No need to panic: 49ers will be fine

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:
Goodwin has been terrible, just plain bad, no way around it. At least Iupati has the injury excuse to fall back on,Goodwin....I don't know what his deal is.

The dude is old, he is 34. You got to drop off at some point.

Originally posted by Buchy:
I'm getting tired of quoting you for agreement


The sorry fact is, as outlined many times by Phoenix, we scheme to get one guy open. That guy is either VD or Boldin. Every other receiver is either running decoy with their head turned from the QB or blocking, they are not definitive receiving targets.

Our offense was good last year because Moss was a deep threat clearing out defenders, that's why he complained about his role. He didn't complain because he wasn't getting thrown to in a QB read offense, he complained because on most calls he was never even considered an option and his sole role was to take defenders away from the designated receiver.

The reason our pass offense is sucking, and as Ginn's better performance with Carolina has shown, is because defenses are adjusting and they know the ball is going to either Vernon or Boldin, they are now understanding who the designated receiver is. Now add to this the fact that our o-line is great at run blocking but terrible at pass blocking, and it makes the QB look like hot garbage when the other team has us figured out.

Essentially our passing woes come down to this:

1) We scheme to get one receiver open. That designated receiver is covered.
2) No other receiver is open or looking at the right time for a catch because they are running decoy routes as instructed or they are blocking.
3) Our O line pass protection is sub par and the QB is coming under pressure before there are any receiving options down field.


That's exactly what we saw last night. Vernon was injured, Boldin is obviously our only passing outlet with Mario rusty. Boldin is getting covered, we've no deep threat as VD is out and Moss is not on the team. The O-line is giving up sacks to a 3 man rush and Kaep is running for his life hoping that someone get's open after running their decoy route, but because Boldin is the designated receiver, Kaep''s on the run to his side of the field hoping he gets open or trying to force it into coverage. That's exactly what happened on the INT at the end of the game.

People are bashing on Kaep, as they bashed on Smith, and the real culprit is the incredibly shoddy, naive, one-trick pony passing offense we are running.

Excellent post. Summed up our passing offense nicely. The "one-read" scheme was a lot more effective when we had the Pistol confusing the hell out of defenses. Now not so much. It was meant to give Kap easier, defined reads. Now it just makes things tougher. Once that read is taken away, he is s**t out of luck.

Originally posted by Kronos2560:
I don't know why we are getting our hopes up over Wright and Carradine. We were saying the same crap about Manningham, "Manningham is coming back, offense will be better". LOL NOPE! Still suck! Kaepernick is trash and overrated, he needs to improve his game and start watching his own film because he is set in his ways and looks like he's having Michael Vick syndrome.

Niners will probably be 6th seed in the playoffs if we are lucky, and we will lose in the first round if we get there. Just my opinion. This team looks NOTHING like a superbowl contender.

Ravens fans were saying the same thing last season too.


As far as Kaepernick, he made some great throws today and he made some bad ones, he had little time to throw and when he did have time to throw, there was rarely anyone open. Bad game, but trash? Now you're just being emotionally driven. If McDonald catches that deep pass which was perfectly thrown, he likely scores a TD and we're having a completely different discussion on here. A lot of Kaepernick's performance was the combined result of horrendous pass-blocking and terrible, inappropriate playcalling.

Originally posted by Hopper:
I was talking about injuries exclusively to starters during this season. I'm not going to point that out again.

LOL, so if they aren't a starter it doesn't matter? He was their #1 rated CB last season and was a de facto starter on the outside for them. Spin it however you like, it was a HUGE loss for this defense.

Originally posted by SofaKing:
Excellent post. Summed up our passing offense nicely. The "one-read" scheme was a lot more effective when we had the Pistol confusing the hell out of defenses. Now not so much. It was meant to give Kap easier, defined reads. Now it just makes things tougher. Once that read is taken away, he is s**t out of luck.

I get the feeling that the coaching staff is trying to be conservative to protect Kaepernick, at this point I'm like f**k it, set him loose, let him make plays, that is what Carolina did with Cam after the Buffalo loss. I don't think things can get any worse on offense, let Kaepernick do what he does, run around, chuck the ball all over the place, let him do what Seattle lets Wilson do, just go out there and play #YOLO, chuck the ball up and see what happens. From early on he seemed to have been over-coached, scared to run, scared to make a mistake, deer in the headlights look that he didn't have last season. Spread out defenses, give him multiple targets, I'd be a lot less upset if they lost playing that way then this forced one-read b******t.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:


Ravens fans were saying the same thing last season too.


As far as Kaepernick, he made some great throws today and he made some bad ones, he had little time to throw and when he did have time to throw, there was rarely anyone open. Bad game, but trash? Now you're just being emotionally driven. If McDonald catches that deep pass which was perfectly thrown, he likely scores a TD and we're having a completely different discussion on here. A lot of Kaepernick's performance was the combined result of horrendous pass-blocking and terrible, inappropriate playcalling.

All we need is to make it into the post-season relatively healthy. It could be as the 6th seed, I don't care. Once we're in, it's anyone's game. I like our chances. I like the makeup of this team and the collection of talent is championship caliber. I believe in Harbaugh's offensive approach, but the pass concepts and Roman's situational play calling needs an overhaul.

I understand what they are trying to do with Kap. They want to scheme a single, defined read for him to recognize pre-snap to make his life easier. Fact is, it's making it harder. This approach was feasible when the Pistol was causing confusion and creating massive throwing lanes. Not anymore. Time to take the training wheels off and work in more progressions.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Originally posted by SofaKing:
Excellent post. Summed up our passing offense nicely. The "one-read" scheme was a lot more effective when we had the Pistol confusing the hell out of defenses. Now not so much. It was meant to give Kap easier, defined reads. Now it just makes things tougher. Once that read is taken away, he is s**t out of luck.

I get the feeling that the coaching staff is trying to be conservative to protect Kaepernick, at this point I'm like f**k it, set him loose, let him make plays, that is what Carolina did with Cam after the Buffalo loss. I don't think things can get any worse on offense, let Kaepernick do what he does, run around, chuck the ball all over the place, let him do what Seattle lets Wilson do, just go out there and play #YOLO, chuck the ball up and see what happens. From early on he seemed to have been over-coached, scared to run, scared to make a mistake, deer in the headlights look that he didn't have last season. Spread out defenses, give him multiple targets, I'd be a lot less upset if they lost playing that way then this forced one-read b******t.

Agree.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:
LOL, so if they aren't a starter it doesn't matter? He was their #1 rated CB last season and was a de facto starter on the outside for them. Spin it however you like, it was a HUGE loss for this defense.

I give up.

Originally posted by Hopper:
I give up.

Your original point was that 49ers have been lucky because they only lost Ian Williams, then you tried to downplay the loss of Culliver like it wasn't s**t, forget that he was their top rated CB last season who would be a full starter this season.


The loss of Crabtree was bad, the loss of Culliver was bad, I don't see much upside in the way of injuries for this team, Patton has lost out on pretty much his entire rookie season, McDonald has been hobbled with injuries that have reduced his performance, likewise so has Iupati, those guys aren't "out", but their performance has dropped off big time. Dorsey has been out at times, VD, Reid, Willis....this has been a disastrous season for injuries, anyway you slice it.

.......

Originally posted by Kronos2560:
I don't know why we are getting our hopes up over Wright and Carradine. We were saying the same crap about Manningham, "Manningham is coming back, offense will be better". LOL NOPE! Still suck! Kaepernick is trash and overrated, he needs to improve his game and start watching his own film because he is set in his ways and looks like he's having Michael Vick syndrome.

Niners will probably be 6th seed in the playoffs if we are lucky, and we will lose in the first round if we get there. Just my opinion. This team looks NOTHING like a superbowl contender.

We didn't look like one last year against Vikings, Rams twice, Seahawks, or Giants. Ravens didn't look like one pretty much the whole season either.

Originally posted by NinerGM:
1. Gore has been running great and on 3rd and 1 yard you bring in Hunter to get the one yard. Fumble lost, ends drive.
2. 1st and 10 on the 14 towards the end of the 2nd, you call a slant pass to Boldin that completes for 9 yards. You follow that up with a play call that hasn't worked on time all game; zone-read formation, play-action pass attempt to a deep receiver. As usual, pass protection doesn't hold, Kap is chased and tackled for a huge lose. It's 3rd and 14 and you call a screen to Kyle Williams that goes for 9 yards. Tell me what's wrong with this series.
3. Gore has 12 carries 61 yards at the half. For the remainder of the game Gore has 3 carries for 9 yards?
4. 2 slants called the entire passing game; one to Boldin for 9 yards, one to Manningham for 8 yards but was called back for a "pick" by Boldin. The offense would never call another slant.
5. The one pass option that was consistently open all game; RB out of the backfield over the middle - this was thrown no more than 3x, never to Hunter, never to LMJ who is all-world in space (which is the reason why he's so good with punt returns).
6.We have 3 of the better running backs all on the same team yet in our offensive sets, never 2 are on the field at the same time; and you almost never see LMJ as a receiver (despite being a punt returner which requires catching skills).

These are the 6 examples I could think of from memory. I'm sure other Zoners have others.

At the very least these call Roman's play-calling into question. At the very worst it begs the question if Harbaugh will do something about a recurring problem where we stop running, have not short to intermediate passing game, and if the coaches are encouraging Kap to take the big play at every opportunity vs. taking what the D gives him. In any event, someone isn't getting the message through and it's clear Colin isn't prepared or the offensive scheme didn't assume Carolina could generate the pressure it did. The game plan never changed. Plays that didn't work in the 1st Q, we were still running in the 3rd as if we didn't try it the first 15 times without success. Insanity.

Just wanted to pick up on this as well, because beyond my frustrations at our scheme, this is bang on in terms of our coaching mindset and lack of adjustment. We don't make any adjustments on our offense at half time it seems, we just keep plowing away with whatever Roman has written down. We're so predictable, and we get caught up in this weird macho bullheadedness where we keep banging our head against the brick wall and think it's going to crack before we do, ignoring the fact the thing is 10 feet thick and reinforced. We never use guile, and that depresses me as I grew up in the 80's watching the franchise that defined out thinking your opponents. We were tough and smart, unfortunately under Harbaugh and Roman at the moment we're just tough but there are tougher teams out there.

I think Harbaugh is smart enough now though to spot the pattern, and a few of us have picked up on it. We ar elosing in the same way to a number of teams that can match us up front. We run out of ideas and lose, getting out coached and then next game we run it over some weak team in shambles and think everything is fine.

It may be too late this season but I expect major changes in the off season if we don't do what the Ravens did. I'll be honest, I would actually fire Roman at this stage because he doesn't know enough of the passing game to take us any further. We've reached our ceiling with Roman as the coordinator and we need some major strategy/philosophy changes to our offense to take us to the next level.

Once again OP is in the wait for the cavalry to arrive mindset.

Dude, it won't make that big a difference.

That's because the problem is in the booth, maybe also under center -- with regard to the comfort level of Kap running quick hitting plays, multi read plays (iare any even called? theres debate there) -- and escaping pressure to make something out of nothing once in a while. None of that is there.

Fortunately a change in emphasis on the look, feel, and timing of our playcalling can and will do wonders for our pass production. We just need the courage to go there and leave behind a lot of these sets that are essentially obvious tells to what we will run at this point -- week 20? week 25? -- in unveiling of the read packages we deploy on the field -- of our "bo schembechler on steroids" game plan.

6-4 after next weekend

Originally posted by monsterzero789:
6-4 after next weekend

I guess we will be on track for a 10-6 season then as I had predicted when everyone laid into me.