Originally posted by NinerGM:
1. Gore has been running great and on 3rd and 1 yard you bring in Hunter to get the one yard. Fumble lost, ends drive.
2. 1st and 10 on the 14 towards the end of the 2nd, you call a slant pass to Boldin that completes for 9 yards. You follow that up with a play call that hasn't worked on time all game; zone-read formation, play-action pass attempt to a deep receiver. As usual, pass protection doesn't hold, Kap is chased and tackled for a huge lose. It's 3rd and 14 and you call a screen to Kyle Williams that goes for 9 yards. Tell me what's wrong with this series.
3. Gore has 12 carries 61 yards at the half. For the remainder of the game Gore has 3 carries for 9 yards?
4. 2 slants called the entire passing game; one to Boldin for 9 yards, one to Manningham for 8 yards but was called back for a "pick" by Boldin. The offense would never call another slant.
5. The one pass option that was consistently open all game; RB out of the backfield over the middle - this was thrown no more than 3x, never to Hunter, never to LMJ who is all-world in space (which is the reason why he's so good with punt returns).
6.We have 3 of the better running backs all on the same team yet in our offensive sets, never 2 are on the field at the same time; and you almost never see LMJ as a receiver (despite being a punt returner which requires catching skills).
These are the 6 examples I could think of from memory. I'm sure other Zoners have others.
At the very least these call Roman's play-calling into question. At the very worst it begs the question if Harbaugh will do something about a recurring problem where we stop running, have not short to intermediate passing game, and if the coaches are encouraging Kap to take the big play at every opportunity vs. taking what the D gives him. In any event, someone isn't getting the message through and it's clear Colin isn't prepared or the offensive scheme didn't assume Carolina could generate the pressure it did. The game plan never changed. Plays that didn't work in the 1st Q, we were still running in the 3rd as if we didn't try it the first 15 times without success. Insanity.
Just wanted to pick up on this as well, because beyond my frustrations at our scheme, this is bang on in terms of our coaching mindset and lack of adjustment. We don't make any adjustments on our offense at half time it seems, we just keep plowing away with whatever Roman has written down. We're so predictable, and we get caught up in this weird macho bullheadedness where we keep banging our head against the brick wall and think it's going to crack before we do, ignoring the fact the thing is 10 feet thick and reinforced. We never use guile, and that depresses me as I grew up in the 80's watching the franchise that defined out thinking your opponents. We were tough and smart, unfortunately under Harbaugh and Roman at the moment we're just tough but there are tougher teams out there.
I think Harbaugh is smart enough now though to spot the pattern, and a few of us have picked up on it. We ar elosing in the same way to a number of teams that can match us up front. We run out of ideas and lose, getting out coached and then next game we run it over some weak team in shambles and think everything is fine.
It may be too late this season but I expect major changes in the off season if we don't do what the Ravens did. I'll be honest, I would actually fire Roman at this stage because he doesn't know enough of the passing game to take us any further. We've reached our ceiling with Roman as the coordinator and we need some major strategy/philosophy changes to our offense to take us to the next level.