49ers Alex Smith, Colin Kaepernick Simply Weren't Ready For Saints Blitzing

Did Harbaugh ask for this? Did he feel the team needed a rude awakening? I’m not sure that it’s possible to talk to the Saints about it, but maybe he just saw what was happening and let it go. Maybe leaving Staley in there and some other moves were designed to let us get our ass kicked, get a reality check and then get some new blood in there like Goodwin.

Only semi positive thing I can think of.

Work out some of these *mistakes

Weren’t ready for the blitz? Really?

Really?

It’s a blitz, you have to be ready for it. On any given down.

It’s a new coach, new system, so what? It’s not the first time a team has had a new coach or a new system in the NFL, you still have to pick up the blitz, you still have to get the ball to the recievers.

It’s only a preseason game, so what? Yea, we don’t want to repeat last year winning all our preseason games and suck all season. But you don’t want to waste all those chances to improve the offense with your quarterback eating turf the whole game.

The team I saw last night was not good enough even with all the lame excuses…

I don’t recall a single clean snap

Although it was disappointing to see our o-line get owned by the saints constant blitz package I come to realize that this is exactly what we needed. I rather see our flaws in the preseason than game 1 of theregular season. There are 5 weeks left for the o-line to work out the kinks.

Very pleased with the coverage and front 7

I for one am happy that the Saints brought the heat to the Oline. It’s preseason, a measuring stick of where the team is at after 2 weeks of practicing together. It shows the heavy dose of reality of just how much work is needed by everyone on this team. We hear from reporters, the athletes & folks that have gone to open practices saying for the most part that things look good but still a work in progress. This game heavily showed “the work in progress” part. The worst thing that could have happened to the 49ers was for the Saints to show a very “vanilla defense” for AS & Co. and having a great game. That would have been a very false sense of hope and security after playing the former world champs at their home. I’m sure the majority would have been drinking the koolaid it that happend. But what happened yesterday was the reality check this team needed to assess how far they are from a finished product and just exactly how far the need to go to getting there.

p.s. Just happy no major injuries happend last night.

This much blitzing in the first pre-season game is unheard of. Coming off a lockout against a team with a new coaching staff makes it even more questionable. It would get talked about on the national press if the 49ers were a big time team with a big time QB, bu as it is they’re a crappy team with a crappy QB so it’s one of those, shut up and play deals.

They only get 6 weeks and 4 games to get ready this year and to spend one basically repeating the same thing over and over was extremely disappointing.

That being said, if they had ONE play against a blitz, they could have done it a couple times and maybe loosened up the defense. Just felt like a giant waste of time though to me though, why do it the entire game? These aren’t excuses for the 49ers being terrible, they were going to be terrible whether the Saints blitzed or not, the point of the pre-season is not to pummel your opponent and hit their QB, it’s to work all aspects of the game and decide your depth chart.

Goodwin is real good at calling blitz pickups. Y’all will be a lot better with him in.

The way the Saints defense played is the way they play in practice. They have to to go against Drew Brees everyday. If Drew gets more that 3 seconds to throw the offense usually wins.

That guy Long looked good, I didn’t get to see all of his routes but what I did see looked good.

i’m quite happy with the bland playcalling and i’m also very glad that new orleans dialled up
as many blitzes as they did… now our coaching staff knows what a nicely executed blitz looks like (even though it is the preseason) and can obviously see the breakdowns on the o-line, and they can get to work at fixing it…..if there’s one thing we’ve learnt from this staff, and the FO as well for that matter, it’s that they won’t show their hand to appease anyone, the fans be damned…..

not even the gun was where it should have been. I saw Alex barely catching the ball, like the ball like he didn’t expect it. Timing was way off.

Was it “wrong” for the Saints to blitz so much? I don’t think so. We were completely overwhelmed by it, and as we all know, without a preforming offensive line, the pass and the run are compromised.

I really don’t believe our line is that bad, way too many 1 and 2nd round picks, and some great coaching. But it is the first presason game, after a handful of practices.

I am willing to bet we see marked improvement next week, and don’t want to go all sing here, but maybe this reality check is what the team needed.

.

It’s one thing not to expect it—but they better, cause this will be the gameplan for every defense facing A Smith this year: bring relentless pressure with man coverage down field until he shows he can beat us—but come on, make an adjustment. Spread the field. Throw on first down. The coaching staff and O-line barely gave Smith a chance to do anything. But still, Smith has to be better with pocket awareness and making throws under duress. Struggling against pressure is his problem. Other QBs deal with this too, but Defenses have to play more honest against most of them because their Qbs can make plays.

- without realizing the the offense’s failure and the defenses success are two sides of the same coin.

The team had far fewer practices than they normally have before the first preseason game. Of course they were out of synch on offense. They’ve probably only really practiced half the playbook, so their options are limited.

Obviously, things have to be better, but this game told us much less than most people are acting like it told us.

They have been implementing new protection schemes for all of 12 practices. The offense is overall two months behind schedule.

They were not ready for Gregg William’s blitz packages operating between gaps and disguised safety blitzes. They were trying to focus on hand-offs and the early pressure rattled Snyder.

With Goodwin at center, the O Line will look much better next Saturday.

Yes, MI blocked DT instead. @49ersCBSSports On that 1st hit by W. Smith, Staley was expecting help from Iupati. Screamed at him afterward.

But I expect most of the preseason games to be short on excitement.

It’s Harbaugh’s first year and I figured going in that he is not going to be showing the NFL a whole lot of his playbook during preseason play, and though it may not lead to meaningless wins, it could serve the team well going into a year in which they are already at many disadvantages.

He’s going to keep things vanilla until the games count. At least that’s my feeling.

O.K…..not that I want the Niners to look like a H.A.M. (Hot A** Mess for those uninformed.) But, I can’t say this is a real shock for me. What is shocking is that the Niners kept it close for so long. From Kaepernick, I really didn’t expect him to impress as he is a raw rookie. However, from Smith, I must say that his ABYSMAL performance was right on target. I have complained for quite a while, to no avail.

Sorry folks, there are simply no excuses left. Yes, the offensive line played like a spaghetti strainer, yet as a seasoned veteran, Smith should have seen most of the blitzes coming a country mile away. It’s not as if Greg Williams has changed his packages THAT much! It’s one of thew main reasons that the vaunted 4-6 D didn’t last. IT was blitz on 1st, 2nd, 3rd down….and if that didn’t work…..BLITZ THE Popcorn Guy!

Before anyone begins to light torches, and call for pitchforks in my neighborhood, understand I am a Niner fan for life. I know we are going through a transition….(AGAIN!) This team has the talent to win. We have a coach with the pedigree, and a defense that should do well. But, if this 1st game tells us anything…..it’s…..Alex Smith….I TOLD YOU
SO!

I’ve been a niners fan as long as I can remember, and I happen to think I’ve seen quite a bit of good quarterbacking, and bad over the years and I refuse to blame Alex Smith for our problems. We have been horrible on offense forever now for a couple years. even our best player(gore)has fumbling issues. What everyone has been missing is that we had no playcalling and no line. Hell they didn’t even get him any weapons till crabtree and I believe that dude is only fast enough to be a number two wideout.lets be honest with ourselves, what weapons and coaching has Alex actually had…had some great coaches early, but never any talent on the outside or on the on-line. I don’t care who woulda been playing qb, whether its Manning, vick or whoever, they would have been destroyed the way our o-line played yesterday. I could have blocked better. I know Alex isn’t gonna break any hall of fame records and appear annually in the pro bowl, but until everyone around him plays better(I don’t know how many dropped passes and fumbles I saw last year),and significantly better line play he will continue to look the same and and so will our offense. Dude needs more time to throw plain and simple, he just does, and frankly I don’t think its impossible to do. We block better(way the hell better), and I promise Alex wont let us down…but like I said…I’ve been waiting a little under a decade for the team to address it.

Rex Grossman went 16 for 26 for 207 1TD and a QB rating of 109 against the Steelers. Does anyone here think that Grossman will have that kind of stat line at any point in the season or that Grossman is a better QB than Alex Smith. Or even that the skill players on the Skins are better than what this team has.

Look I will not make excuses the team played like garbage, outside of the 1st team defense all aspect of the team need to be worked on. Thats just plain fact and thats okay, thats what this team needed.

This team will take their butt whooping in stride and use it to get better. The pass protection scheme is completely different and the players of the line are getting used to it. The only player on the line that looks ready is Goodwin but that because he comes from a system that is so intricate. No one on the line has ever seen an offensive scheme so complex

Last preseason, they played like champs and what happened? a 4-0 record during the preseason and a 6-10 record during the season. That is obviously why Singletary was fired and Harbaugh was hired. 12 practices is not enough to get a competent team out there especially when you are changing all 3 schemes.

As long as the team continues to progress and the players continue to get better I will be ecstatic if we end up with 1-3 or 0-4 preseason record. The best 53 players on this roster will show themselves and the best 22 will be the starters. The coaches know that

One thing that I noticed is that I didnt or hear one tirade from any of the coaches. Of course they were frustrated and upset that the team didnt play well because they knew that this was the 1st time that this team was on the field and that because of the cards that there were that everything was not going to run smoothly. There was going to be issues and that when they looked over the details of the game they would have a clear assessment of the areas that the team needs to get better at.

He didn’t play very well, but I think that early pressure by the Saints really got to him. While it’s only the first game, I’m pretty concerned about the offensive line. They were manhandled by the Saints’ defense. Neither Smith nor Kaerpernick are going to succeed if the line continues to play like that.