That Shawntae Spencer should be the guy the 49ers look to for covering the deep pass. But you can’t deny Nate Clements has been a hard hitter and an all-around guy when it comes to stopping the tight ends and running backs. I do think, however, that Clements is less versatile when it comes to man-to-man coverage.

Clements plays the left side and Spencer plays the right side, so whichever receiver lines up on their side is who they cover. They both end up covering the #1 WR sometimes and the #2/3 WR’s sometimes.

I’m not sure how to answer this question because I don’t have all the game film in front of me (and a regular recording of the game itself is not enough to show fans what’s really happening). But! I will say that from what I’ve seen in both the preseason and regular season games thus far, defenses seem to pick on Clements a lot with their number 1 wideouts, and he hasn’t done a great job at ‘shutting’ them down. $80 million dollars isn’t supposed to let Roddy White break away for 2 long touchdowns, you know what I mean? The first one was just pathetic. You could see in the replay that Clements was playing soft, and relying heavily on a deep Dashon Goldson. White broke the route inside instead of to the outside where Clements was playing, and that resulted in a TD. The second one was equally as pathetic. Clements played man-to-man coverage and completely ignored the fact that there was no safety help to the outside edge of the field where the ball was thrown to. Well, the ball was thrown, Clements gambled by going for the ball and he missed it, and because there was no safety help, Clements got burned yet again for the YAC and eventual TD.

I really don’t understand the thought process behind the game-play of Clements. It’s as if he’s lacking the fundamentals. To my understanding of the game, you play man-to-man whenever you have safety help because that way if you get burned, you have the safety to make up for your mistakes. On the other hand, you play soft coverage (i.e. approximately 10 yards away from receiver) if you have no safety help because if you get beat, there’s no one down the field to help you.

The reason I bring up these two plays is because I think they are indicative of why Clements is not our #1 corner. I can cite plenty more plays, but it would take too much time. We need to start treating Clements like Zito. He deserves a demotion.

Back to your question… I’m not sure if Spencer is the 49ers #1, but I would like to say with a lot of confidence, that Spencer would do a much better job than Clements in covering the other team’s #1 wideout. Many people seem to forget that Spencer had a solid, solid season in his 05-06 campaign. He was healthy that year and produced 4 interceptions, 19 passes deflected (19!!!), and had over 80 tackles. This year is the first he’s really been healthy ever since that season, so I say why not give him the keys to the #1 spot. Coach Sing should give him the opportunity to line up against the other team’s best WR on every down. We should remind ourselves that the 49ers said publicly that they would line up Spencer against Fitzgerald in week 1, which they did throughout the game, and the results were amazing. (For further proof that Clements isn’t our #1 corner, look at the 40 yard pass to Jeremy Urban in the 1st quarter of that game. Guess who was covering him? Clements.)