A couple days ago Maiocco had a post about the unfair criticism of Marathe.

It’s time for everybody to lay off Marathe, who is also the club’s chief contract negotiator. It is completely unfair and misguided to single him out. He is only one of seven individuals in the 49ers’ coaches’ booth, and the head coach has the final say on everything . . .

There is no question in my mind Marathe knows the NFL rulebook better than anyone in the organization . . .

If Marathe knows the rulebook better than anyone, he should be in the team’s coaches’ booth to assist the head coach in making decisions. That makes a lot of sense – but only if the head coach wants him in the booth. Nolan wanted him up there, and so does Mike Singletary.

MM makes interesting points and if Marathe does know the rule book backwards and forwards it certainly does make sense to have him up there with others.

MM’s only criticism was that:

But the only – ONLY – problem I would have with Marathe in the booth is if he were entrusted to make game-impacting decisions under extreme pressure. That’s an area best left to the coaches who are out on the practice field every day and whose livelihoods depend on making split-second decisions.

My opinion on Paraag Marathe isn’t without bias. And that bias is the one that makes me disagree with Ralph Barbieri. I feel like Marathe really gets blamed for a lot of crap that doesn’t lie with him. He’s never thrown a single challenge flag. He’s not directly responsible for almost any of the stuff he seems to get blamed for, and there’s no strong evidence I’ve seen to suggest that he’s indirectly responsible for as much of it as we might like to think.

But on the other hand, I don’t really understand what purpose he does serve outside of contracts (where I’m fine with him), so I don’t know why he does serve a purpose outside of contracts. I can’t support him as a booth person because I have nothing to base any support on, but I’m fairly slow to jump on his back because I don’t think very much of the onus falls on him either.

So I guess I’m pretty indifferent once I get past my burning desire to take the opposite end of the spectrum of Barbieri.

And Amici’s sucks. Deep Dish Forever!

He may be fine at the contractual stuff, and he may be fine with the statistical work, and if this is the case, he should continue to do that work. But this is all separate from the replay issue. And there is only way I can believe he is not bad at that part of his job — if Mike Nolan is a liar, who has thrown him under the bus on more than one occasion. In the past, Nolan has said, Marathe is “in charge” of the replay system in the booth, so saying he’s one of only 7 coaches is like saying you criticize a head coach, because he’s not the only coach on the team.

So if Marathe is the guy who told Nolan what to do, and Nolan is not lying when he said on more than one occasion he was “not told” about a potential replay situation that viewers at home had the time and access to see, then Marathe is indeed bad at that part of his job.

One such situation happened earlier this year against the Eagles, where Baskett made a big 3rd down catch putting the Eagles in the red zone, but replays clearly showed the ball hit the ground. FOX showed the replay quickly, Brian Baldinger had time to say the Niners should challenge more than once, and I myself had time to call Nolan a moron and more other words before the next snap. After the game, Nolan said he “didn’t get word from the booth in time” to challenge.

How good is Marathe as a talent evaluator as well? He is partly responsible for the screaming success of Alex Smith, right?

I’m sure that Marathe is good at the job he was intended to have (salary cap, contract negotiations, and statistical analysis). The problem is that because of the chaotic and rudderless nature of the organization and his close relationship with Jed York he seems (and no we don’t know for absolute sure) to have more influence than the average capologist/statistical analyst has in the better run organizations around the league. We know that he had a major role in the coaching search that led to Nolan.

It seems to me that the people with the most power in the organization are Marathe and Jed York which is unconventional to say the least. Unconventional would be fine if it was working, but given that most of us remember the days when the 49ers were the best run organization in all of professional sports and these days they are one of the worst in the NFL, there is bound to be some complaints about the unconventional.

Also, this is just a pure hunch, but I think Marathe was the guy that leaked word of Nolan’s impending firing to Michael Smith and caused that be botched so embarassingly.