Agree?: Lack of Depth Lead to our Bad Pass D

Originally posted by Wubbie:
So Maiocco had an article about why our Passing D failed us in the playoffs (http://www.csnbayarea.com/blog/matt-maiocco/why-49ers-pass-defense-faltered-playoffs).
He said, pretty much, that our secondary is fine, our starting pass-rushers are fine, but the lack of depth killed our late-season pass-rush.

Do you agree? In watching the playoffs, it felt like we had minimal pass-rush. Obviously, the regular season stats back up how good our pass defense is, yet something went wrong in the playoffs. It makes sense. We didn't have the same explosiveness from our pass-rush, and it's very well-documented how little our players sub out.

I really agree though. Yes, there were of course some blown assignments in the secondary, or times were they were beat, but I felt like guys were in good position to make plays. It felt like quarterbacks were beating good coverage with perfect throws. They weren't very well-disrupted.

If it truly is the case of a lack of depth in the front 7, that's definitely on Trent Baalke, and to some extent, the coaching staff, for not rotating the players more.
Thoughts?

Well I partially agree.

I think we have issues in coverage from our safety position, but depth on the D-Line is an issue. Not rotating those players also has something to do with who they have to play those spots if they rotate (IE...they don't have much).

I can't go with the "thats on Trent Baalke" thing tho. Yeah, he needs to improve that position but it's not like there is any other team in the NFL who is completely without weaknesses. That just happens to be ours. There are only so many players on a roster.

You simply aren't going to have a team that is great at every position and have really good backups at all of those positions as well. That's not reasonable.

The 49ers will do something to try and rectify that situation this offseason...but next year it might be something else that isn't perfect. All teams are flawed in some way...they just have to overcome those flaws.

lack of depth at dline and OLB

Yes and no. This was an experienced secondary and they had more tools this year and a majority of the year, we played with extra DB's. I think scheme had more to do with it and the lack of range by our S's and blown assignments by both CB's and S's. I also think the philosophy was weak too...playing off 15 yards on 3rd and 5 or letting excellent WR's come free and clean off the LOS esp. in the RZ (Boldin, Pitta, and a million others). Sad. Also, technique...DB's playing the body language of the WR's ONCE the ball got there instead of playing the ball in the air. The Raven's broke on balls and almost made INT's. We stayed 500 yards back and waited for the WR to catch the ball and THEN tackled him. That Flacco play where he was running backwards, brining Aldon with him, buying more time for the sideline-out by his WR and Brown, never once playing the ball. That may have been the easiest pick-6 you'll ever see.

That said, Brooks provided about the same in pass rush, even more this year in coverage and batted passes and Aldon almost got the sack record. Was there a drop off in the playoffs? Yes, but there was still pressure. And in those pressures, the DB's were clueless and for whatever reason, in solo coverage (see Flacco's hail mary helium balloon passes/boldin/Clliver).

The other issue is that the pressure you were getting was from Brooks, a little from Aldon/McDonald and they weren't running on you. So why not scheme to more DB's since they were getting dominated by the Raven's WR's? Coaching, scheme and philosophy, IMHO was more of an issue than anything. Using NO rotation is a poor idea. When Vic did he used RJF in the RZ who got pancaked. You should use your DL rotation in the opposite fashion.

And again, we did NOTHING to even stop the obvious (piss poor game planning/execution) pass plays...Bolding/Pitta in the RZ for simple TD's.

theres always a lack of depth at every position, you can't stack players like you use to

Originally posted by Marvin49:

Well I partially agree.

I think we have issues in coverage from our safety position, but depth on the D-Line is an issue. Not rotating those players also has something to do with who they have to play those spots if they rotate (IE...they don't have much).

I can't go with the "thats on Trent Baalke" thing tho. Yeah, he needs to improve that position but it's not like there is any other team in the NFL who is completely without weaknesses. That just happens to be ours. There are only so many players on a roster.

You simply aren't going to have a team that is great at every position and have really good backups at all of those positions as well. That's not reasonable.

The 49ers will do something to try and rectify that situation this offseason...but next year it might be something else that isn't perfect. All teams are flawed in some way...they just have to overcome those flaws.

Um, but it IS on Trent Baalke. Just because it's unrealistic to have a 100% great team, doesn't exempt him from having a weakness on the team. I'm sure he'd be the first to say that they can always do better. It's his responsibility to find 53 players and a practice squad, not just the starting 22 on offense and defense.
I'm not saying he did a bad job, because he's done phenomenally, but clearly he had a fundamental problem in building the team.

Justin got hurt and our Defense became above average instead of the best in the NFL.

yeah, I buy that we need more depth on the line.

Yes I agree totally.

It's plain and simple that when Justin went down - our secondary got exposed. How many yards passing did Brady get in the first half when JSmith was in the game and how many yards did he get in the 2nd half when Justin was out? I could be wrong but didn't he more than double his passing yards? Our pass rush wasn't nearly as effective - case closed!

Add to that we didn't have a rotation worth snot. Our starters were on the filed 90%+ in most of the games.

Factor in that we played against some excellent QB's and our secondary wasn't as good as the season prior.

There are some quality FA's and we have plenty of picks to fix it in the short and long term.

Originally posted by 49AllTheTime:

theres always a lack of depth at every position, you can't stack players like you use to

True. Obviously the salary cap is doing it's part, but I think defensive line and linebacker are two of the positions where you really try to have guys who can rotate in/out. Again, I'm not saying Baalke did a *bad* job. It's just that when you're competing in the playoffs and the Super Bowl, the margin of error is very slim. And while having some depth seems like a minor flaw, it was a contributing factor, in my opinion.

Originally posted by LasVegasWally:

Yes I agree totally.

It's plain and simple that when Justin went down - our secondary got exposed. How many yards passing did Brady get in the first half when JSmith was in the game and how many yards did he get in the 2nd half when Justin was out? I could be wrong but didn't he more than double his passing yards? Our pass rush wasn't nearly as effective - case closed!

Add to that we didn't have a rotation worth snot. Our starters were on the filed 90%+ in most of the games.

Factor in that we played against some excellent QB's and our secondary wasn't as good as the season prior.

There are some quality FA's and we have plenty of picks to fix it in the short and long term.

If anything, look at what our defense did at the beginning of the season to Green Bay and Detroit, when our defense was fresh. They clearly didn't look like that by the end of the season.

Originally posted by Wubbie:

Originally posted by 49AllTheTime:
theres always a lack of depth at every position, you can't stack players like you use to

True. Obviously the salary cap is doing it's part, but I think defensive line and linebacker are two of the positions where you really try to have guys who can rotate in/out. Again, I'm not saying Baalke did a *bad* job. It's just that when you're competing in the playoffs and the Super Bowl, the margin of error is very slim. And while having some depth seems like a minor flaw, it was a contributing factor, in my opinion.

True....DL and OL is a must for good depth, other positions you can get away without.

Originally posted by Marvin49:
Well I partially agree.

I think we have issues in coverage from our safety position, but depth on the D-Line is an issue. Not rotating those players also has something to do with who they have to play those spots if they rotate (IE...they don't have much).

I can't go with the "thats on Trent Baalke" thing tho. Yeah, he needs to improve that position but it's not like there is any other team in the NFL who is completely without weaknesses. That just happens to be ours. There are only so many players on a roster.

You simply aren't going to have a team that is great at every position and have really good backups at all of those positions as well. That's not reasonable.

The 49ers will do something to try and rectify that situation this offseason...but next year it might be something else that isn't perfect. All teams are flawed in some way...they just have to overcome those flaws.

Against Minnesota they tried subbing for J Smith, with whom I forget, and Minnesota started to gouge the defense more. After that, SF never subbed for J Smith. So Williams, Dobbs, Tukuafu can't cut it.

Haralson was injured as well as Fleming which hurt our pass rush depth. We only had two pass rushers and say what you want about Haralson, but he would have provided much needed depth at the position.

I agree with Maiocco. it was frustrating how many time we were inches away fom sacking Flacco. In 2011 most of those would have been sacks. Not having a rotation on our DLine hurt us as well as losing Smith. If we had fresher players, maybe we woulda gotten some of those sacks.

We need to find a way to make Smith less important to our overall D.When he's not in there we are average to above average at best. Teams can run at us at will and our pass rush disappears. That can't happen. We need to really hit some home runs on the dline this year because Smith isn't gonna be around forever.

Originally posted by Marvin49:

Originally posted by Wubbie:
So Maiocco had an article about why our Passing D failed us in the playoffs (http://www.csnbayarea.com/blog/matt-maiocco/why-49ers-pass-defense-faltered-playoffs).
He said, pretty much, that our secondary is fine, our starting pass-rushers are fine, but the lack of depth killed our late-season pass-rush.

Do you agree? In watching the playoffs, it felt like we had minimal pass-rush. Obviously, the regular season stats back up how good our pass defense is, yet something went wrong in the playoffs. It makes sense. We didn't have the same explosiveness from our pass-rush, and it's very well-documented how little our players sub out.

I really agree though. Yes, there were of course some blown assignments in the secondary, or times were they were beat, but I felt like guys were in good position to make plays. It felt like quarterbacks were beating good coverage with perfect throws. They weren't very well-disrupted.

If it truly is the case of a lack of depth in the front 7, that's definitely on Trent Baalke, and to some extent, the coaching staff, for not rotating the players more.
Thoughts?

Well I partially agree.

I think we have issues in coverage from our safety position, but depth on the D-Line is an issue. Not rotating those players also has something to do with who they have to play those spots if they rotate (IE...they don't have much).

I can't go with the "thats on Trent Baalke" thing tho. Yeah, he needs to improve that position but it's not like there is any other team in the NFL who is completely without weaknesses. That just happens to be ours. There are only so many players on a roster.

You simply aren't going to have a team that is great at every position and have really good backups at all of those positions as well. That's not reasonable.

The 49ers will do something to try and rectify that situation this offseason...but next year it might be something else that isn't perfect. All teams are flawed in some way...they just have to overcome those flaws.

This. Maiocco makes a great point but we also clearly have coverage issues in the secondary.

You can't argue with what happened. The same secondary was effective when both Smiths were healthy and became ineffective when they were not healthy. It was a shut down secondary when the sacks were coming and not when they weren't. Now, I do think they should work on the secondary. I think Culliver needs work locating the ball in the air. I think they might need someone to compete with Whitner, someone faster.

But, I totally agree with Maiocco - they need more defensive linemen. And, they are lucky because this draft is deep with big, tall, high-quality defensive linemen. A 6'4", 320 lb. J. Hankins with his non-stop motor would be perfect to alternate with Justin Smith. And a huge, 6'4", 360 lb. J. Jenkins at nose tackle would consistently occupy two blockers while crushing the center of the pocket allowing Bowman and Willis to run free. Plus, they'll get a couple injured d-linemen back and they can pick up more in the later rounds. A few more D-linemen and a couple more d-backs out of those 14 picks fixes this defense as far as I'm concerned.