Will it be the ole Greg Roman play calling again?

Originally posted by pasodoc9er:

Like NC said in response to my post, that romn will be gone by yrs end if he doesn't improve vastly. To which NCommand replied, "if he is still calling plays like last 3 yrs, he won't make it past midseason" (paraphrased, but you get the point. ) Actually if we come out and our OC calls plays like last 3 yrs and kap with crabs, stevie, anquan and Vernon...all 4 all pros.. then romn could very well be gone before midseason. Based on 1st PS game, we learned nothing re: romn. Or at least , I didn't.

Mid season..yeah right

I felt like he's gotten more dry every single year.

First year was very bland, but we knew our identity, which meant we could put points up at will. Thanks to David Akers' monster year, and a great year by our o-line and Gore.

Second year was a lot more dynamic, but when Smith went down, he started experimenting with different packages and designed QB runs. It was a lot more dynamic, but it never felt solid like 2011 did.

Last year was painful to watch... Every time we came out on offense, I had no idea what to expect. Nothing seemed natural. In fact, everything seemed forced and designed to the tee. It was either Gore down the middle, Kaep rollout to the left and pass to Davis (especially in the RZ), Kendall Hunter Sweep, or deep pass to Vernon. Boldin and Crabtree were allowed to make plays toward the end of the year, but that was mainly because they took the brakes off Kaep.

But yeah, I REALLY don't want to see a repeat of last year. It's amazing how far we got with how inept our offensive attack was.

I would rather see us take more initiative in being explosive, rather than playing not to lose. I want to see blowouts when our defense plays as well as they did, and I sure want us to destroy good teams like Carolina and NO when they could barely move the ball on us all game long. This should be out year, but a lot is going to come down to this offense making the most of their talent.

Sorry, I wrote too much. I get carried away.

Preseason the 9ers keep the play calling as vanilla as possible. I was surprised they even blitzed Thursday.

So we won't really know the answer until the first real game.

Am I the only one concerned about our defense regressing this year or is it just me?


For once im actually not too worried about the offense

Originally posted by defenderDX:

Am I the only one concerned about our defense regressing this year or is it just me?


For once im actually not too worried about the offense

Based on Aldon and Bow's situations, and the re-vamped secondary I expect the D to come out of the gate slow. I expect the D to come together by mid-season and they will be lights out heading into the playoffs.

I expect the O to take a big jump this year, especially if we can figure out how to be more lethal in the red zone.

Originally posted by defenderDX:

Am I the only one concerned about our defense regressing this year or is it just me?


For once im actually not too worried about the offense

I'm with you. Now I'm starting to worry about the offensive line too. The Kilgore, Looney and a not 100% Davis scares the crap out of me too.

Originally posted by TheSilverFox1971:

Originally posted by defenderDX:
Am I the only one concerned about our defense regressing this year or is it just me?


For once im actually not too worried about the offense

Based on Aldon and Bow's situations, and the re-vamped secondary I expect the D to come out of the gate slow. I expect the D to come together by mid-season and they will be lights out heading into the playoffs.

I expect the O to take a big jump this year, especially if we can figure out how to be more lethal in the red zone.

I'm anticipating a lapse in production from our defense and a jump in production from our offense. It's always been the other way around. Something tells me our defense is due for a less productive year.

Originally posted by NinerG94:

Originally posted by defenderDX:
Am I the only one concerned about our defense regressing this year or is it just me?


For once im actually not too worried about the offense

I'm with you. Now I'm starting to worry about the offensive line too. The Kilgore, Looney and a not 100% Davis scares the crap out of me too.

I never said I was worried about the offense.

We'll know 3 or 4 games into the season. Last season they began to play around with the passing game in the opening GB game and in the following games but things fell apart so our passing game went into emergency conservative mode. Now, with four 1,000 yard WR's and a pro bowl TE it would be a travesty if Roman doesn't open the passing game up. The only thing holding the passing game back would be really bad play from Kaepernick as we saw last season against the Colts, Seattle, Houston and Car. When the QB was passing for under 200 yards a game with under a 50% completion rate....our passing game didn't "recover" until the Redskins game and it was still below average at that point.

Kaepernick has a lot of work to do. I was PISSED when I read he didnt work with a QB coach in the offseason and am angry that Whitfield is working with the other QB's more than Kap (in camp). He should improve just by having 4 very good WR's around but Roman's style is also lacking, it's not just Kaps inconsistent play. We're not really running a WCO, no screens....no nothing which requires the O-line to be more dynamic in pass blocking. That's another aspect- our O-line gets all this praise but it didnt hold up very well last season in pass protection and isn't very dynamic when it comes to screens and such. Kaps arm also lacks finesse. He should have been working with George Whitfield daily after the NFCCG loss. Every single day. He should be working with him now everyday but he's not.

Generally, outside of play design, the play calling itself was bad. I knew when they were going to run or pass on just about every play EXCEPT when Roman would stop running when the run was working. He did that in two games and we lost both games because of it. The delay of game penalties also stunk. They said they "streamlined" the playbook to simplify things at the line- said that wont be an issue but we'll see when the season starts.
Our season and SB chances pretty much rely on Kaepernick improving. The season relies on our passing game improving and our offense carrying some of the load early on in the season while Bowman/Aldon are out and while our secondary fuses together as a unit. Our defense is a BIG ???? going into the season. We need to keep them off the field as much as possible so we have a risky situation manifesting. If we try to change the passing game too much it may backfire like it did last season and our young inexperienced D will be put in a bad position if our O puts up a lot of quick 3 and outs. We need to run more screens, pass to the RB's more, more short passes to WR's down the middle and checkdowns need to be utilized. Kap needs to stop locking on to one WR, our O line needs to be more dynamic in pass blocking and Roman needs to call plays less predictably but the play design itself needs to change away from focus on one WR as it was last season. We need to force Kap to go through progressions. We should be playing him this preseason and force him to look at one, two and three WR's before he passes the ball. Force him to throw some lob passes in the redzone- passes that have an arch to them. Force Kap to throw to running backs and throw some short passes down the middle. Force Kap to stay in the pocket and see the field. As it is now our play design and play calling is limited by Kaps level of development. The more Kap progresses the more complex our passing game can become but I'm not sure if Roman is the man to help guide this process. He doesn't have my confidence. I wanted another OC the day we lost the NFCCG. Wanted a different OC after the first loss against the Giants. 1 pass to a WR that game. That wasn't all Alex Smiths doing.

Roman should be handed his walking papers if we come up short of the SB this season and we should also draft another QB early in the draft if Kap doesn't significantly improve but he should improve this season. He should. This should be our year! I see him having a about 3700 yards passing with a 64% completion percentage. 30 TD's and 10 ints. Less rushing, around 350 yards rushing.

I've wanted Roman to get a job somewhere the last two off-seasons.....he's okay but not the genius some make him out to be, IMHO.

Originally posted by TheSilverFox1971:

I've wanted Roman to get a job somewhere the last two off-seasons.....he's okay but not the genius some make him out to be, IMHO.

He is a running game genius, but the complete opposite when calling pass plays or making in-game adjustments...

Hopefully Roman is gone before this season concludes, but it'll be hard to do since Kap carries Roman and his horrible offensive identity, he thinks is so genius and cutting edge, with clutch gameplay when we need it.

The Niners are a very obvious team offensively, so I'm not yet surprised. It's all about "you know what we're gonna do; try to stop us."

I'm waiting for the Cowboys game before I get the tear ducts in full effect.

Originally posted by TheSilverFox1971:
We are fine between the 20's......red zone is our issue. Has been for some time.

Its because the niners for a while now have been an intermediate to deep passing team (at least in attempts). We've gone away from the short passing game and into mostly looking for deeper routes. That leads to more incompletions, but better facilitates moving the ball between the 20s if you dont have a consistent offensive attack. Unfortunately that however, doesnt help as much inside the red zone. The team has to bring in the short passing game into the mix.
I just hope that it really was that Roman didn't have the talent to use RBs or the short passing game in the past. We'll find out if that statement is true this year.

Ellington has been lining up in the backfield in training camp and we are deeper at WR this year with hopefully 2 pass catching TEs. We now have two No. 1 RBs. Kap's fourth TE ar in the system 3rd as a starter and a lot of the play calling will depend on his maturation. There is a reason the players call Greg Roman a genius when it comes to offense. Remember last year they came out passing but after the GB game we had to scale the O back because it wasn't working. I don't think G Ro is the issue.

As long as Kap can handle it this year and I think he will with all the new weapons we will see a very exciting O this year. However I do have one criticism, STOP with the jumbo package on short yardage it's a giveaway with the extra lineman they never block anyone there seems to be more penetration than usual and it hasn't worked since the Philadelphia game Harbaugh's first year.