NFL Films analyst Greg Cosell spoke on the Murph and Mac Show Thursday morning. Here’s Cosell’s take on the Vernon Davis issue.
Q: Vernon Davis’ catches have decreased a little bit this year. What are you seeing on film? Are defenses taking him away or is Alex Smith just not looking for him?
COSELL: It’s always hard to say whether a quarterback’s looking for someone because I don’t know what’s in a quarterback’s head when he drops back. I would say that they may not be designing – and maybe Greg Roman would disagree, it’s always for me to say because I just don’t know what they tell a quarterback when they design route combinations – but it just appears on film as if they’re not going to him. I remember last year seeing plays specifically designed where they split him out, things like that. I’m not seeing that as much up to this point.
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Here we go again with a topic we exhausted 2 weeks ago!
Probably saving him for the playoffs, and if VD is like most of us, he’s happy with getting a Win.
Grant a great idea for an article would be interviewing strength and conditioning coach Mark Uyeyama and how the 49ers have been able to stay healthy under his program.
Excellent idea. It’s not by accident that the Niners have been unusually injury free for the past several seasons.
Uyeyama was recognized as the NFL Strength & Conditioning Coach of the Year by American Football Monthly.
Also deserving an interview is Jeff Ferguson who moved up from Head Athletic Trainer to Director of Football Operations and Sports Medicine.
These two guys have been with the Niners for 5-6 years and have provided good service.
Hey Primate, are you out of bananas again? I heard Safeway has them on sale. Go stock up monkey boy.
@ Nick,
Good one Nick, Primate is going to go ape for that type of sale.
Nick, you are better than that? Why stir up the drama?
lol at FDM,
Talking about drama, he wanted to physically fight BIG P, what a hypocrite.
Neal, same message applies to you, why always the drama?
I have been drama less the last couple of days, just love Nick’s humor
Why the drama FDM? Couple reasons. First Cal boy is just sorry cause I toss him around like yesterdays news. He cannot formulate a football conversation cause they don’t really teach you how to think at Cal.
As for Neal, well we all know he has 10%body fat, top 2 sales man and well, WHO GIVES A CRAP!
This is their story, nothing but losers that come on here and look to fight!
I finally got it, now I know why Prime Axel is so bitter in his life, first it was he had no friends, no women, 17 jobs in two years and than finally got it he has Napoleon complex. The guy is a midget, his parents were born as midgets. This is midget Prime Slime Axel Welcher at work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd-sfqzFdmk
“It’s always hard to say whether a quarterback’s looking for someone because I don’t know what’s in a quarterback’s head when he drops back.”
So Cosell is just guessing then? Good analysis.
According to this article by Eric Branch, this is being caused by defenses paying extra attention to Davis this season. But hasn’t this been true for several seasons now?
http://blog.sfgate.com/49ers/2012/11/06/smith-agrees-attention-paid-to-davis-is-unprecedented/
Spaceborn, that article from Branch looks very similar to one from Sando a few days ago.
http://espn.go.com/blog/nfcwest/post/_/id/80651/vernon-davis-receiving-stats-due-to-spike
Hmmm, Sando’s article came out the 5th and Eric’s the day after! Good catch, Jack!
Jack, have you had a chance to talk to JG, yet, with Grant’s question of which WR he would like to see featured?
For some reason I have a feeling he’ll say RM. Looking forward to his answer.
Space,
JG lives down in San Diego, so we don’t get a chance to talk all that frequently. As I told Grant, my guess would be Davis. During his time in SF, he did a very good job of getting the ball to his best receiver who at the time was TO. He was a little more willing to give his receivers opportunities to make a play if you know what I mean.
Jack, thought that was about WR’s, but if it is best receiver, then I would agree with Davis. I just thought he might give the “old man” some love since he also enjoyed a long career I guess.
Thanks for the response!
“He was a little more willing to give his receivers opportunities to make a play if you know what I mean.”
Yeah, his career ypa is 6.9. He would barely make the cut with this fantasy football blamer crowd!!
Go cry in your wine Hofer. Or is it whine? Get over the blamer stuff.
Jack, interesting comment coming from you! One moment you are all football and your latest blog article, the next moment,if you aren’t in the middle of the personal drama, you are leading it! Sour grapes eh!???
+1
Hofer,
Leave the childish blamer/hater/smither stuff to the others.
Grant here are some words that I think you need to meditate and reflect personally upon: The Buddha said that the origin of our suffering is our inability to let go; our clinging.
You are suffering much over this subject and it pains me, and plenty others I’m sure, to see you continue down this path.
Let go brother, let go.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFnFr-DOPf8
This is a topic that could be argued over forever… but why? We are winning games, and I’m sure VD will take that over stats any day. Expect more calls and plays designed for VD when they’re really needed… down the stretch if needed for seeding, and more importantly in the playoffs…. until then we have a ground game that is almost unstoppable and plenty of contributors in the passing game that they’re obviously working on establishing as threats for defenders to worry about when we get to the bigger games. I’m fine with that, it gives opposing defenses more to account for. I can only imagine the articles we’d be seeing about how we’re misusing our TE’s if we’d drafted Fleener like Grant wanted.
With all the attention VD is supposedly garnering, you’d think one of the WR’s would be having a bigger year. Crabtree is having the best year but he’s only around 44th in the league with 39 catches for 440 yards. Even with all the attention VD is still tied for 11th in the league in receptions of 20-40 yards. Randy Moss only has 13 receptions on the year but 2 of those were over 40 yards which ranks him around 8th in the league in over 40 yard receptions. If teams are stacking men on VD and the receivers are getting single coverage, you’d think we’d have huge opportunities in the passing game.
Houston,
We have tons of easy opportunities in the passing game. That’s a factor in why Smith’s completion % and YPA are so high…unless you think it’s all Smith…..:) However, we also have a dominating, smashing, kick-ass awesome running game, so there’s lots of huge opportunities there too! It’s an embarassment of riches!
However, I’d like to see, as I’m sure you do too, some more big yardage plays, like an ‘Eight-88′ to Moss. Teams play a safety over the top too much, so 49ers look to underneath and running game more often than not.
You know Angus, alot of those stats don’t really reconcile with me. Alex has a very high YPA but he’s 34th in passes over 15 yards. 49er receivers are toward the bottom of the league in YAC. Alex is relatively high up on the list in Air Yards but he’s at the bottom of the league in Passing Yards. Some of those stats obviously go together but you’d expect better yardage per game if he’s completing such a high percentage. So when I say easy opportunities I am really saying we have opportunities at chunk plays but we’re not getting many.
Houston,
It is extremely simple. Smith is 31st in passes attempted, which is why he’s near the bottom of the league in passing yards. His YPA is high because his leading receiver, Crabtree, has the 6th highest YAC in the league among receivers.
As for the chuck plays, define that for me? He had 2 of 20+ in the last game against Arizona.
If you want them to stretch the field vertically, they are calling the plays, but as I said yesterday, they are generally off play action with 2 guys deep and a check down. Defenses are doing a good job of covering those deep routes with the 3 deep defenders leaving the underneath stuff open. Smith is going to hit that open guy instead of taking a chance with the deep throw.
Houston: regarding “Alex has a very high YPA but he’s 34th in passes over 15 yards.”
One is an Average and the other is total. To make an extreme example for the sake of simplicity, if Smith had 2 passing attempts for 100 yards each, his YPA would be 100, but his total passes over 15 yards would only be 2….. Hence the difficulty “reconciling”
Guys, I understand the stats you cited are complimentary stats and they go together. The parts that don’t fit for me are things like having a very high % of completions, relatively high in Air Yards, a receiver in the top 10 in YAC but one of the 3 worst teams in terms of yards per game. Even with fewer attempts you’d think a passing game with high completion % and a receiver with high YAC would result in at least a top 20 passing yardage game.
Jack, Chunk Plays are what many in the NFL call plays designed to attack the intermediate or deep parts of the field. The term may have changed but for players I know they often call the deeper passes – chunk plays.
Oh wait, they have Alex Smith at QB.
I think Grant used a 3rd round pick on VD is his Fantasy Football draft…
The horse is dead Grant stop beating it…
The reason Davis is not getting more opportunities is very simple, Harbaugh absolutley loves to run the ball and we are having great success at it this year. The #2 reason is Roman/Harbaugh are trying to spread the ball around as much as they can. Are they right or wrong to do that? the answer will come in the second half of the year and the playoffs.
If we win the west and go deep in the playoffs Roman/Harbaugh were right. If we do’nt then Grant was right. My money is on Roman/Harbaugh but i’m willing to give Grant his due if he is right.
You can’t be afraid to feed your stud.
the 49ers stud is frank gore and they are feeding him plenty
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=feeding%20the%20horse
hehe
Grant
AS set a record passing accuracy wise in AZ. He threw for over 300 in less than 30 throws. The Niners passing attack is shaping up nicely.
If Davis was routinely open, and the staff thought that throwing to him in those circumstances had the best chance ensuring a 49er win, you can bet your bottom dollar they’d have no problem throwing to him 20 times a game.
Changing the subject a bit, I’d like to ask for some help from our fellow 49ers fans.
I’m from Brazil and will be at my first live 49er game on Monday Night against the Bears (we sure will show them what a number one defense really is).
I’ll be with my wife (who is 5 1/2 months pregnant) and 2 other couples, and we would like to have the complete game experience.
That means: TAILGATING.
We’d really appreciate any invitation to join a Tailgate barbecue from some of you guys.
But it has to be a family enviroment, with women and children if possible.