1) Kap: CAREER regular season statline as a starter - 9 starts, 160 comp, 259 att, 61.77 comp%, 2139 yards, 8.25 YPA, 13 TDs, 6 INTs, 95.05 QB Rating. Ouch. That one smarts. Easily his worst game as a pro and more than a little of it had to do with WHERE they were playing and WHO they were playing. I've read reports on the Seattle board about how this justified their thinking all along that he was just a one read QB...that his first guy was covered and he'd just run. Thats BS. In fact, early on I think he too often was trying too hard to DISprove that theory when he should have just run with the damn thing. I think the issue here isn't that he was making only one read...it's that Seattle was taking ALL of his reads away and giving him very little time to get through them. The first INT was his fault. Misread the coverage. The second was his as well...underthrew the ball and Sherman made a very good play. I was annoyed at Vernon about not going up for the ball until I realized he had pulled a hamstring on the play. I'll take the INT in that game at that point over a MORE injured Vernon. Live to play another day. The last one was all Kap. He was pressing trying to find something that just wasn't there.
2) Run game: 2 weeks now of NOTHING. Kaep can win the game "on his own" against a GB defense, but when the run gets taken away AND you are facing the best secondary in the NFL AND you're IN Seattle....yeah...we saw what happened. I expected the 49ers to lose, but I have to admit that I was surprised they stopped the run game so effectively. I don't think the issue is Frank. I don't know if its scheme or what but the last two opponents have found a flaw in the design of the 49ers run game. The entire O-Line played poorly in this regard but in particular Joe Staley. He let defenders get inside him on several occasions and they simply blew up the play. Was he expecting help from Iupati or a FB or TE? Dunno...but WAY too much penetration to get anything going. Is Gore getting old and slow? Lets be real...Gore was never FAST. LOL. I don't think Gore is the issue here. He just hasn't had ANY room to run in 2 games now.
3) Defense: Ya know something? This game was much closer than the score would indicate. No excuses here. Seattle DOMINATED the 49ers offense, but the 49er Defense played very, very well. All they gave up in the first half was 3 points and that was after the Kap fumble so they were given a short field. What killed them? No help whatsoever from the offense and...
4) Penalties: Sigh. Ya know, its hard enough to beat Seattle in Seattle when you aren't beating yourself. That isn't to say that the 49ers lost because they beat themselves (Seattle did more than enough to win the game)...but they certainly didn't help themselves. Stupid, costly Personal Foul penalties. The one on Brooks I actually felt bad for him on. I don't think he intended to hit him in the face like that. You could see by his reaction. That gave them a first down in the redzone and resulted in a TD. The one on Aldon was inexcusable. STUPID, STUPID play. That would have been 3rd and very long and he gave them another 1st down...and another TD. The score at that point is closer to 11-3 instead of 19-3. If those drives don't result in TDs then Kap isn't forced to pass into a DIME defense and he possibly doesn't turn the ball over 2 more times in Seahawk territory. In a game that close bad decisions can spiral a game out of control in a hurry. Those two penaties in particular against Brooks and Aldon were backbreakers.
5) Injuries. Ugg. Again...not sure how much they affected the game (dunno if Williams would have made a huge difference over Dorsey...D played well all night so tough to put it on them). What it does affect tho is the rest of the season. We are again shorthanded up front. Williams gone and McDonald gimpy. Reid may be out as well. Great. Just perfect. The worst part of the Reid hit is that he was trying to do the right thing when he got hurt. He was leading with his shoulder that he ended up getting hit in the side of the head. If he keeps his head up and see's his target (IE, doesn't use the crown of his helmet) he doesn't get hurt on the play.
6) "THE SEASON IS OVER!!!": OMG people please just STOP. LOL. Have just an OUNCE of PERSPECTIVE. I was pretty sure this was a game the 49ers were going to lose. If they lost by 2 or by 50...it adds up to ONE loss on the schedule. The Seahawks have a one game lead after 2 weeks. They won't win every game. Relax. Lemme roll off some scores for you....26-3. 42-13. Those are the scores of games the 49ers lost LAST YEAR. They still advanced to the Super Bowl. How about this score...40-8. 1994 Super Bowl Champion team...and THAT was at home. How about these....43-13 (Ravens last year), 49-24 (Giants the year before). Moral of this story? CHILL. It aint the end of the world. We are one game back with FOURTEEN left to play. LOL. The first 5 games of this season are a crucible. All we needed was to get out to a 3-2 or 4-1 start before we can start cruising a bit. We are 1-1 and now face a Colt team thats struggled, a Ram team I'm not convinced was all that good to begin with, and then the Texans who have performed miracles to win over so-so teams. We still get Seattle at home this year and they still have 7 more road games (although maybe we shouldn't count the Jags) where they went 3-5 last year. This is a LONG, LONG, way from being over.
7) O-Line: Rough, Rough night. Noise clearly affected them. Avril/Bennett getting an extra beat to get upfield and it showed. Anthony Davis just couldn't get back fast enough all night. As I said before, the combination of the secondary mauling the WRs and the Line getting Kap no time is what resulted in what we saw. No run lanes, No time, No open receivers = Ugly, ugly performance. I don't expect that to continue tho. No other team in the NFL is built to do what the Seahawks did last night. Nobody. Even the Seahawks would have trouble replicating it at Candlestick.
8) Aldon/Justin: Outside of that horrific penalty, Aldon's back. He is who we thought he was. 3.5 sacks already and played very, very well in the run game as well making a few tackles for loss. Justin is the same guy he's always been. That D-Line was NOT the reason they lost. Running a 7 man front all game against Seattle was going to catch up with them eventually.
9) Gameplan: I'm actually not upset about the offensive gameplan. You can look at what happened in the game and think that I just made a ludicrous statement, but hear me out first. The offensive gameplan was to run up tempo to tire that Seahawks D, silence the crowd somewhat, and prevent clock issues. They also ran completely silent for portions of the game. They could just never get any drive going long enough to tire the D. The problem wasn't the plan...it was the execution. Seattle was GLUED to receivers all night and the O-Line just couldn't get a push.
10) Is it Sunday yet? This one is gonna linger.
[ Edited by Marvin49 on Sep 16, 2013 at 11:01 AM ]
