Our Underachieving Season Was Due To

Originally posted by JaggedJ:

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:

Originally posted by JaggedJ:
Then your thread title is invalid.

Injuries happen, lesser players come in and are generally more prone to turnovers/inability to takeaway.

You can't disregard injuries from a discussion about why our season was poor.

Its valid to discuss if our offensive game plans were too ambitious for CJ and Mullens. That's a point of discussion here.

On defense, we didn't have any season changing injuries -- just no depth at all.Foster laid an egg his sophomore season. But that's not really meaningful injuries that change the course of a teams season.

All that you mentioned above are valid points of discussion.

However, you asked what our poor season was due to and the number 1 answer to that is injuries.

What injuries on defense where franchise-changing? If Buck went down maybe you might have a point to make. But nothing really unusual happened other than the annual season-ending injury to Jimmie Ward and tartt and Colbert Miss some games. They stunk anyway so who really cares. I think that 11 DB rotation was due as much to lousy play as being nicked and dinged. If a coaching staff can't handle injuries on the offensive or defensive side -- or at least minimize the damage with an appropriate scheme and responsible play calling -- then they're not a coaching staff that's ready for the NFL. Where everybody goes down for some time during every season

Originally posted by alwayssecond:
Lack of takeaways as a way of saying that our defense didn't come up big in the moments we needed them to win some games

Our d was atrocious all season long

When only 4 or 5 starters will still be on the roster when the team is actually good, that is going to be the result.

Originally posted by thl408:
They had a high number of turnovers, but the low number of turnovers forced was historically bad.

Two interceptions for the season is a Jerry Rice record -- one that will not be broken in our lifetimes. It covered the last 80 years of football, and probably the next 80 as well.

That's two intercetions -- in 16 games.

Thats why Jeff Haffley "chose" another job.

Injuries. When you lose your franchise QB that early in the season, your starting RB before the season and have to trot out a guy like Beathard, the year isn't likely to go very well for you, no matter what you do. You can nitpick everything else and come to some valid conclusions about certain things but the reality is that if this team has a healthy Garoppolo, McKinnon, Colbert, Tartt, if Reuben Foster doesn't go full on stupid and guys actually have the time to coalesce together, if Richburg doesn't screw up his knee early on in the season, limiting his effectiveness, if you get the starting players on offense and defense together far more consistently then your record at the end of the season is also likely a lot better.

With a healthy Garoppolo and McKinnon alone I don't think there is anyway that this team loses either game to the Cardinals, they probably pull out another game or two that was lost as well, putting them far more in the reasonable expected range of 7 to 8 wins for a team that is still very much rebuilding and had no edge presence on defense.

Injuries

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:
Injuries. When you lose your franchise QB that early in the season, your starting RB before the season and have to trot out a guy like Beathard, the year isn't likely to go very well for you, no matter what you do. You can nitpick everything else and come to some valid conclusions about certain things but the reality is that if this team has a healthy Garoppolo, McKinnon, Colbert, Tartt, if Reuben Foster doesn't go full on stupid and guys actually have the time to coalesce together, if Richburg doesn't screw up his knee early on in the season, limiting his effectiveness, if you get the starting players on offense and defense together far more consistently then your record at the end of the season is also likely a lot better.

With a healthy Garoppolo and McKinnon alone I don't think there is anyway that this team loses either game to the Cardinals, they probably pull out another game or two that was lost as well, putting them far more in the reasonable expected range of 7 to 8 wins for a team that is still very much rebuilding and had no edge presence on defense.

Good post.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:
Injuries. When you lose your franchise QB that early in the season, your starting RB before the season and have to trot out a guy like Beathard, the year isn't likely to go very well for you, no matter what you do. You can nitpick everything else and come to some valid conclusions about certain things but the reality is that if this team has a healthy Garoppolo, McKinnon, Colbert, Tartt, if Reuben Foster doesn't go full on stupid and guys actually have the time to coalesce together, if Richburg doesn't screw up his knee early on in the season, limiting his effectiveness, if you get the starting players on offense and defense together far more consistently then your record at the end of the season is also likely a lot better.

With a healthy Garoppolo and McKinnon alone I don't think there is anyway that this team loses either game to the Cardinals, they probably pull out another game or two that was lost as well, putting them far more in the reasonable expected range of 7 to 8 wins for a team that is still very much rebuilding and had no edge presence on defense.

The only injuries anyone cares about are JG and JM.

The others are irrelevant -- just what every other team goes through every year. It's normal. A starter gets dinged on the oline. Some one gets dinged in db. It's normal for everyone.

No one curr about Colbert, Tartt. They below average and average seasons respectively while they were healthy.

I disagree with your observation, that there's no way we could have won 7 games without JG and JM.

I think it was on the table, we just didnt grab it. Why?

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:

Originally posted by thl408:

They had a high number of turnovers, but the low number of turnovers forced was historically bad.

Two interceptions for the season is a Jerry Rice record -- one that will not be broken in our lifetimes. It covered the last 80 years of football, and probably the next 80 as well.

That's two intercetions -- in 16 games.

Thats why Jeff Haffley "chose" another job.

Along with that, I'm also gonna put a vote as a record we won't see being broke is our TD/int ratio against. It was 35 to 2.

This narrative thread hasn't been locked yet?

Injuries and overconfidence in our roster.

injuries and saleh.

Losing

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:
The only injuries anyone cares about are JG and JM.

The others are irrelevant -- just what every other team goes through every year. It's normal. A starter gets dinged on the oline. Some one gets dinged in db. It's normal for everyone.

No one curr about Colbert, Tartt. They below average and average seasons respectively while they were healthy.

I disagree with your observation, that there's no way we could have won 7 games without JG and JM.

I think it was on the table, we just didnt grab it. Why?

Strong disagreement with that. By the end of the season, the entire secondary was rookies that had very little time together. That is not a "normal" situation. At no time during the season did the same group have more than two games together. You just cannot develop the chemistry and understanding to make aggressive plays on the ball without that. That alone is going to impact turnovers immensely.

Also, Tartt was ranked in the top 20 safeties prior to injury. Colbert was a disappointment based on his rookie year but the sample size was small.

Originally posted by brodiebluebanaszak:

The only injuries anyone cares about are JG and JM.

Losing your starting QB and RB alone is enough to derail a season.


I disagree about some of the others not being important. Losing so many DBs that you have to sign guys off the street definitely affects your chemistry and communication across your defense.



In the end, this is still a rebuilding roster that was realistically expected to win 7 to 9 games. They are not remotely close to being deep enough to absorb all the injuries they suffered across the roster. When you have a lot of young players, it becomes even more if an issue as you don't get to develop any real familiarity or chemistry with each other.



I think you take away a few of the most crucial injuries and they win a few more games. They aren't winning 10 or 11 but 7 or 8 certainly would have been reasonable given several of the close losses they experienced. I think 7 or 8 would have been perfectly acceptable given that this was just year two of an extensive rebuild.

Originally posted by Phoenix49ers:

Injuries. When you lose your franchise QB that early in the season, your starting RB before the season and have to trot out a guy like Beathard, the year isn't likely to go very well for you, no matter what you do. You can nitpick everything else and come to some valid conclusions about certain things but the reality is that if this team has a healthy Garoppolo, McKinnon, Colbert, Tartt, if Reuben Foster doesn't go full on stupid and guys actually have the time to coalesce together, if Richburg doesn't screw up his knee early on in the season, limiting his effectiveness, if you get the starting players on offense and defense together far more consistently then your record at the end of the season is also likely a lot better.

With a healthy Garoppolo and McKinnon alone I don't think there is anyway that this team loses either game to the Cardinals, they probably pull out another game or two that was lost as well, putting them far more in the reasonable expected range of 7 to 8 wins for a team that is still very much rebuilding and had no edge presence on defense.

Here is the problem with your thesis. Jimmy G was not playing that well to start the season. He was taking stupid sacks and was inconsistent. We lost 2 games with him at the helm. Would he of turned it aroundd, maybe? However, Mullen's played better in a number of games. The one sore spot that I'll grant you was the stretch with Beathard, but that's on Kyle.

Also, Jet went down but Brieda and the committee averaged over 5 YPC. It's not like we lost Frank Gore in his prime and everything fell apart.

In my mind, that makes your first two point irrelevant.