Coaching: B+. Vic Fangio called more blitzes than usual and the 49ers defense got a ton of pressure on John Skelton.
Greg Roman called some creative run plays in the first quarter out of Bill Walsh’s old “Blue” and “Brown” formations, lining Gore and Hunter up side-by-side in the backfield. After the first quarter, the run game did very little.
In the passing game, Roman mostly called plays for the wide receivers. He continues to feature them at the expense of Vernon Davis, the best player on the offense, who’s caught just five passes the last three games. This strategy has not hurt the 49ers against offensively inept teams like the Cardinals and Seahawks. We’ll see how that strategy works against well-rounded teams who can score points.
Another thing – the Cardinals blitzed a lot on obvious pass downs and Roman didn’t call screens. He rarely calls a screen, and the 49ers have the personnel to run the play effectively.
Roman has spent the first half of the season establishing his wide receivers as threats. As the second half of the season approaches, it would be in the 49ers best interest if he started to get the other players involved in the passing game, too.
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19 passes, 30 rushes. The coaches had a brief spasm of stupidity the past few weeks but they seem to have remembered where the strength of the offense is.
Good job.
So you’re saying our running game carried the team tonight? Alex and our receivers didn’t do any of the heavy lifting, did they? Our passing game was garbage tonight! Stats be damned!
Give me a break dude.
LSX, Msclemons67 is NOT a dude…. break down the handle… Ms Clemons 67. She’s a chick born in 1967, a 45 year old woman. She sees things from a woman’s point-of-view BECAUSE she’s a woman…
Jock, I disagree with Msclemon here as well, but your post here is just plain sexist. One gender isn’t better than the other.
The number of rushes increased because the Niners put the game out of reach before the end of the third quarter Msclemon.
I think the cards, and this is just a theory, over looked Alex Smith and focused too much on the run. They truly believed all they had to do was shut down the run and they beat us. But it bit them in the arse ’cause Alex and the WR corps straight BALLED!! So, our run game, in a sense, did carry the team (and thats not taking away from Alex). Are run game is so tight, they took their focus off the real killer, Alex Smith, and he feasted!!!
@Msc:
19 passes, 30 rushes. The coaches had a brief spasm of stupidity the past few weeks but they seem to have remembered where the strength of the offense is.
Yes – in a balanced offense. By my count, the coaches called 15 running plays and 17 passing plays in the first half. On the first drive of the second half (the one that produced Moss’s TD), it was 3 runs and 3 passes. It was only after that drive, when the game was in hand, that the play-calling went to an unbalanced 11 runs and 3 passes.
I think you may want to rethink your theory.
The Niners ran the ball to establish the pass. When they do that, they’re effective.
Whats with everyone diminishing the performance. The opponents never measures up, defense not good enough, other opponents QB not good enough etc. etc.
These are NFL teams we are beating. Our schedule has been difficult. Lets start giving credit where its due. This is a solid 49er team finding different ways to win.
Atta’ boy, Axel…kick some ass… just keep reminding the “gang of 4 1/2″ that we HAVE a QB…and yes…he can play.
Go away double poster. You have no integrity. You are not a man.
Bay Harbaugh was talking to you and 23, and Neal and Nick when he said you guys are “all
Gobble Gobble turkey from jive turkey gobblers”
Insted of haters, this will be your new gang name! I love it!
Prime, thats hilarious, I like that. Jive turkey gobblers, better than haters.
Bay
The missing link (aka Axel Primate) has no integrity and lost all credibility last week. I wonder how many other screen names he has. He could be FDM, Claude, and DS for all we know.
Nick slow, I could be 100 different posters, the message is still the same, your a clown from Cal. Get use to it!
LOL @ Prime
These turkey gobblers don’t even know what’s up!
I completely agree about Roman and the screen pass. It works so well, yet he rarely seems to call one.
“As the second half of the season approaches, it would be in the 49ers best interest if he started to get the other players involved in the passing game, too.” They completed passes to 9 different receivers tonight. They had plenty of players involved.
As for the screen game, onthe opening drive Roman called a nice screen pass that would have netted a 1st down had Boone not been flagged. The rush wasn’t such that it warranted a lot of screens tonight.
Nice to see Alex hitting covered receivers tonight
A- on the coaching. Hardly any mistakes from them, especially Roman.
Vernon post worked. That play is always there if they need it. How about Randy Moss, nice juke! Haven’t seen that since John Taylor! Nice.
Niner football=physical and efficient
So I was off 3 points. Great job 49ers!
My predictions for tonight’s game:
Smith will throw for 220 yards snd a touchdown.
Gore and Hunter will run for 200 yards together.
Vernon Davis will catch s touchdown.
Crabtree will catch six passes for 67 yards.
Staley will give up two sacks.
The D will have two interceptions and three sacks.
Fitzgerald will struggle tonight.
The D will give up less than 60 yards on the ground.
The finsl score will be Niners 21 Cardinals 13.
I didn’t do too bad on my predictions either Razor. Now if only I can do this with my weekly picks.
Maybe, Greg Roman doesn’t believe like a lot of us, that Davis is in fact the best receiver on the team. Maybe at some point you should start to believe the same thing.
I think it’s more a question of what the defenses believe that the 49ers come up against. Davis is routinely double covered. Cards got burned on a blitz with Davis in man-to-man, on the deep post.
You won’t see a ton of instances of Davis in single man coverage.
Let’s trade for Dwayne Bowe! Umm, maybe not.
Good team win, as everyone seemed to play well. Only complaints I have is Roman trying too much in the run game. Just a lot of plays that seemed too cute when we had a good thing going, but other than that not much to complain. Really great game by Crabtree, I haven’t seen his feet move as quick as they were working tonight since probably his days at Texas Tech. Alex was crazy efficient and picked apart a defense that football outsiders has as the 4th best passing D in the league which was encouraging. We do need to get Vernon involved as a pass catcher more though even if using him as a bit of a decoy definitely worked well tonight. Also should take time to say how dominate Culliver has been outside of that Giants game. He always seems to have tight coverage and has a knack for knocking the ball away. Great to get a win going into a bye week so we don’t have to hear the chicken littles babble for two weeks.
Winning is the best deodorant. Not my words but they remain true and especially true with this team.
Grant it’s clear that you not only watched the game tonight, you also listen to the commentary.
“Greg Roman called some creative run plays in the first quarter out of Bill Walsh’s old “Blue” and “Brown” formations, lining Gore and Hunter up side-by-side in the backfield.”
Attribution is a good thing. Give it a try.
Great win by the 9ers. A few thoughts:
Alex Smith played extremely well. He continued to check down but it worked out in this game. This was the good Alex. I hope he can be consistent the rest of the way.
In street lingo, I think Michael Crabtree made Patrick Peterson his female dog in heat.
The Delanie Walker block on Adrian Wilson on the first play of the 2nd half was badass. Walker completely blew up Wilson and knocked him 5 yards out of bounds. Thing of beauty.
The 9ers punished the Cardinals. I think all the hate talk before the game fired up the 9ers. They physically dominated the Cardinals. That is the essence of 9er football under Harbaugh.
And an F for Grant for stealing a line off the teevee (blue and brown) and passing it off as his own…
Alex Smith got some YAC to help his numbers. It’s about time the receivers broke some tackles and made some tacklers miss. I wish Smith would have gotten off that last pass attempt instead of the Delay of game for a new NFL record. Still very happy for Smith. I think tonight put an end to the Kaepernick experience.
The AZ secondary looked abissmal tackling. The play of the night, Randy Moss getting his own TD. They don’t pass it to him in the redzone, so he went out and scored his own.
I think tonight marked the end of Whisenhunt in AZ.
It’s not Smith’s style to go for the record. However — what gave me a sign of hope for Smith to be more consistent was his interview on ESPN, where he talked about how he wished he threw the ball away and hoe communicative Randy Moss is. Maybe Moss can get in his air and help him be a better QB. That Moss TD was electric, it was not an easy run after the Catch.
We know Smith competitive, but it’s rare to see the fire in the belly. Moss has 155 catches, 50 more and he catches Jerry Rice. Can you image if Smith was the guy who helps Moss break that record? It’s insane but not impossible. Moss caught 20 something passes in one year. That’s being a competitor, for SMITH to want to go in the record books, with his history, to be THAT GUY who throw THE PASS to that HOFer to break Jerry Rice’s record. I know it’s crazy to think that but if SMITH was THAT guy? And Moss ACTUALLY did it at a Niner? Then Smith would raise his game and be an ELITE QB.
Yeah, that’s crazy talk.
@Fansince77 – I’m sorry to tell you but RM is not going to break Jerry’s record. Moss needs 50 more TD catches to catch Jerry. If Moss can average 10 a season then he is 5 years away from the record. He will well into his forties by then and will not be averaging 10 touchdowns a game. The way the season is going now, he will get four by the end of the year. Sorry, not going to happen.
Welcome back D line. So is Aldon Smith officially healed from his stab wound or what? Aldon finally looked like the beast that I expected him to be this year. As he goes the defense goes.
Goldson laid a huge wooooo lick. Culliver and Brown were good in coverage.
Offense. Let me start by saying, I’m a huge Hunter fan. While he is good, he’s not Gore’s replacement. I think RB will be a need in this years draft.
WR’s were great. I knew this group was this good if just given a chance. I don’t want to hear that Moss “doesn’t have it”, or that Crabtree is “slow and lacks explosiveness”.
Smith. Does this guy have more field personalities than Sybil or what. His performance last night leaves me more frustrated than ever. Last night he was off the charts. Decisive. On the Moss TD, he actually started looking right and actually SCANNED the field and found Moss left. He actually went through a progression. The first TD to Crabs was nothing special but he put it up and let him fight for it.
Smith was accurate. He didn’t throw the deep ball that he is so terrible at but so what. He didn’t need to. Last night he was a bad ass WCO QB. While he doesn’t have to be this good game in game out, he does have to start figuring out who he is. He can’t have a game like Buffalo then wet the bed and look like the worst QB in the league the next couple weeks. Then come out and set an NFL completion record only to follow it up by laying trails of crap. Smith leaves more questions than answers because of his inconsistency. Last night though, he was a baaaaaad man!
He hasn’t looked like the worst QB in the League in years. Have you never had a bad day?
The loss to the NY Giants was not entirely Smith’s fault. Roman getting too cute with the gimmicky Colin Kaepernick plays, plus some ill advised deep passes on third and short caused the Niners to come up with just three points even though they kept the ball for about 12 minutes in the first quarter. If the Niners had led 10-0 instead of 3-0 at the end of the first quarter, I don’t see how the Giants win.
In the Seattle game the coaches again sent in CK for an ill-advised drive disrupting gimmick play after Smith had led the team into the red zone. Also there were a few low percentage deep passes on third and short which stalled drives in the first half. Harbaugh must have read the riot act to Roman at the halftime of the Seattle game and told him to cut out the cutesie stuff and play our game. You may remember Smith led a couple of solid drives in the second half (although one did end on end zone pick) to put the game away, and there were no gimmick CK plays in the entire second half.
Then last night, it was clear that there was not going to be any gimmick wildcat crap to disrupt the flow of the game. Nor were we going to throw 30 yard passes on 3rd and 3. As you said yourself, it was a bad ass WCO game plan.
I don’t understand why Smith haters are harping on the fact that most of the passing yards were run after the catch. I can remember exactly same games by Joe Montana where John Taylor and Jerry Rice had 250 rac yards out of 350 total passing yards for Joe. I don’t ever remember anyone saying that Joe had a bad game because 80% of his passing yards were rac as it happened frequently.
@ Rick
I don’t understand why Smith haters are harping on the fact that most of the passing yards were run after the catch.
Because that’s what haters do. They go into denial to avoid admitting they were wrong.
Interesting point. Because all this year, we’ve heard that AS can’t throw accurately enough to get the YAC.
Now the YAC means nothing.
Haters hating. That is what they do.
+1 on every point, Bay. That hit Dashon put on Ducet made me go “WOOOOOO”, too! haha
Randy Moss is the fastest WR on the team with the best breakaway speed IMO. He out ran the entire defense. That’s a fast man….
You think faster than Kyle Williams or Teddy Ginn? I was actually very disappointed in Ted Ginn last night. He had some good returns but whats with always running out of bounds? He had so many chances to cut it back inside and insted ran out. Not sold on him yet.
@Prime, welcome back but I dont do the Alex Smith thing anymore. The play on the field will tell all. No need to gloat nor criticize any longer. Its been played.
Ginn has always run out of bounds to avoid hits. Thats been his game going all the way back to college. The difference this year is that he looks like he lost some speed. Something isn’t right with Ginn.
I hate it Houston, to me your return guy has to be fearless. If your afraid of contact, dont play special teams.
FDM
If it were DW or PW or JS, then I’d understand running out of bounds. But the Punter?! Come on man! At least lower a shoulder into the guy and make him feel like he is playing in an NFL game and not participating in practice.
I’d argue Williams is “quicker” than Moss and that Ginn is faster in a straight line, but Randy’s got better “football speed” than either of them. Maybe it’s a subjective thing, but Randy looked crafty while dodging both the rook CB and the trailing LB on that TD run – Ole! Ole!
At least Ginn can catch the damn ball.
Neal
Yeah provided that the ball is kicked first. He has the worst hands on a NFL WR this side of TO
FDM
I would pay to see a race with RM, TGjr., KW, LMicJames, VD, PW, and CK7.
Oh, and you were joking about welcoming back Prime right?
If you really think he kept his bet by staying away for two weeks, I have some purpetual snow for sale (lol)!
If you guys applaud 23welcher and then get on Prime for his act, well thats hypocritical.
Especially since wuss boy made another deal to not call others names after welching in the first place. Did that last?
Gosh AES. You’re showing you’re ALL IN for sure.
Smh at some of the comments on how short the passes were and how Smith was bailed out by his receivers. When I read things like this it opens my eyes to how many young fans we have on this site. Fantasy football has destroyed the ability of inexperienced football fans to understand the beauty of the game.
What we saw last night was Bill Walsh WCO football. I was stopping and rewinding different plays because it was like going back in time. This was Bill Walsh’s offense. Predicated on the short pass and RAC. That throw out to Moss Could have been Montana to Taylor if you squinted just a little. The move by Crabs on his second TD could have been Rice down near the goaline on one of his many similar TD’s. This was fantastic stuff and it’s completely lost on so many because they want deep balls and 300 yard games.
Last nights gameplan is what won SB’s for the Niners in the 80′s and as we saw is still very effective when executed properly. Steve Young must have been wetting his pants on the sideline watching this. He has lamented the fact that for years Coaches have not taken advantage of the Vault of instructional videos Walsh left behind; well we can see that is not the case with Harbaugh and Roman. They are not only studying the film, they are incorporating it into their offense.
Last night was like a trip down memory lane. They need to stay there now.
Rocket, very true. This game was very BW-esque. What are your thoughts regarding the use of the RB screen pass or lack thereof? BTW, there was a story about a year and a half ago that the vault tapes have disappeared over time. Former coaches took them? Who knows??
Hof,
I’d like to see them use it more often for sure. Teams always try to pressure Smith up the middle which leaves them prone to a screen. Roman just doesn’t seem to be much of a proponent of it and I’m not sure why.
Some of the tapes disappeared but a bunch were found and sent to the Niner HQ’s during the lockout last year. Roman and Harbaugh both talked about watching them last year and during this offseason. It was so cool to see elements of Walsh’s offense showing up in the game.
Rocket, maybe because the timing has to be so succinct or the play can be blown up. I don’t remember how often they used the screen pass when they coached at Stanford.
“It was so cool to see elements of Walsh’s offense showing up in the game.”
Why did it take so long to utilize when clearly the wrinkle of the year wasn’t working after a couple of early td runs?
I don’t recall seeing a lot of screen plays while they were at the Farm either Hof. It’s really puzzling to say the least. Maybe it’s the mindset they have. They are an aggressive, physical offense and the screen involves letting the defenders come at you and letting them go. It’s the only thing I can think of, although I’m probably overthinking it. They did throw one last night that worked beautifully if Boone hadn’t gotten a penalty.
I think they have slowly worked some of the Walsh offense into their scheme. Crabtree’s routes especially have been more like the Rice and Taylor route tree at times this season and as we saw, if given some space Crabs can make some things happen. Last night just seemed to be more Walsh than at anytime I’ve seen so far with some of the route combinations and the split backs. It was really great to watch and I hope they keep building on it.
+1 Rocket. That second Crabtree TD could’ve very well been a clip of John Taylor! What a thing of beauty.
As for rummaging through the film vault, I seem to recall how happy Roman was when talking about having found a treasure trove of old video cassettes from the Walsh days – lots of installation film and whatnot – last “preseason”. It’s so exciting to see him/them/our coaching staff mix in these now-unconventional plays from my childhood. What a complete turn-around from Jimmy Raye (SMFH) to this offense! You never know what you’re gonna see and it.is.awesome to watch!
Steve Young must have been wetting his pants on the sideline watching this.
Boy, I bet that made things uncomfortable on the ESPN set. No wonder Stu Scott was giving Steve the fish eye.
Yes, I am going to Hell.
Memory Lane!
The 49ers were down big to the Rams of LA when John Taylor took a crossing pattern well inside the 49er ten yard line and scored. Then he did it again a few minutes later.
I can guarantee you that it never occurred to a single 49er fan back then to point out that Montana was “just” dinking and dunking. That was left to the East Coast writers.
Correct HT! Nobody [no outlet, except talk radio] diseccted each game to the nth degree like ‘we’ do nowadays. A lot of the younger posters think that Montana was a gunslinger, throwing the ball all over the joint. When in fact he was a game managing surgeon.
I think JT had 2 90yd plus touchdowns in that game [95& 92?], on a Monday night? I remember his long smooth strides running down the sideline and jumping for joy, the Rams were THE division rival back then, the Saints and Falcons were terrible.