Holding back plays

The offense should be better with Crabtree back. Crabtree, Boldin and Davis will force teams to rethink stacking the line to stop the run.

What may start to happen as early as the Seahawks game is some more three WR sets with Boldin, Crabs and Manningham out of the pistol or shotgun. As soon as they are confident that the first two reads can quickly beat coverage on short to intermediate routes just behind the front 7 we have the answer to 8-9 in the box. There really is no other answer long term. Add in a better job on screens and draws and things could change quite a bit for the offense...Let's hope.

Originally posted by outside4949:

harbaugh holds back plays. he did both his first 2 years. its part of his philosophy. weather its a good idea or not could be questioned at this point. but it what it is.

I hope they are holding back some smoking gun. I just can't imagine they're doing that, other than small wrinkles and adjustments.

That was my theory the past two years...I'm still waiting

Originally posted by 49AllTheTime:
That was my theory the past two years...I'm still waiting

I always thought it was ridiculous to think they'd be holding back plays. But this week, after hearing Ted Robinson say he hopes they are, it got me questioning what I thought.

Originally posted by grizzlyadams:

Originally posted by 49AllTheTime:
That was my theory the past two years...I'm still waiting

I always thought it was ridiculous to think they'd be holding back plays. But this week, after hearing Ted Robinson say he hopes they are, it got me questioning what I thought.

They did it last year. They watched and waited as SEA and WAS ran the pistol and read option sets all of the second half of the year in SEA case and all year in WAS case as we used it sparingly. Then when the playoffs hit we unleashed Kap and our read option concepts and we throttled GB and as ATL overreacted to that display, Kap diced up their secondary with his arm. Needless to say we came up just short vs BAL as the league had to spend the offseason trying to keep pace with what we did. Roman even alluded to the fact that we like to keep some bullets in the chamber for when we really need them. I have great anticipation that we have some plans to line up and attack defenses very differently into the playoffs assuming we make them than we have all year. For one we have new weaponry in Crab Manny and QP and we haven't even began to show what we have in store for those guys. Their addition will make life easier for VD, Q, Gore and Kap

Originally posted by Pillbusta:

Originally posted by grizzlyadams:

Originally posted by 49AllTheTime:

That was my theory the past two years...I'm still waiting

I always thought it was ridiculous to think they'd be holding back plays. But this week, after hearing Ted Robinson say he hopes they are, it got me questioning what I thought.

They did it last year. They watched and waited as SEA and WAS ran the pistol and read option sets all of the second half of the year in SEA case and all year in WAS case as we used it sparingly. Then when the playoffs hit we unleashed Kap and our read option concepts and we throttled GB and as ATL overreacted to that display, Kap diced up their secondary with his arm. Needless to say we came up just short vs BAL as the league had to spend the offseason trying to keep pace with what we did. Roman even alluded to the fact that we like to keep some bullets in the chamber for when we really need them. I have great anticipation that we have some plans to line up and attack defenses very differently into the playoffs assuming we make them than we have all year. For one we have new weaponry in Crab Manny and QP and we haven't even began to show what we have in store for those guys. Their addition will make life easier for VD, Q, Gore and Kap

But why hold back during Carolina & NO while the offense was struggling? There's no guarantee of making the playoffs.

Originally posted by grizzlyadams:
But why hold back during Carolina & NO while the offense was struggling? There's no guarantee of making the playoffs.

I think the player personnel dictated us holding back some of what we are capable of. The only productive wideout this season to date in that game was Boldin. Manny was inching his way back and Crab and Patton were sidelined. CAR and NO had a very easy job defensively knowing they could stack the box and roll coverages towards VD and Q while disregarding our other options for the most part. Now they can't stack up with Crab, VD, Q and Mario on the field. DCs will have to pick their poison and as a result I think we will show more of what we can do offensively

Originally posted by Pillbusta:

Originally posted by grizzlyadams:

But why hold back during Carolina & NO while the offense was struggling? There's no guarantee of making the playoffs.

I think the player personnel dictated us holding back some of what we are capable of. The only productive wideout this season to date in that game was Boldin. Manny was inching his way back and Crab and Patton were sidelined. CAR and NO had a very easy job defensively knowing they could stack the box and roll coverages towards VD and Q while disregarding our other options for the most part. Now they can't stack up with Crab, VD, Q and Mario on the field. DCs will have to pick their poison and as a result I think we will show more of what we can do offensively

As much s what you said sounds true..it also make our coaches and game planing look ignorant.

Coaches are suppose to make the players better with plays that that suit their style

I can specifically remember Kap coming in while Smith was still at the reigns earlier in the season running some read option plays... so I guess we were keeping it a complete secret...

I don't think the team is holding back plays. Why would you hold back against Carolina and NO and give up the chance to catch Seattle, get a first round bye etc etc. It makes no sense at all.

I highly doubt they're holding back plays.

The Carolina and NOLA game were loss because the offense laid gigantic eggs and looked completely inept - which widened the gap between us and Seattle, pretty much ensuring them the division, tied us w/ f**king Arizona, and put our playoff chances in jeopardy as we're now in a huge wild card hunt for the 6th seed.

Do I expect to see some adjustments made and new wrinkles added to our offense as the season progresses? - YES. Our passing offense has looked like dog s**t, changes must be made if we want to compete at a high level. But deliberately holding back plays for the post season - as if we're even guaranteed a play off spot, which we're all learning this year isn't true, would be complete arrogance and stupidity. I'm sure these alleged "secret plays" could have helped us a ton all the times our offense was completely embarrassed this year.

Don't believe for a second the coaching staff is purposely holding anything back.

Originally posted by mattster03:

I can specifically remember Kap coming in while Smith was still at the reigns earlier in the season running some read option plays... so I guess we were keeping it a complete secret...

I watched all the games as well and I remember some pistol and read option as far back as 2011 with Alex Smith under center but prior to the GB game I didn't remember us running the QB as many as 16 carries read option or scrambling. We unleashed Kap in that game and GB clearly wasn't ready for it. I don't know that we do this during the regular season

Originally posted by sfninerfanMax:

I don't think the team is holding back plays. Why would you hold back against Carolina and NO and give up the chance to catch Seattle, get a first round bye etc etc. It makes no sense at all.

I don't think it is so much plays but with the personnel we had on The field our OC might have had to dial things back a bit. Notice how we started running the ball a lot more since the Colts game I had ringside seats to? Roman realized that we were getting nothing at WR outside of Boldin with Mario and Crab out and Patton hobbled. I think we see a bit more passing offense as we get healthy at WR. There won't be a new playbook for the playoffs perhaps but according to the opponent there will be more plays and we will take more risks with the targets we have now. Kap will probably tote the pill a bit more as well

Seems like every year there is a thread like this. Fans attempting to justify lousy unimaginative offense. The plays are the there, blame the coordinator.