Originally posted by kray28:
Sorry, I don't give a crap about Gore's stats. He should have good stats, as he gets basically like 60% of the team's offensive touches. With an utilization rate like that he should be leading the league in multiple offensive stats. But he isn't even doing that. And more important, the Niners aren't winning.
And the stats don't mean much. Great stats for Gore does not necessary mean great things for the Niners. The Niners offense should play as a team, and utilize its' team strengths, not just hand the ball off to one guy and let him carry the team.
Gearing everything around Gore is recipe for disaster, and basically every year with as the featured back has seen the 49ers lose as a team. Good teams know how to shut him down.
He's had most of our offensive touches since 2006. That doesn't mean he's getting a huge number of touches. It's the yards he's been getting per touch that is important. The guy who is second on the list is Steven Jackson. He has a lower career average per run and average per catch.
Run
Gore: 4.8
Jackson: 4.3
Catch
Gore: 8.5
Jackson: 8.2
You say you don't care about stats because he's getting such a large percentage of offensive touches
this year. Can you not see that the coaching and blocking are awful? Teams know where we are going to run before we snap the ball. What do you expect Gore to do? He's running the plays that are called for him and the line can't block eight guys who all know what gap we're targeting.
Gore has shown season after season that he can break huge runs out of a pile that looked like he was going to be stuffed. He's only had the one huge run this season against the Raiders and there was good blocking on that play for once. It was also one of the few creative run plays we've executed properly. It was taking advantage of our predictability with our penchant to run "Power O". We pulled Iupati like we were running a normal "Power O" and at the same time we pulled Baas to run off tackle. Iupati stops mid-pull and turns to contain backside defenders in place of Baas. Baas continues on and it plays just like a normal off tackle play, but because we made it look like "Power O" the defense was set to fill the B gap like normal, but we stretched it outside and walled them off easily with Norris, A.Davis, and V.Davis after hitting the C gap because they were slowed by the fake.
Unfortunately, we continue to run "Power O" (pull Iupati into right B gap and have Gore follow) even when it's clear that the defense knows we're going to run it most of the time. They just stuff that gap by squeezing Rachal and Davis, while keeping the edge contained. Sometimes it works for us, most of the time it doesn't. Almost all of our best run plays are built on the predictable failure of this play.
Here's the play with the Saints failing outside contain:
You can see just how filled that B gap is. It's almost always like that.
This next one is how the play is supposed to look, only we're running it out of three wide:
It's successful because the box isn't stacked to stuff it due to the pass formation.
I'm not going to be able to find you video of the many stuffs we've seen. My point is that we need to mix up the run game more. We are way too predictable and it's absurd. Again, this is on the coaches, not Gore.
I agree with you that we need to do a better job of getting the ball to our other weapons. I mean... you want to do that if you're building around Gore or not. It's just basic football. We just have terrible coaches and terrible blocking. We had a couple games with Troy where he was able to extend plays in spite of the o-line and coaching and improvise to get the ball our other play makers. We won those games, right?
Broncos Game
Total Offensive Touches: 54
Gore's Touches: 30
56%
Rams Game
Total Offensive Touches: 43
Gore's Touches: 25
58%
So, your theory that giving Gore around 60% of the offenses touches being bad is obviously wrong, right?
Well, not so much. The point is that you can still spread the ball around (historically well in the game against the Rams) and still get Gore a high percentage of touches. Troy Smith was just able to overcome the limitations of the o-line and the coaching staff by extending plays with his legs and improvising.
The problem is the coaching and the o-line. We can't be consistent with our game plan if we can't run or pass block and our coaches are being predictable.
Not Gore's fault.