We are talking about THE MOST FUNDAMENTAL PART OF COACHING - calling the plays. It's not rocket science. Coaches at the high school and college level do it every game. And there are thirty-one other teams that seemingly have NO problem getting a play called. Well, thirty as Peyton Manning is pretty much an autonomous offensive play-caller.
This just reeks of a coaches' problem. Jimmy Raye is either indecisive, or overly pedantic if he is incapable of getting a play call to quarterback's coach Mike Johnson in time. While most other teams are worrying about how to adjust to a particular blitz scheme, or how to exploit overly aggressive corners (we shall heretofore call this the Pete Carroll adjustment) the 49ers are worrying about whether their offensive coordinator is going to be on the field or in the booth.
What this indicates is a general lack of preparedness by the coaching staff. Raye and Sing do not act decisively in short-yardage, game-critical situations. This is, simply stated, a coaches failure. And if there is failure at the top, it will filter down through the ranks to the rest of the team.
Maybe next week the 49ers will ponder changing their equipment manager. Or. Maybe they should re-evaluate they way they huddle up. I mean, maybe that's why Crabtree isn't running the right plays (according to Smith). Oh wait, Crabtree ran the right plays (according to Sing). But who can really be sure if Alex Smith never got the play call to begin with and had to fill in the blanks? No one really knows because after one week the 49ers have exposed themselves as a team that can't even handle the basics.
It's even worse that I originally thought. This morning I read anaccount by Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports of the 49ers play-calling woes. Here's a choice bit of information from the article:
[quote=Jason Cole]"It seems like Jimmy calls plays from memory a lot of the time and not exactly the way it's written down," said one of the aforementioned sources, adding that the plays often get garbled. "He knows the plays and he knows the right thing to call, but he's fumbling through his papers and it's like, 'Hey, we need to get a play called.' "
So our offensive coordinator is basically sending jumbled, incomplete plays to the sideline and Mike Johnson has to play Jimmy Raye Mad-Libs in order to get the call in.
The grand solution? Put Jimmy Raye on the field. Because Raye, a man who "fumbles through his own papers" while in the relatively calm coaches booth is going to do much better on the sideline. The hectic, bustling, loud, non-desk having, players-flying-at-you sideline. Right.
This is another Band-Aid fix for a team who, thus far, can only beat one NFL team. Themselves.