Originally posted by baltien:
Lol. Do you think that losing his best receiver in training camp and being forced to rely on the guy that just got traded to the team may have had something to do with it?
Some of you guys are thinking about this way too hard. I suppose the improvement seen once Crabs got on the field is just a coincidence as well? Listen, nobody is saying that with Crabs Kap is the second coming of Steve Young, but losing a 1000+ yard receiver would hurt any offense. I fully acknowledge that part of Kap's "struggles" boil down to experience and maturity, but let's not pretend like he's been playing with a full deck this season. And because of that, you can't really accurately judge his progress.
Look at what happened to Brady while Gronk was out and he only had an oft-injured Amendola and a bunch of no-name WR's to rely on. I suppose he regressed as well? Now notice the difference when Gronk is healthy and putting the fear of God into the secondary. The ENTIRE passing game gets elevated.
Amazing how that works, huh?
This has been discussed in many threads over the last few weeks. Unlike the patriots offensive staff, the 9er staff doesn't seem to utilize offensive skill during a game if the skill doesn't have a good practice, or makes a mistake on field or in paractice, or for some other unknown reason. The result is that we don't call plays to a wide variety of players and it gets easier and easier to key on our schemes and that is hurting the team hurting production and helping to make kap hesitent and playing up his weaknesses. Our schemes take secondary players like baldwin + macdonald + patton out of the game plan much more effectively than any d can.
Anyway, what is happening -- at least up last week -- was that kap was so involved in seeing through the play that he was missing open reads and not taking what was there, just because it wasn't the play. He needs to improv, take what's there even if roman didn't scheme it. Just do it. It will make things so much better.