Originally posted by Willisfn4life:
Originally posted by MC9BEAT:
Originally posted by Willisfn4life:
Originally posted by MC9BEAT:
Originally posted by BOI49er:
There are two sure ways to get your head coach fired. First, underperform your talent level, and secondly, lose the locker room. Jim Harbaugh has done both this year.
Who has ever heard of an NFL locker room so disfunctional that it literally has two? The coaches favorites stand close to him in the facility locker room, and the rest have fled to the stadium. The players go into games ready to win, but as the games wear on and they start to tire, they don't dig deep. They let up, and we score little in the second half. No matter what your lead in the first half, it's hard to win if you can't score in the second. This has really accelerated in the second half of the season. He's got to go.
For all the praise heaped on him on this board, he has many failings in his coaching. Here are a few in my judgement.
1. Trying to build a perennial winner by choosing athleticism over quick thinking in your quarterback position. That's just dumb. How about not running out of bounds stopping the clock with 3:30 left in the game sitting on a seven point lead. How about setting the defense up by looking them off of where you want to go a bit more often. We sure threw the league for a loop for a while, but it's all over now.
2. Not getting plays off on time, and blowing way too many time outs in the process. This has been going on since day one, and it has never been fixed.
3. Insisting on ball security mental discipline in your players. Kaepernick was swinging that ball around like a discus thrower on that sack/fumble/touchdown. He has always done that, and he has made no progress. If you see players being careless with the ball, as a coaching staff, you bench them, no matter who they are. Harbaugh won't, so as in dog training, what you let them do, you are training them to do. If Quentin Patton had put the ball in his outside arm in overtime, that fumble would not have happened.
4. Excessive penalties are always and everywhere on the coaching staff. See above. If you tolerate them, you will have them. You have to sit the culprits and let them think about how they can earn their way back onto the field, and stay there.
5. As Jaws says, points come out of the passing game. Nobody can complain about wanting a strong running game, but you can't do it at the expense of your passing. If we want to try to win by having a strong defense and taking no chances on offense by keeping the ball on the ground, let's just bring back SingleCell, who said to the offense "you just don't screw it up, and my defense will win it in the fourth quarter". How's that working out. We're losing in the fourth quarter because we can't score late in games and put them out of reach.
To win Super Bowls, you need a top defense and you need to scare people on offense. You have to frustrate defenses by making them feel that no matter what they do, it will be wrong. You do this on both the macro level, in that if they try to stack the box against the run, they know you will kill them with the pass, and conversely, and you do this at the micro level, in that no matter which way the safety goes, it will be wrong, because he can't cover two guys and your quarterback will read it and hit the open guy. And, your quarterback is so accurate that he will usually put the ball in that one foot window that allows maximum run after catch yardage. This is how the San Francisco 49ers win Super Bowls, and we are nowhere near there now. Our offense is unacceptable.
It's time for both Harbaugh and Kaepernick to go, and get back to 49er football. Let's stop this simplistic thinking that, let's see, we used to be bad, and then we got Harbaugh and Kaepernick and we were good, so OMG, let's not lose them. We ARE bad again, and looking in the rear view mirror will not show us where we are going. We're not improving, and other teams have learned how to play us, and since Harbaugh does not have the answers, it's not going to get better. To stick with this duo would be wasting time and the good core of players we still have.
A good coach overperforms his talent level. Let's get us one of those.
You make a lot of good points but it is not the whole story. We are all dissapointed with our offense and Kap's slow progress in developing.
Still. The Ravens won a superbowl with Trent Dilfer at QB and nobody feared their offense. They beat the Raiders in the playoffs with a total of 7 points scored by their offense I believe.
The seahawks won it last year and nobody is shaking in their boots over the mighty seahawk offense. We played them last week with an injury riddled team in their crib, the toughest home field in the NFL, and gave up 17 points 4 of which were a gift by the refs. That's a whopping 13 points they scored against our injury riddled team that had another 4 injuries during that game.
We had 8 starters out on defense alone against the chargers. EIGHT! We were also missing many of their back ups. Add to that the injuries on offense and it becomes overwhelming. We will finish with 7 wins this year. That's middle of the pack in a year when we had more injuries than any year I can remember going back in to the 70's. Add the Aldon Smith suspension and releasing RayMac. Add all the bad calls that just kept going the other teams way. We lost a TD and a Safety to the refs in the rams game alone. Then throw in the bad luck. There were 4 fumbles in the charger game and we didn't have a shot to get any of them. The ball bounced their way every time. With all the crap that we couldn't control. The refs, The bounces, The injuries, The suspension of Aldon and Release of RayMac 7 wins is not that bad of a record. How many teams in the NFL could have won 7 games under these circumstances? There are a bunch of teams that couldn't win 7 games without any of this happening to them.
How good would the Superbowl Champion Seahawks be missing 8 of their starters on defense and some of their best back ups as well and more injuries on offense? Add the ball bouncing the other way , way more often than it bounces yours and having to give up a lot of points to bad officiating as well?
How many games would we have won this year if our injury report matched the seahawks and the refs called a fair game? Probably around 11 wins. I am also dissapointed in the offense even though they scored 28 points against the chargers and blew a scoring drive with a fumble inside their 5 and lost another score on a long TD pass to VD called back or it would have been more. The offense has been a big dissapointment this year but the overall record is hardly an indictment of Harbaugh considering the circumstances.
You both make great points . I think his frustration goes beyond this season though. Harbaugh put excitement into 49er football again . There is no questioning in that. With that said there is a long list of problems that he has failed to clean up in his 4 years and i think BOI really nailed most of them.
For me it is his inability to make halftime adjustments. This year of our 8 losses . We lead 5 of them at half and went up on a bad raiders team in the third then lost them all. It seems like many of the games Harbaugh has lost in his era has been this way. Lose it in the last half. I'm not sure what the percentage is or if it can be tracked but I'm sure its high. It just seems like a lot of harbaughs act has been caught up too by the rest of the NFL and either he is unable to adjust or unwilling.
I am watching the Chiefs/Steelers game. In 15 games the Steelers have scored a total of 1 TD on their 1st drive. We have scored 6. The Steelers are 9-5 and leading in this game and most think they have a good offense yet we outscored them in opening drives 6 to 1. Everybody already knows our schemes and has plenty of game film on our offense and on Kap yet we have 6 opening drive TD's so it's not the scheme or the gameplan.
It is as you say the halftime and in game adjustments. The Head Coach can have a big impact on the gameplan but the in game and halftime adjustments fall more on the OC and less on the Head Coach. You not only make your adjustments but you have to be able to come out and see what adjustments the other team has made and then adjust to that and Roman doesn't seem to be up to the task. 2nd half play calling is always suspect.
As for benching players no matter who they are because they don't play the way you know they should - don't know about that. You can drill in to them proper techniques and even discipline them but benching key players is not always easy. Kap needs to secure the ball but I remember the way Wendell "fumble" Tyler used to hold the ball out away from his body for balance when he cut and Bill Walsh never benched him. We do take chances on offense. Some think we take too many. Last season ended with an 18 yard fade that was picked. I thought we should have run the ball or thrown short safer passes. We don't have a true deep threat WR and Vernon Davis being missing most of the season didn't help either. He had 13 TD's last year and 2 this season.
In the end winning is great medicine and losing permeates everything. Take away the massive amount of injuries we had this season and we are a winning team going to the playoffs. We have momentum in games, in the locker room and in practice instead of this dark cloud and feeling of hopelessness. Show me any team that has suffered this many injuries in a season and not had locker room problems. It's been rough on all of us watching the injuries and the losses. Imagine what it's like for the players to live it.
This idea that everybody has figured out Harbaugh's offense and the run is now over, they have our number is wrong. We lead the league in opening drive TD's. How could that be if everybody has our number? Most of our ills can be fixed with some speed added to our offense and a better OC who can make good adjustments and a quality QB coach. We don't need a whole new offense or a new Head Coach.
It appears that York wants Harbaugh gone. I want York gone. Eddie D. was way better.
I'm not sure there is much to debate about the whole opening drive argument. The steelers are averaging over a 100 more yards a game then us and have scored 389 points to our 286. Some teams just get going quicker than others and people can still be on to our scheme and we still score points no matter when the TDs are scored.
Schematics aren't everything. Talent has its place too and we have plenty of talent on both sides of the ball. Just because you know somebody's scheme doesn't mean that you'll shut them completely down. Players still have to execute. With that said though. We have had many of the same problems the last 4 years. Timeouts to save delay of games. Costly penalties. Constantly blowing leads in the second half. No screen game and yet we've never adjusted.
Harbaugh plays a hand in the play calling process so his handprints are just as much on the bad halftime adjustments as roman. When you continually get outcoached on the second half then that is very much on the scheme and coaching.
Now I agree with you that we would have won more games with a healthier defense. There's no way the Chargers come back in that game yesterday if we were healthy on D
Regardless of how good our d is though if we can't score and generate more offense then we have been then once you play the teams at their best in the playoffs we still wouldn't win.
The fact is our offense hasn't improved since it peaked during 2012. We have continued to add more talent on that side of the ball but have failed to get better offensively. That is why I say teams have figured our scheme out.
Now this isn't an anti I cant stand harbaugh post. I would love to see him stay prove all the doubters wrong including myself and win the super bowl but he doesn't seem willing to fire roman and adjust the offense. So I don't see that happening.
Everything that could go wrong did go wrong this year. Not only would a healthy defense have kept some teams of scoring big on us like the chargers but it would have done much more. Everthing connects. We used to lead the league in starting field position. Opponents had a lot of 3 and outs and we started a lot of drives at the 35 or 40 yard line. We were getting turnovers in opponents territory setting up scores. Our field position this year has been horrible. Our D has been a bend don't break D not a shutdown D. We give up a lot of long drives and then to their credit have gotten some turnovers deep in our territory or forced a lot of FG attempts. Under the circumstances an amazing job but not our typical shut down D forcing 3 and outs and getting great field position or getting turnovers in scoring position. It not only gave us great field position but our offense would often take the field after being on the bench for 3-5 plays and more in a rythymn against a more fatigued defense that only rested for 3-5 plays. We led the league in field position but we were also at the top in time of possession which kept us more in a rythymn while wearing down opposing defenses which shows up on the field especially in the 2nd half. Now even when our D has a good game opponents are going on long drives and icing our offense while their defense is resting on the sideline. All of this does have a big impact on our offense.
So does missing Vernon Davis for the year. Our 1 true vertical threat. Add to that the O-line woes at Center and RT and boone's hold out. Add to that far worse field position, more time being iced on the sideline and taking the field against less fatigued defenses and it piles up.
Now throw in the bad luck we have had with the refs this year and it just keeps piling on.
Give us a healthy team and good officiating and we would be the kind of team we were last year.
We would still have complaints about the offense as we did last year but they wouldn't seem as monumental. Many of us including myself were questioning the play calling and Kap's ability to find the open man prior to this season but we were winning and we did have shots to win it all. If we were healthy it would be the same thing this season.
. One can only dream.