Why do we succumb to teams we can't Bully?

You could make a similar thread about every team and its losses. Team identity is based on trends, not individual blips on the radar.

Originally posted by glorydayz:
feeling the raft of Gholdson

The f**k are you talking about.

dadgum b***hes better recognize the niners new hotness this year!!!

Well, let's forget about 2011 and look at last year. Your question, though, answers itself. If we CAN bully a team, then by definition we should win. If we don't bully them, then that could be because of numerous things - not because they are "tougher". I don't think that we were out-bullied in most of those game if you think back. Probably the only game where we were bullied was the second SEA game.

Vikings - They just outplayed us, and Ponder had probably his best game as a pro. I think we were unprepared for some of the stuff in that game, and just dug a hole where we couldn't climb out of it.

Rams - Tough team that we couldn't bully, but we beat ourselves in both games. In the first, AS got hurt early and Kap's first time taking over the team just was a little disjointed. In the second game, I cannot begin to count the boneheaded plays and miscues that led to our defeat.

Seahawks - In the second game, we were outright beaten and bullied. They were the better team that day. Let's not forget intangibles in that one (we had secured a playoff spot already, were coming off the slugfest with NE the prior Monday, etc.)

Giants - Not a great game on our part, and was AS's worst game in the past 2-3 years. He turned the ball over in our own redzone like 3 times. Bullying either way had nothing to do with it. We played bad.

Ravens - Listen, the SB hurt, but it was the same exact game as the NFC championship. We fell behind by a bunch and had to claw back. I see no difference between the ATL game and the BAL game, but the ATL game doesn' make your list.

All in all, if we can bully a team we win. I don't think we bullied GB or DET last year, but we won handily. The most important thing is that it is very rare for someone to bully us, and that is why we are now yearly contenders.

Originally posted by tmpluff:

I disagree in 2011 we couldn't really bully the Stealers, Bengals, Eagles, Seahags, Giants, or Rams yet we beat them. It was just 2012 we had some issues, mainly it was by being too cute (Giants, Rams.....) that hurt us. or we were dinged up (need more Dline Depth IMO) (Seahags and Ravens issues)

We definitely bullied the Steelers in 2011.

Against Vikings we were Alex Smith lead Niners. Conservative offense and hope for defense to make plays. Add in we were against Adrian Peterson and games like this are tough to win, he lives for these games. Rams games were early in the Kaep process. We also had no answer for Amendola. These are just teams that for some reason or another had pieces we weren't able to overcome.

I think we all saw a difference between the "personality" of the team that the poster is referring to. It is hard to define exactly - is it bullying or something else - but I 100% agree that in some games, even when behind, the team seemed to play a coherent, efficient, and winning (dominant) style of football. And then in other games the team seemed to be disjointed / flat / lost and would fall into a pattern where everything worked for the other team and we couldn't get anything going on offense or get off the field on defense. It was almost a Jeckle & Hyde team.

By the end of the season, the Jeckle and Hyde theme was between halves of football -- NE, Atlanta, Ravens. As a matter of fact, in both the Atlanta and Ravens game the secondary was doing a lot of calls before plays and talking after plays as if they were trying to get the coverages right. This reveals a weakness in the game planning and coaching prep of the players.

IMHO - this is on the coaching. When the team is unprepared for what the other team does (offense and defense) they look lost. The strange thing is that the coaches seem to wait to halftime to make significant changes. Yes, there are half time adjustments, but it is a myth that pro teams wait until half time to make significant adjustments. Good coaching staffs make adjustments throughout the game. Both the DC and OC seemed slow to make adjustments to get in a rhythm when the original plan wasn't working.

MAYBE as only a 2nd year staff and system, the 9ers have had less flexibility to make significant adjustments to their pre-game plans. More experience will let the coaches and players more seamlessly make adjustments during the game. They will just have a much greater depth of being able to relate back to prior adjustments or game plans they used to successfully beat what they are seeing.

Regardless, this needs to improve a lot. It seems to me that other teams realized that if they can prepare a game plan the 49ers don't expect, then they can gain a big advantage. This vulnerability needs to be eliminated next year.

A good coaching staff will realize (self scout) what it's weaknesses were and fix them - and I fully expect Harbaugh and staff to do that.