concerns I have going into the season in order for us to have anything better then a 7-9 or 8-8 season and a shot at the playoffs.