Things I've noticed this season

Originally posted by LambdaChi49:
Secondary is just an absolute glaring weakness. Any team that throws more than 30 times against us has a good chance of winning.

Yup. 2 weeks and 3 blown big plays.

Originally posted by LambdaChi49:
Secondary is just an absolute glaring weakness. Any team that throws more than 30 times against us has a good chance of winning.

This is why we dont allows 100 rushers.

Yea Williams and Whitner are not upgrades. At some point i was hoping willis or Bowman would check him man to man. Good observations. I don't think Gore is done. Look at the Falcons game last night and look at the holes Turner has to run through. You don't see the Niners o line anywhere near that level of run blocking.

Originally posted by lamontb:
Yea Williams and Whitner are not upgrades. At some point i was hoping willis or Bowman would check him man to man. Good observations. I don't think Gore is done. Look at the Falcons game last night and look at the holes Turner has to run through. You don't see the Niners o line anywhere near that level of run blocking.

Thats exactly the reason why we need a little quick footed shifty RB that can create a little more on his own. Frank needs that first whole to be there otherwise its pretty much lights out.

Originally posted by lamontb:
Yea Williams and Whitner are not upgrades. At some point i was hoping willis or Bowman would check him man to man. Good observations. I don't think Gore is done. Look at the Falcons game last night and look at the holes Turner has to run through. You don't see the Niners o line anywhere near that level of run blocking.

I think Manusky would have had a LB covering him, with a safety lurking in the shadows. I miss that.

Originally posted by unst4bl3:
I think Manusky would have had a LB covering him, with a safety lurking in the shadows. I miss that.

damn we are already missing Manusky

I've been around NT for a long time...was out of the country for around a year and my user profile was deleted due to inactivity. Not a big poster, but active on here since at least 05.

Anyways, to the stuff that actually matters...the Niners.

Susweel's orignal post matches verbatim with my own reflections on the game this morning. What troubles me most about the team is the conservative playcalling/playing not to lose instead of playing to win. Now, granted, there are several reasons for Harbuagh's conservativeness, namely Alex Smith as QB and poor OL. That said, there is no excuse for playing not to lose. In fact, the Niners have played not to lose the last decade. Hell, I even remember during Mooch being asked why the team lacked a killer instinct during his last year here.

I believe this particular team has the talent to compete for a divisional title this year (though this is not exactly saying much given that we play in the NFC West ). Alex Smith, for all his many liabilities and faults, has proven himself to be a serviceable QB; moreover, the guy has shown himself to be quite adept at running the spread offense--a set called by the incomparable Jimmy Raye no less. Trying to establish the run first flat out does not work for this team. Gore seems to have slowed slightly and the OL remains porous. Now, the weak OL will pose problems when passing, as evidenced yesterday with the multiple sacks, but we need to open up the playbook and play to win the game. We have one of the most talented top-to-bottom lineup of pass catchers in the league. Though there may not be a superstar in the group, a corps of Edwards, Crabtree, Morgan, Ginn, and Williams augmented by VD and Walker should be exploited with regularity. Our TEs and WRs are the strength of this team, not the RB and poor OL. I know we have Smith at QB, but he has played best when allowed to throw the ball around in a more open offense. VD, at his best running the seam route, is being relegated to a Mike Martzian role. This is unacceptable and needs to be rectified immediately. Smith has shown he can have some success throwing the ball downfield; After 1/7 of the season gone, we've gone downfield maybe 2-3 times. Harbuagh needs to man up and begin playing to win. No team has ever performed well when playing not to lose, as we niner fans know only too well given the last decade of football.

On D, we also need to be more aggressive, as we rarely blitzed yesterday. Of course, Romo was shredding us and blitzing may have only allowed for more big plays, but Romo is also a QB who struggles when under pressure. Our DB, the liability of our defense, cannot cover receivers while a QB sits back with all day to throw the ball. The front 7 is in fact quite good. It needs to be utilized as such to help cover for our very weak DB.

Originally posted by susweel:
damn we are already missing Manusky

which is crazy, because i wanted him gone ever since that saints loss last year. I was saying it every week. Granted though, when I heard we were hiring fangio and saw that his defensive history looked like the defensive version of Jimmy Raye..... I wasn't too excited.

Originally posted by susweel:

Originally posted by LambdaChi49:
Secondary is just an absolute glaring weakness. Any team that throws more than 30 times against us has a good chance of winning.

This is why we dont allows 100 rushers.

Yeah...why run against the 9ers when ANY QB can just throw it up and count on our secondary biting. Happens every game at least once or twice since 2005.

People always want to cite the QB issue as the "kommon deenominayter" but forget that even when the QB plays generally well (Vikings 2009, Saints 2010, and many many other games) our secondary just has a habit of giving up big plays. Clements was helpful but he got burned consistently.

People comment: "We haven't had consistent QB play since 2002." True. We also haven't had consistent secondary play either. When was the last time we had ABOVE AVERAGE or elite people in coverage. Eric Davis mentioned this yesterday, basically saying thats why the focus has been signing (and over paying) decent cover guys. Pass rushers are important yes, but QBs are getting better at beating the blitz and teams are just simply evolving (or have evolved) to pass happy quick strike offenses. A great pass rush will help but it means nothing against a Drew Brees or Aaron Rodgers. League is full of shoot outs now. We're going into a gun fight with a .22 while other teams have AR-15s.

Wow... this is a really good, fair assessment. Nice.

Coming from the mighty Sus, this is definitely welcomed analysis.

Originally posted by susweel:
Thats exactly the reason why we need a little quick footed shifty RB that can create a little more on his own. Frank needs that first whole to be there otherwise its pretty much lights out.

nobody feet are that fast Turner is slower than Gore. 95% of the running plays a defender is in the back field. It's about the run blocking, and scheme. This team is still way to obvious with their run packages. Now when Gore starts falling down on 1st contact and not churning his legs then it's all on him. Right now it's more on o line. They are all at fault.

Originally posted by lamontb:
nobody feet are that fast Turner is slower than Gore. 95% of the running plays a defender is in the back field. It's about the run blocking, and scheme. This team is still way to obvious with their run packages. Now when Gore starts falling down on 1st contact and not churning his legs then it's all on him. Right now it's more on o line. They are all at fault.

This.

The offense still looks too predictable. Even with all the shifting around you don't ever see the defense getting into a rut and shouting at one another to make an adjustment to cover this guy or that guy. They just kinda watch the Niners line up, move around a little bit, and say "meh."

Opposing teams will never respect it either until we actually start calling some plays they know will hurt them. Instead it's flat out to the left, flat out to the right, run up the middle. It's that Chicago mafia mindset that Mike Ditka instilled in Singletary, and now Harbaugh is doing it too.

Originally posted by zillabeast:
The offense still looks too predictable. Even with all the shifting around you don't ever see the defense getting into a rut and shouting at one another to make an adjustment to cover this guy or that guy. They just kinda watch the Niners line up, move around a little bit, and say "meh."

Opposing teams will never respect it either until we actually start calling some plays they know will hurt them. Instead it's flat out to the left, flat out to the right, run up the middle. It's that Chicago mafia mindset that Mike Ditka instilled in Singletary, and now Harbaugh is doing it too.

That's because the defense isn't scared of our passing game. Our opponents are all about Stop the Gore, Stop the Niners.

On top of that, we run very little slants and deep routes or we don't throw to them (one or the other). Romo thrived on the slants.