Originally posted by thl408:
I understood the desire for to get the ground game going. That seems like the bread and butter for the 49ers. But they had to know that PIT was going to key the run in a big way after seeing what Hyde did to the Vikings. So it's safe to say that the 49ers already had the run game established before their first offensive snap. Hindsight is 20/20, but I think the 49ers could have come out slinging it around using playaction. That doesn't fix the real problem yesterday though.
The defensive game plan was garbage. I would have put the onus on the front 7 to do its job versus DeAngelo Williams, and put two safeties back at all times. Force the dink and dunk game. It might have been a slow death, but watching DHB and ABrown catch nearly every single long bomb was frustrating. Although PIT capitalized on every deep throw, they did have to methodically move down the field on a drive or two so maybe this was done and I couldn't see it.
About putting the safeties up at the line of scrimmage at the snap, then having them run back to the deep zone. When a standard 4 man rush can't get pressure, try to confuse the protection scheme so that perhaps there's a free rusher at the QB. We saw the downside as the safeties couldn't get back quickly enough to help the CBs. Should have just double covered ABrown all the time, who cares if it's obvious. Force DHB/Wheaton/TEs to beat them. To say the defense was swiss cheese is inaccurate because even swiss cheese has some parts where there are no holes. Ben averaged a ridiculous 13+ yards per attempt.
The two bright spots is the fight from the team in the 2nd half, and Kap. He was quick to take what was given and showed good accuracy when given time.
That was really shocking.