Week 13: Thoughts after rewatching the game...

Originally posted by SFrush:

Originally posted by English:
What about the pitch over Ginn's head for an easy TD?

Harbaugh admitted that play should've never been called and he's right.

That's right, but the moment got too big for Kaep there. He choked. Plain and simple. I'm not a Alex guy or a Kaep guy - but there is no other explanation for Kaep to over-throw that lateral by that much...and that wasn't the only mistake. After a great 50+ yard run, he ran out of bounds and stopped the clock. That was a pretty big mistake as well.

This was a team loss...everyone on offense played poor. But, when Kaep was bad - he was REALLY bad.

Originally posted by 49ersMyLife:

Originally posted by SFrush:

Originally posted by English:
What about the pitch over Ginn's head for an easy TD?

Harbaugh admitted that play should've never been called and he's right.

That's right, but the moment got too big for Kaep there. He choked. Plain and simple. I'm not a Alex guy or a Kaep guy - but there is no other explanation for Kaep to over-throw that lateral by that much...and that wasn't the only mistake. After a great 50+ yard run, he ran out of bounds and stopped the clock. That was a pretty big mistake as well.

This was a team loss...everyone on offense played poor. But, when Kaep was bad - he was REALLY bad.

Yes he was. You can't sugar coat it. He looked like a QB with big upside who IS NOT READY right now. Is that who he is? Or just 1 game?

Originally posted by jreff22:

Originally posted by SFrush:

Originally posted by English:
What about the pitch over Ginn's head for an easy TD?

Harbaugh admitted that play should've never been called and he's right.

and you trust what he says in public?

right or wrong its an easy pitch, at worse its a loss of yards.

Yea, if a play-call is poor...you still have to make the best of it as a player.

How can the guy have presence of mind to slide at a 2 yard line when he can walk to the endzone with a minute left in a blow-out...and not have the presence to not go out of bounds in today's situation???

This team choked today...from Kaep to Walker to Akers. Play-calling was good enough to get a win.

Originally posted by jreff22:
and you trust what he says in public?

right or wrong its an easy pitch, at worse its a loss of yards.

On this subject yes. It's very easy to botch a read option pitch to your fourth WR when you haven't used it the entire season. It was also inside our own 10 yard line which is awful field position to experiment with a new play.

Originally posted by SFrush:

Originally posted by jreff22:
and you trust what he says in public?

right or wrong its an easy pitch, at worse its a loss of yards.

On this subject yes. It's very easy to botch a read option pitch to your fourth WR when you haven't used it the entire season. It was also inside our own 10 yard line which is awful field position to experiment with a new play.

I'm sure he practices this all the time, and he did this at Nevada for years. If we cant add a new wrinkle on a week by week basis we are screwed. It was a simple pitch, not a complex play.

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:
While I agree with a lot of your points you are going overly soft on Kaepernick. He was a HUGE LIABILITY in this game. You can't sugar coat it any other way. Does he have big upside? Sure. Can he be a QB of the future? Yes. Might that start next year? Maybe. But come on. Lets not cover for him and lie.

~ Backpeddled way, way deep all the way to the endzone and got a safety. No reason for this play. It didn't have to be. You can say "it really wasn't a safety." But by backpeddling into the endzone he put it in the officials discression. He didn't have to drop back that deep. There was no reason to force officials to make that call one way or another. (+2 Rams)
~ Horrific pitch backward lateral deep in our own territory. TD Rams. (+6 Rams)
~ Led to 2 point conversion they would not have had otherwise. (+2 Rams)
~ Ran out of bounds on a scramble at the end allowing them precious time to come back the other way and tie us. He didn't have to do this. Stay inbounds and run the clock.
~ Consistently did not get the team up to the line in time and was snapping the ball with 1, 2 seconds left.
~ This forced delay of game penalties and excessive use of timeouts that we may otherwise need late in the game to stop the clock and get the ball back.

Kaep has a big league arm and legs and is a big, tall, strong guy. Yes we all like his upside. But to say he played well in this game is just plain rediculous. He did not. Alex would have probably won this game. Now our hold on the #2 seed is very thin. A win would have separated us since some other teams close to us lost. We do have some 4 loss teams out there chasing us for #2. But how much better would have 9 - 2 - 1 been as compared with 8 - 3 - 1? We would be sitting pretty.

We are risking the #2 seed and our playoff position with this experiment. I always thought next year Kaep would have been more ready. He's not reading defenses fast enough and making audibles at the line fast enough and snapping the ball on time. Just basic stuff he must do for us to have a chance to win.

Trust me, I agree with you on all those points. Kaep should be held accountable for all those mistakes. Harbaugh is taking a huge risk. It's such a difficult situation to be in because on the one hand, you have an experienced QB who does not make those mistakes but he has his limitations and won't have enough to overtake teams if need be. Then you have an inexperienced QB that can be costly to the team but is the one X-factor that could help overtake those hot teams in the playoffs.

Then on top of that, you have all these young inexperienced players who now have to come in and help the team out with an inexperienced QB. But then you have situations where the opposing defense can stop the run with an experienced QB that doesn't stretch the field and is not a deep threat.

I sure don't want to be in Harbaugh's shoes.

Originally posted by 49ersMyLife:
That's right, but the moment got too big for Kaep there. He choked. Plain and simple. I'm not a Alex guy or a Kaep guy - but there is no other explanation for Kaep to over-throw that lateral by that much...and that wasn't the only mistake. After a great 50+ yard run, he ran out of bounds and stopped the clock. That was a pretty big mistake as well.

This was a team loss...everyone on offense played poor. But, when Kaep was bad - he was REALLY bad.

If anyone choked it was Delanie Walker. Right after that fumble, Kaep got us 50 yards with legs and hit Delanie with a perfect pass right into his fingertips that was unacceptably dropped. The rest is history.

Originally posted by jreff22:
I'm sure he practices this all the time, and he did this at Nevada for years. If we cant add a new wrinkle on a week by week basis we are screwed. It was a simple pitch, not a complex play.

I agree, regardless of the play calling, it was a bad pitch on Kaep's part. The good thing about Kaep though is that he's able to improve or fix the mistakes that's he made from prior games. Not that we expect him to pitch again in this lifetime.

Originally posted by jreff22:

Originally posted by SFrush:

Originally posted by jreff22:
and you trust what he says in public?

right or wrong its an easy pitch, at worse its a loss of yards.

On this subject yes. It's very easy to botch a read option pitch to your fourth WR when you haven't used it the entire season. It was also inside our own 10 yard line which is awful field position to experiment with a new play.

I'm sure he practices this all the time, and he did this at Nevada for years. If we cant add a new wrinkle on a week by week basis we are screwed. It was a simple pitch, not a complex play.

Agreed, but adding a new wrinkle late in the fourth quarter backed inside your own 10. Awful timing.

Originally posted by SFrush:

Originally posted by 49ersMyLife:
That's right, but the moment got too big for Kaep there. He choked. Plain and simple. I'm not a Alex guy or a Kaep guy - but there is no other explanation for Kaep to over-throw that lateral by that much...and that wasn't the only mistake. After a great 50+ yard run, he ran out of bounds and stopped the clock. That was a pretty big mistake as well.

This was a team loss...everyone on offense played poor. But, when Kaep was bad - he was REALLY bad.

If anyone choked it was Delanie Walker. Right after that fumble, Kaep got us 50 yards with legs and hit Delanie with a perfect pass right into his fingertips that was unacceptably dropped. The rest is history.

Plenty of blame to go around, but Kaep had too many critical mistakes. Yes, the refs blew the safety call - but why run 25 yards back in the endzone to throw the ball. It made no sense.

Just hoping he figures it out by the time playoffs start, because today he had several mental mistakes.

Originally posted by SFrush:
If anyone choked it was Delanie Walker. Right after that fumble, Kaep got us 50 yards with legs and hit Delanie with a perfect pass right into his fingertips that was unacceptably dropped. The rest is history.

Delanie always chokes. Actually, I was VERY surprised at how well he did last week. Why isn't Miller in there?

Originally posted by SFrush:

Originally posted by 49ersMyLife:
That's right, but the moment got too big for Kaep there. He choked. Plain and simple. I'm not a Alex guy or a Kaep guy - but there is no other explanation for Kaep to over-throw that lateral by that much...and that wasn't the only mistake. After a great 50+ yard run, he ran out of bounds and stopped the clock. That was a pretty big mistake as well.

This was a team loss...everyone on offense played poor. But, when Kaep was bad - he was REALLY bad.

If anyone choked it was Delanie Walker. Right after that fumble, Kaep got us 50 yards with legs and hit Delanie with a perfect pass right into his fingertips that was unacceptably dropped. The rest is history.

When kaep is bad he still puts us in a position to win the game.

When alex is bad, the game is 99% out of reach

Some people really over-reacting on Kaep.

If Alex was in, yes I think that those mistakes wouldn't have happened and he would have eaten the sack, but on the other hand it was not a safety but a very bad call by the refs. Kaep is a rookie really, he's just started this season in live games which is a big difference from being backup for one season.

However, look at it this way:

1) Refs make the right call on the "safety" and there's no tie at end of regulation time.
2) Walker catches the TD pass and we win.
3) Akers kicks one of 2 missed field goals inside his range and we win.

Those are three definitive collaborations to the cause but beyond that:

1) Horrible, horrible play calling - Roman seems unable to adjust to the game live.
2) Staley holding call killed our 3rd(?) drive in the 2nd quarter taking us outside FG range at the least.
3) Walker holding call killed a drive
4) BS personal foul call on Goldson when he was making a legitimate hit on Bradford which moved them into FG range for the tie.
5) Goodwin is getting blown away at centre a lot, seems to be a huge number of plays coming down the middle where he loses his man inside 2 seconds. He was responsible for a lot of that pressure on Kaep.

The only genuine errors Kaep made were poor execution on the lateral to Ginn (we all agree it's a horrible call in that situation) and running out of bounds on the last 4th quarter drive when he should have kept the clock running,

Now having said that, it's easy to blame a rookie for rookie errors, especially when he's the QB and there's a controversy on his selection, however a number of experienced, veteran players and coaches made some very costly mistakes which made a significant impact on the end result.

Originally posted by YoungWifey:

Originally posted by SanDiego49er:
While I agree with a lot of your points you are going overly soft on Kaepernick. He was a HUGE LIABILITY in this game. You can't sugar coat it any other way. Does he have big upside? Sure. Can he be a QB of the future? Yes. Might that start next year? Maybe. But come on. Lets not cover for him and lie.

~ Backpeddled way, way deep all the way to the endzone and got a safety. No reason for this play. It didn't have to be. You can say "it really wasn't a safety." But by backpeddling into the endzone he put it in the officials discression. He didn't have to drop back that deep. There was no reason to force officials to make that call one way or another. (+2 Rams)
~ Horrific pitch backward lateral deep in our own territory. TD Rams. (+6 Rams)
~ Led to 2 point conversion they would not have had otherwise. (+2 Rams)
~ Ran out of bounds on a scramble at the end allowing them precious time to come back the other way and tie us. He didn't have to do this. Stay inbounds and run the clock.
~ Consistently did not get the team up to the line in time and was snapping the ball with 1, 2 seconds left.
~ This forced delay of game penalties and excessive use of timeouts that we may otherwise need late in the game to stop the clock and get the ball back.

Kaep has a big league arm and legs and is a big, tall, strong guy. Yes we all like his upside. But to say he played well in this game is just plain rediculous. He did not. Alex would have probably won this game. Now our hold on the #2 seed is very thin. A win would have separated us since some other teams close to us lost. We do have some 4 loss teams out there chasing us for #2. But how much better would have 9 - 2 - 1 been as compared with 8 - 3 - 1? We would be sitting pretty.

We are risking the #2 seed and our playoff position with this experiment. I always thought next year Kaep would have been more ready. He's not reading defenses fast enough and making audibles at the line fast enough and snapping the ball on time. Just basic stuff he must do for us to have a chance to win.

Trust me, I agree with you on all those points. Kaep should be held accountable for all those mistakes. Harbaugh is taking a huge risk. It's such a difficult situation to be in because on the one hand, you have an experienced QB who does not make those mistakes but he has his limitations and won't have enough to overtake teams if need be. Then you have an inexperienced QB that can be costly to the team but is the one X-factor that could help overtake those hot teams in the playoffs.

Then on top of that, you have all these young inexperienced players who now have to come in and help the team out with an inexperienced QB. But then you have situations where the opposing defense can stop the run with an experienced QB that doesn't stretch the field and is not a deep threat.

I sure don't want to be in Harbaugh's shoes.

He opened a big can of worms witht his thing midseason.

Originally posted by Buchy:
Some people really over-reacting on Kaep.

If Alex was in, yes I think that those mistakes wouldn't have happened and he would have eaten the sack, but on the other hand it was not a safety but a very bad call by the refs. Kaep is a rookie really, he's just started this season in live games which is a big difference from being backup for one season.

However, look at it this way:

1) Refs make the right call on the "safety" and there's no tie at end of regulation time.
2) Walker catches the TD pass and we win.
3) Akers kicks one of 2 missed field goals inside his range and we win.

Those are three definitive collaborations to the cause but beyond that:

1) Horrible, horrible play calling - Roman seems unable to adjust to the game live.
2) Staley holding call killed our 3rd(?) drive in the 2nd quarter taking us outside FG range at the least.
3) Walker holding call killed a drive
4) BS personal foul call on Goldson when he was making a legitimate hit on Bradford which moved them into FG range for the tie.
5) Goodwin is getting blown away at centre a lot, seems to be a huge number of plays coming down the middle where he loses his man inside 2 seconds. He was responsible for a lot of that pressure on Kaep.

The only genuine errors Kaep made were poor execution on the lateral to Ginn (we all agree it's a horrible call in that situation) and running out of bounds on the last 4th quarter drive when he should have kept the clock running,

Now having said that, it's easy to blame a rookie for rookie errors, especially when he's the QB and there's a controversy on his selection, however a number of experienced, veteran players and coaches made some very costly mistakes which made a significant impact on the end result.

yeah like Drew Brees and his 7 INTs that cost his team the playoffs.