2013 - Week 10: Thoughts after rewatching the game | Page 16

Originally posted by qnnhan7:

Originally posted by ChazBoner:
great stuff here with picture break downs and a gif of the play.

http://www.ballsdeepsportsblog.com/?p=2746

I can't buy the criticism of the O-line on the 1st GIF. It was 3rd &25! How often can an offense convert that... Even the best of qb, Oline, and receivers will have a difficult time converting that.

That 1st play just shows how inconsistent ADavis is with pass pro. However, as pointed out, Charles Johnson is a badass.

The 2nd play is a great example of how Kap is a slow coverage reader. His first read is to Boldin. Like the article mentions, Kap needs to recognize the depth of the SS and how it takes away Boldin's slant. There is nothing else to see here, move along Kap. Instead, he takes another tenth of a second to make sure that Boldin is covered. Yes, Kap, he's still covered. I give a little bit of slack to Kap here because of the play action fake that required him to turn his back to the play, then having to re-adjust his line of sight as he completed the play fake. Still, time is of the essence and Kap cannot waste any time double checking if Boldin is indeed covered. Play fake, look up, find the SS and read his depth. Move on. He might have had enough time to go to Ham on the other side who had separation. The LB on Ham's side was sucked in with the play fake and a pass could have been dropped in over his head to Ham.

The 3rd play was a nice offensive playcall versus the coverage and shows how athletic Keuchly is. This was a Tampa2 coverage - Cover 2 with the MLB taking away the deep middle. WR corner routes to hit behind the CB, in front of the Safties, while the TE attacks down the middle.

Originally posted by Marvin49:
Ug. That was rough.

1) Kap: CAREER regular season statline as a starter - 16 starts, 244 comp, 412 att, 59.22 comp%, 3275 yards, 7.94 YPA, 19 TDs, 9 INTs, 90.82 QB Rating. This will be the last time I track the career #'s. We now have a 16 game regular season statline. My goal was always to have some kind of statistical basis to compare his performance to other QBs over their first 16 starts. Here are a few statlines from some players in their first year as a starter....

Tom Brady: 18 TDs, 12 INTs, 2843 yards, 86.5 Rating. In fact, Brady didn't have a rating over 90 till his 4th season as a starter.
Drew Brees: 17 TDs, 16 INTs, 3284 yards, 76.9 Rating. Year 3 was his first season with rating over 90. In fact, he had a 67.5 rating in year 2.
Aaron Rodgers: 28 TDs, 13 INTs, 4038 yards, 93.8 Rating.
Carson Palmer: 18 TDs, 18 INTs, 2897 yards, 77.3 Rating

You might be asking why I chose these four players in particular. The obvious answer is that they are three of the best QBs in the NFL and another who was once thought to be among the best. That is part of it. The more compelling reason tho is that while they are three of the best in the NFL, they all also didn't start as rookies. They all had at least a full year with their teams to learn the system before they took over. Rodgers in fact didn't take over as a starter till his FOURTH year in Green Bay. I bring all this up not to say that Kap WILL be as good as all of those guys. My point here is that he is far from a finished product.

That leads me to yesterdays game. It was rough. He didn't play well. He was pressured all day and lost Vernon early, but he didn't play well either. The 49ers have an issue with a lack of quality pass catchers. When Vernon is out, defenses just bracket Boldin and the passing game is toast. That's completely true...but the fact that Kap seems incapable of adapting and having even a decent passing day is alarming. Yes...Niners were also down 2 TEs so all of the sudden they had to play Adam Snyder at TE. Yes, The Panthers D is damned good. Yes, it appears that the Panthers were changing their look very late on the playclock to prevent Kap from changing the play at the line. Watch the game again and you will see the FS bail out deep very late. All of this is true. He still has his part to play.

When Crab and Vernon are back at full health, things will be different. Defenses won't be able to completely shut down the passing game simply by doubling Boldin. The problem is that there is no guarantee that will happen this year. Kap needs to be able to be productive despite the situation. The line needs to block better, the receivers need to play better and the OC needs to call better plays, but Kap has his part to play in this.

To those calling for Kaps head tho and saying we never should have let Alex go, etc....you're loony tunes. We got spoiled last year by Kaps early performance. Kap is still a galactically physically gifted QB. He's still a very smart kid and he's still willing to work his a$$ off to get better. We need to chill. He'll be fine.

2) Eric Reid: OK, now I'm concerned. Two concussions this early in his career? That makes me worry that he's going to be one of those guys that ends up out of the game very early and simply keeps getting concussions. I hope I'm wrong...but my bet is that he's not playing in New Orleans.

3) Vernon: Jeez....when he's not in there, its ugly. The THREAT of him is enough to loosen up a defense. When he's out, its pretty much over. When I saw him walking into the locker room yesterday, I was pretty sure the 49ers wouldn't score another point. I hate being right sometimes. The 49ers really underrated the importance of Delanie Walker last year. If they had known they would struggle like this, my bet is that they would have found the money to resign him. I think that was a mistake by Baalke. Yes, Delanie had problems catching the ball, but his presence in the offense challenged a team vertically. He created space. McDonald at this point is unable to do that. McDonald may eventually be a good TE, but he is simply a completely different player than Walker.

4) O-Line: Some credit has to be given to the Panthers defense, but the Niners O-Line was horrible is pass protection. There were a few times that Kap could have gotten the ball out earlier, but he was under siege all day. It seemed they were doing fine run blocking, but that pass protection was horrible. Anthony Davis in particular seemed to struggle. They also had trouble all day with the blitz.

5) Gore: Still plugging away. One of the few bright spots. As we seem to say every time they lose....why did they stop running the ball? His patience running the ball was something to behold. Watching some of those plays over again...watching him wait for a block or seem top find a cutback lane where there wasn't one....his vision is insane.

6) "Twin" Teams: This isn't new. We all know that the 49ers struggle badly against teams that are built like they are. The question is why. Teams that can stand up to their physical style always seem to be able to "out physical" them. Big time passing offensive teams tho with all world QBs? In the last 2.5 years, they've beaten the Saints twice, the Packers 3 times, the Patriots, and the Falcons (when they were good). This is why I think we have a shot in New Orleans. If both Reid or Vernon are out tho....it might be ugly.

7) Aldon: Some are going to make some point out of the 49ers being 1-3 with him and 5-0 without him. Total statistical anomaly. It means nothing. Skuta played very well yesterday so I'm not saying Aldon playing few snaps was the problem. In fact the entire defense played very well. They really only gave up one drive and even that one was a hair away from ending in an INT by Bowman.

8) WR: I'm not going to go into these guys performances again. Same story all year. Vernon out. Boldin doubled. Nobody else making a play...tho Manningham did show some signs of life...tho looked a bit rusty. That's to be expected. What I really want to talk about here tho is what I saw in Seattle and what I've seen ALL YEAR in Seattle. What do I see? Not superstar receivers. What I see is WRs making insane plays on a regular basis. Diving catches. Prayer catches on the sideline. Miracle catches in the endzone. That Golden Tate catch was nuts. Doug Baldwin has made several of these this year. Wilsons WRs have bailed him out all year. With the exception of a few catches by Boldin, that is NOT happening in SF. The case could be made that perhaps Kap isn't putting the ball in a position for his guys to make those plays. I'm not sure what it is. I just see Wilsons guys doing that week after week and I don't see it happening in SF. To any Seattle fans reading this...this isn't meant as some excuse. Its jealousy.

9) Ahmad Brooks: I had to at least give him a shout out. He had himself a great game. So did Skuta. They were not at fault in this one.

10) Greg Roman: I know what peeps on here are gonna say...and are already saying. Many of you want him on the first bus out of town. Your complaints aren't entirely unjustified. He got away from the run again when it was working. In his defense tho, The Panthers started to do something they haven't done all year. They started to put 8 in the box. That is a formation Kap SHOULD have been able to pass from. The problem was that he couldn't find anyone. He didn't have any time back there. It's easy to criticize the OC when stuff doesn't work, but he also was calling those run early that DID work. It's become popular to hate Roman on this site and he certainly deserves some of the blame here, but losing 2 TEs, having a serious lack of receiving talent, a QB who is not playing well, and an O-Line unable to protect will make any OC look pretty bad.

Looks like their will be 11 pints this week instead of 10....

11) Our new playoff reality: Is the division completely out of reach? No. Do the 49ers need to proceed as if it is? Yes. Seattle is no longer the team to have our sights on. We need to be looking at the NFC South. We need to be looking at the NFC North. We could now be competing with the Saints, Panthers, Bears, and Lions for those 2 Wild-Card spots. Losing to the Panthers hurts because that could be a tie-breaker late in the year. This season tho is far from over. As bad as this looked, the Niners are still 6-3 with only 2 "difficult" games left on their schedule. They are still getting some guys back here in fairly short order. The season is not lost.

About points 1, 3, and 11.

1. Not sure why prefer to look at Kap's last 16 regular season games as a gauge, as if omitting the three games that were even more important are less relevant? Not to mention an entire offseason breaking it up where our schemes have changes, opponents' schemes have changed, defenses prepping for 6 months to take away what he was so good at, etc. Not sure how accurate a barometer this is.

3. Even if they'd known we'd struggle like this, no way they would have given Walker over $17M over 4 years. You simply can't give a #2 TE $4.5M annually in this league, especially when you gotta budget 9 figures for Kap not to mention Aldon, Crab, Iupati, Brown etc. in line for hefty paydays soon. Maybe we'll be able to keep all but one of those aforementioned guys long-term. Had we paid Walker, maybe that number goes to two or more.

11. The 49ers don't 'proceed' as if anything is in reach, out of reach, over reach, under reach, it doesn't matter. They have always and will always proceed to simply win the next game. I don't know what you mean by this. How does something being in reach or not change our approach. The approach is to win the next game up, whether leading the division by a bunch, trailing the division by a bunch, or somewhere in between. All the coaches and players can control is the San Francisco 49ers' next game. We can't make the Seahawks lose, we can't make the Lions lose, etc. All we can control and the only way in which to 'proceed' is winning the 49ers' next game. What's in reach or not is irrelevant.