Billick: "...defense will only carry 49ers so far"

Originally posted by BHulman:

Originally posted by tjd808185:

Originally posted by Legbreaker:
In which he threw 3 interceptions.

Which also tells you that we trusted him with the offense.

You look at both playoff games before the Super Bowl and Montana was no game manager.

It is sometimes forgotten that much of that drive was accomplished through running the ball. Lenvil Elliot was a workhouse during the drive and Freddie Solomon picked up a decent chunk of yardage on a reverse. It was the genius of Walsh to see the Cowboys were dropping six in coverage and exploiting it. I have no doubt that Walsh trusted Montana but I think his greatest faith was in himself and the offense he designed.

Just as Harbaugh is calling in plays, Walsh was the man in Montana's ears. Alex is thriving in this environment, and now it seems that he may finally get some continuity with a offensive minded coach in place. This season, the playoffs and how far we get through it will set the tone and Alex can be fairly assessed. What I've witnessed is progression on his part, he will make mistakes, but the commentators/analyst and of course some fans will bring up past stats to justify their negative point of views. I'm enjoying this year and looking forward to the following years based on his performance through ten weeks of work, bring on Cleveland already!

his mouth can carry my balls

I bet Brian Billick has been bombarded with the question, can the 49ers win the superbowl with defense and running the ball like his Ravens did. So he answered in his opinion no, not without a strong quarterback. He wasn't saying that Alex couldn't become that qb, but right now probably not. He listed his reasons and that is fine.

I don't think you need Tom Brady to win a superbowl. If Alex keeps improving, and the rest of the team keeps improving, I think he can do enough to take us there.

Originally posted by tjd808185:
Which also tells you that we trusted him with the offense.

You look at both playoff games before the Super Bowl and Montana was no game manager.

On the contrary...In 1981, Joe Montana was the very DEFINITION of "game manager". For the record, most WCO quarterbacks are called upon to "manage" the game early in their careers. The system allows for growth...but expansion on its concepts takes years.

Joe was the antithesis of "real" quarterbacks like Staubach, Bradshaw and Fouts in the eyes of the experts back then. He threw short, high percentage passes and the 49ers were generally looked down upon because of it...one of the reasons we were looked down upon by EVERYONE in 1981.

The 49er offense was not designed around a vertical attack. Rather, they made up for their lack of a punishing runner by throwing A LOT of short routes designed to compensate for it. They beat you by running a BUNCH of short pass plays. More often than not, Joe had 2 reads. That's it.

Joe's job was simple: take what the defense gives you. In fact...on the penultimate play of the 1981 NFC Championship game, Joe had only 2 reads. Solomon underneath, and Clark over the top. They were stacked, so his progression was very simple.

This is not an attempt to disparage Joe. He was the first incredibly accurate passer in NFL history. That is what made him truly amazing. But early on, he did exactly what Coach told him to. He grew into an amazing player as his career progressed (his true growth occurred from 1982-84...once he got Jerry in 1985, they elevated each other), but he didn't start out that way.

Originally posted by Legbreaker:
On the contrary...In 1981, Joe Montana was the very DEFINITION of "game manager". For the record, most WCO quarterbacks are called upon to "manage" the game early in their careers. The system allows for growth...but expansion on its concepts takes years.

Joe was the antithesis of "real" quarterbacks like Staubach, Bradshaw and Fouts in the eyes of the experts back then. He threw short, high percentage passes and the 49ers were generally looked down upon because of it...one of the reasons we were looked down upon by EVERYONE in 1981.

The 49er offense was not designed around a vertical attack. Rather, they made up for their lack of a punishing runner by throwing A LOT of short routes designed to compensate for it. They beat you by running a BUNCH of short pass plays. More often than not, Joe had 2 reads. That's it.

Joe's job was simple: take what the defense gives you. In fact...on the penultimate play of the 1981 NFC Championship game, Joe had only 2 reads. Solomon underneath, and Clark over the top. They were stacked, so his progression was very simple.

This is not an attempt to disparage Joe. He was the first incredibly accurate passer in NFL history. That is what made him truly amazing. But early on, he did exactly what Coach told him to. He grew into an amazing player as his career progressed (his true growth occurred from 1982-84...once he got Jerry in 1985, they elevated each other), but he didn't start out that way.

People also seem to forget that Brady won his super bowls as a game manager with some clutch. The year he went off and their team went 16-0 in the regular season, they lost the super bowl. Game managers probably just get a bad wrap because of a certain man whose name rhymes with Dent Kilfer.

Originally posted by Legbreaker:
On the contrary...In 1981, Joe Montana was the very DEFINITION of "game manager". For the record, most WCO quarterbacks are called upon to "manage" the game early in their careers. The system allows for growth...but expansion on its concepts takes years.

Joe was the antithesis of "real" quarterbacks like Staubach, Bradshaw and Fouts in the eyes of the experts back then. He threw short, high percentage passes and the 49ers were generally looked down upon because of it...one of the reasons we were looked down upon by EVERYONE in 1981.

The 49er offense was not designed around a vertical attack. Rather, they made up for their lack of a punishing runner by throwing A LOT of short routes designed to compensate for it. They beat you by running a BUNCH of short pass plays. More often than not, Joe had 2 reads. That's it.

Joe's job was simple: take what the defense gives you. In fact...on the penultimate play of the 1981 NFC Championship game, Joe had only 2 reads. Solomon underneath, and Clark over the top. They were stacked, so his progression was very simple.

This is not an attempt to disparage Joe. He was the first incredibly accurate passer in NFL history. That is what made him truly amazing. But early on, he did exactly what Coach told him to. He grew into an amazing player as his career progressed (his true growth occurred from 1982-84...once he got Jerry in 1985, they elevated each other), but he didn't start out that way.

Here's my point regarding the issue. There's no comparision between our offense and San Francisco's 1981 offense.

In 1981 Joe Montana finished 8th in attempts, 8th in yards, and 9th in YPA. If you think Montana was a game manager then by your defintion 24 out of 28 quarterbacks were game managers too.

We're 32nd in the league in attempts, 30th in passing, and 19th in YPA. I'm not hating Alex at all. He's playing smart football and that's leading to wins. All I'm stating is alot of people here are getting revisionist history and pretending that we didn't have a passing attack back in 1981. It's not the case. We were top 10 in every metric, Montana was heavily relied upon in both playoff games, and only in the Super Bowl our passing attack took a step back and the run game was heavily relied upon. Otherwise we were the defintion of a balanced attack.

I'm sure everything you said about how we beat teams is true. I'm not really debating how Montana dissected his opponents. I'm just stating that passing attack was there, and was a large reason why we won the Super Bowl.

People have different definitions of a game manager. I have no problem with you labeling Joe Montana as a game manager based off of your definition. But if you don't see the difference in quality what else can I say?

This isn't intending to be a Alex Smith bashing post. He's playing great. Receivers and the O line's blocking are bigger problems than him right now. I just think there's truths to what Billick is saying. The guy lived it for his entire coaching stint in Baltimore. Yeah they won the Super Bowl, but they had a top 6 defense every year. I'm sure he expected to accomplish alot more than what they actually accomplished.

Billick would certainly know about a defense carrying a team.

I don't think our defense is at the Ravens level, or anywhere close. But we're strong and should keep improving as players get more familiar with the playbook and schemes. Same goes for the offense. We have weapons, just a matter of getting it to where it's not vanilla and we can really start dictating the offensive flow rather than "taking what the defense gives". More use of Delanie Walker and VD underneath will only open it up to Crabs and Braylon down the road.

By simply reading the article, it's obvious that I've done more research than Billick has done before he made that wildly inaccurate statement. Clearly he didn't watch the 3 come from behind 4th quarter road games in which Alex Smith put drives together to win the game. Or the complete domination of the Buc's where Alex had performed so well that he got pulled shortly into the 4th quarter. And we would of beat the Cowgirls if the 49ers defense didn't collapse at the end of that game, kinda hard to put that blame on Alex.

Originally posted by unst4bl3:

Originally posted by Psinex:

Originally posted by 49ersMan420:
IMO we could dismantle the saints, Its the Pats/Packers im worried about.

Yes, I'm worried about the Pats and Packers, but as we've shown against a one-dimensional team that does not run well...we can generate a good pass rush with only 3 or 4 linemen while dropping everyone else back into coverage. Culliver neutralized Calvin Johnson, and Carlos Rogers is good on smaller veteran type (ala Welker and Jennings) receivers. Willis and Bowman are great at limiting gains on short dumpoff type passes and streaks. I think we will match up better than others think.

If we study the film and our DB's and safeties figure out Brady and Rodger's tendencies, I'm sure Fangio will come up with a good strategy on how to bottle them up. The problem with those two QB's is that they pass into double and triple coverage and still complete passes because they lead their receivers and have excellent recognition.

Neutralized? A clue: No.

Our D kept him out of the endzone, but he still had big numbers against us.

If you are looking at those numbers more practically, he gained almost half of his yards on one big play that didn't result in any points. So really, he didn't do any damage, which is why I'm saying that the Niners secondary neutralized him.

Maybe billick had some merit during preseason. But as of now, our #1 liability , the OL is starting to fire on all cylinders, they just got thru giving a beating to the Lions
"best DL" in the league, they have now utilized snyder, AD, Staley as pulling linemen, and our #1 weakness has now become a hugely positive strength. Our #2 liability the DBs, have suddenly become the scourge of the league, while the LBs have gone from good to the 4 best in the league. As for the DL, what can you say about our Dpassrush with aldon, except that it has crushed everyone we played the last 3 games. The DL beat the amazing Vick. The DL and OL beat the amazing Lions.

On STs, we have the best in the league. TEs are solid, WRs we are weak with injury to both morgan and braylon. We still have a very good passing game. RBs obviously got better as the OL learned to block. As for coaching, Coach Harbaugh is going to be the best coach in the league by yr end. He is already just 3 spots behind Payton, Bellicheat, McCarthy and maybe his brother (Ravens). Re: QB, alex was just in need of a really great HC, QB, OL, WR, DL, DB, TE, ST, and especially an OC. Well, he got all those in Coach Harbaugh, so how good he becomes will be interesting to watch. Right now he is better by 10X than at any time in his career, and the great news is, he gets lots better each game. Sky is the limit for alex, who JH has taught to play within himself, along with how to call plays.

i would feel comfortable against every team but green bay. while brady and brees put up numbers they can both be rattled by strong pass rushes and hits/knockdowns. even though brady puts up great numbers if people would climb off his jock they would realize as his defense has declined he is 0-3 in his last post season games.

Originally posted by oregonniner:
I bet Brian Billick has been bombarded with the question, can the 49ers win the superbowl with defense and running the ball like his Ravens did. So he answered in his opinion no, not without a strong quarterback. He wasn't saying that Alex couldn't become that qb, but right now probably not. He listed his reasons and that is fine.

I don't think you need Tom Brady to win a superbowl. If Alex keeps improving, and the rest of the team keeps improving, I think he can do enough to take us there.

I think that Alex is more than capable of winning the SuperBowl with this team, When Brady help the Patriots win their first Superbowl, he had a lot of help not only from his players (Adam Vinatieri) and from the refs (Tuck rule). During that season and the playoffs he didn't have great stats, but he did what he had to to help the team win. As good as Brady has been, all his SuperBowls wins he had, they all came down to (Adam Vinatieri FG's). Ask Jim Kelly, if he wouldn't love to have a kicker like Vinatieri kicking the FG during the game against the Giants.

Good thing Smith is a better qb than Dilfer.

Alex Smith is going to be fine Billick.

We may not rack up the yards like we did back then, but then again, we don't have to. Our D can continue to bend and "don't break", preventing the opposing offenses from scoring TDs. Instead, they have to kick FG. The same with our offense. When we do score, it's with a few yards possible to do it.

Offense: 27th in yards per game; 9th in Scoring (tied w/4 other teams
Defense: 11th in yards per game; 2nd in Scoring, but the Ravens have yet to play who lead by 26 pts.

We are truly the most efficient in the league both on D and O.

And the answer to Bilick's question is YES, our D can continue to "carry" when need to. The same goes for the offense and special teams.

This is truly one of the best TEAMs we have fielded since 2002.

Stick that in your ear, Billick.