Thanksgiving is coming up on Thursday, which means we've got three Thursday games this week.  Even though the 49ers aren't playing that day it's always a highlight of the season.  One of the games has big playoff implications (NYG/Den), so I've decided we'll have a wildcard option this week.  We did this Week 10 when the 49ers played on Thursday night.

The way it works is 5 games are locked in for everybody.  Then, for your sixth game, you can either predict the NYG/DEN game, OR, you can predict the CAR/NYJ game.  If you pick BOTH games ahead of time, you'll only get credit for the NYG/DEN game.  If you pick the Thanskgiving game but want to save your other predictions for later, you must submit those scores by replying directly to your NYG/DEN prediction (instead of posting a new comment at the bottom of the page).  If you have any questions about this, please ask so we can make sure there is no confusion.

Prediction format and scoring rules are after the jump.  As always, the times are pacific.

NY Giants @ Denver - Thursday 11/26 5:20pm - ***THANKSGIVING WILDCARD GAME***

Jacksonville @ 49ers- Sunday 11/29 1:05pm

New England @ New Orleans - MNF 11/30 5:30pm

Pittsburgh @ Baltimore - SNF 11/29 5:20pm

Indianapolis @ Houston - Sunday 11/29 10:00am

Arizona @ Tennessee - Sunday 11/29 1:05pm

Carolina @ NY Jets - Sunday 11/29 10:00am - ***WILDCARD GAME***

Continue reading this post »

maybe i live in a place of repressed memory but remember the days when we would have beautiful opening drives with the Genius scripting the plays. Now everyone and their brother has a laminated plan, but in the on days it was only walsh. It seemed like every game he would pull out a special innovative play in the first drive as they wend down the field. I looked forward to that "new play" that "new wrinkle". Now we have have Jimmy Raye, its actually ridiculous. How can we have gone so low, our team looks tired and stale. Singletary seems like he can be a good coach but man its hard to defend a guy that would hire Raye. Walsh would see all the ingredients, far beyond just a an OC. We need an new Genius, the only one close to Walsh as far as innovation goes is belichick.

In the old days we didnt just win, we won with style.

Check out the quotes below, we can only dream

Innovation and Creativity 

The Future of the NFL Forged in the 1980s

"I don't know if people realize the innovation he has brought to this game on so many levels. From a business perspective, I'd compare it to Silicon Valley, where Andy Grove, Steve Jobs and some of the other pioneers really changed business. Bill Walsh, around that same time, brought the same kind of mentality to football. In terms of how you deal with people and the kind of environment you create, his was a very enlightened approach."

--Steve Young, San Francisco 49ers quarterback and NFL Hall of Famer.

"In the recent or modern history of the NFL. no coach has been more influential and innovative than Bill Walsh. That includes his coaching on the field and his thoughts and action on how franchises can work together to win championships."

--Brian Billick, Baltimore Ravens head coach.

"He was a perfectionist. When writing his script, he didn't believe that running the football was the way to get there. It had to be prettier than that --beautiful in some way."

--Keena Turner, former San Francisco 49er linebacker for 11 years.

As we've been discussing Smith and his success (or lack thereof) in the 49ers offense, many, myself included, have advocated moving toward a more open "spread" attack, utilizing plays mostly out of the shotgun.  I've been advocating this because it has certainly seemed like Smith was more comfortable in this formation, and the 9ers offense as a whole is more successful.

During this conversation, some people have been wondering what the "spread", "shotgun", "desperation" or whatever you want to call it offense actually entails.  To me, it means running plays primarily (>50%, more like 60-75%) from the shotgun, with either 3+WR,  2 WR 2 TE, or 2WR 1TE 2RB (that's 2 RB,  not 1 RB, 1 FB).  The latter formations allow for players to begin on the line and shift  out to WR spots, or vice versa.  What it DOES NOT mean is throwing on every down, completely abandoning the run.

I wanted to take a look at the Niners' O since Smith has been starting, and see how successful they've been when they're in the "spread", so I looked at every drive, and compiled all of the drives where >50% of the snaps  were taken from the shotgun.  I did this becasue I wanted to differentiate between when the offensive philosophy was to execute from the spread, as opposed to being forced to use more WR / the shotgun because of down and distance on isolated occasions.  As a result, several of these drives include plays made from under center, and with non-spread personnel, but the overall drive conformed to the philosophy.  The results may surprise you:

Continue reading this post »

Looking up the history of QB's  for the niners and other teams, sacks are directly related to the level of QB play. This might seem like a no brainer but looking at the stats is powerful. For example Manning never gets sacked, the only year he did was in 2001, he was sacked 29 times and had a rating of 84 and the Colts were 6-10. This is a trend with every good QB, they get sacked, they throw pics, low QB rating, poor record. So the niners questionable line is a real big issue, bigger than I want to believe. Its hard to be a good team and give up 40 sacks (on pace) a year. If you look at Young and Montana the trend continues:

Young, 1986, 47 sacks, rating 65.5 (granted is was with TB), the niners never reached the 40 mark while he was at QB until 1998 where he was sacked 47 times and got a million concussions even though he performed well.

Montana, 1985 35 sacks, rating 91.3 (which is good but not great for Montana)

Jeff Garcia, he was never sacked even 30 times a year as a niner

Alex Smith is on pace (if he played the whole year) to get sacked 42 times! I am not an Alex Smith defender but the stats dont lie. If he got sacked at the rate Garcia did (which was lower than Young and Montana) I guarantee you you would see a QB rating in the mid to high 90's and we would be talking about how great he is. The O line is performing that bad 

Norm Van Brocklin. Drew Bledsoe. Phil Simms. Joe Kapp. Alex Smith.

I'm trying to run with this whole 11 thing. It's week 11. Alex Smith wears number 11. My Spinal Tap Fan Meter Rating sits at 11. Of course, that's on a scale of 1-16, so take it for what it's worth.

No, there's really nothing particularly good about 11. Not with quarterbacks anyway. Well, unless you have the soft and fuzzies for Norm Van Brocklin. But come on, the dude didn't even have a QB rating in the 80s. Hall of Fame LOSER, am I right?!

Yeah, so... did you know that 11 is the atomic number for sodium? That's something. Na keeps me alive.

Ummm... The Canadian one-dollar coin has 11 sides. And that helps keep the Loony strong. Canada is weird.

11 is the first of the master numbers in numerology. I don't know what the hell that means. But it sounds important.

Holy crap... 11 is a terrible number. It sucks. Sorry, Alex Smith. I guess your fate really is sealed.

Continue reading this post »

NFC Standings                                                                                                AFC Standings

1. New Orleans 14-2                                                                                       1. Indianapolis 15-1

2. Minnesota 13-3                                                                                            2. New England 11-5

3. Philadelphia 11-5                                                                                        3. San Diego 11-5

4. San Francisco 9-7                                                                                       4. Cincinnati 10-6

5. Green Bay 10-6                                                                                            5. Pittsburgh 10-6

6. Arizona 9-7                                                                                                    6. Jacksonville 10-6

 

Wildcard: Arizona @ Philadelphia 17-34

Green Bay @ San Francisco(my preseason predictions) 20-27

Jacksonville @ San Diego 28-24

Pittsburgh @ Cincinnati 18-23

Divisional: Philadelphia @ Minnesota 33-23

San Francisco @ New Orleans 27-35

Jacksonville @ Indianapolis 20-41

Cincinnati @ New England 27-24

Championship Games:

Philadelphia @ New Orleans 38-37

Cincinnati @ Indianapolis 23-20

Super Bowl: Philadelphia vs Cincinnati 24-30

There you have it Cincinnati Bengals are my Super Bowl winners, even if they lost to the Raiders, I think they can win tough games at New England and Indianapolis(who tend to lose when they are the first seed) call me crazy but hey at least the Niners make it to the second round. Super Bowl MVP: Carson Palmer

Regular Season MVP: Drew Brees

Defensive Player of the Year: Jared Allen

Offensive Player of the Year: Drew Brees

Offensive Rookie of the Year: Percy Harvin

Defensive Rookie of the Year: Brian Cushing

Worst Team in the League: Cleveland Browns at 2-14

 

I really don´t know what´s happening to this team, it seems that there are two different teams on the field and each one plays one half of the game. What´s wrong with our coaching staff? Why can´t they make up their minds on how should this team play? It shouldn´t be so hard, If you keep on giving away one half in every game, we are neither making the play-offs nor having a winning record this season. If you stubbornly insists on playing as we did during the first half, that will make us lose a lot of games, so come on Mike OPEN YOUR EYES, this is not  Chicago 1985, this team can´t impose its will, not with this offensive line. A good coach has to be able to get the best from his players, if you put Alex Smith on the field because he is better passing the ball than Shaun Hill, then why don´t you let him pass until we are 21 points under the opponent, I can´t understand how we play so differently during the same game. If you are so afraid of turnovers let me ask you something, do you really think the risk of a turnover is much worse than ending every drive with a punt?, wasting our offense opportunities and giving the ball to the opponent´s offense over and over.

I know that from the start of this season you said you wanted to run the ball and play physical football, but we have already played 10 games, and by now you should have realized that we are not tougher than any other NFL team. It´s good to have a clear concept of what you want, but stick to a system that has proven itself wrong for this team is a MISTAKE (with capital letters).

You have got the weapons: Alex Smith, Frank Gore, Vernon Davis, Michael Crabtree, Josh Morgan, etc, so why do you insist on keeping them in the holsters during the whole first half of every game?

Please stop doing that, let´s play an offense our players can fit in, we can´t afford any more mistakes,  because we are running out of time, so you better change quickly or it will be too late to keep your word " this is the last year…"

Hey Niners Fans

I'm John, one of the writers over at SBN's Jaguars blog Big Cat Country. My Jaguars make their second coast to coast trip this year to play the 49ers. Our last trip, a 41-0 loss to Seattle, wasn't the best and things couldn't have gone much worse. The 49ers will certainly give us a tough test this week.

PS: We at BCC have a weekly radio show every Wednesday night at 10PM EST/7pm Pacific and this week Fooch will be on discussing the upcoming game. You can check it out here http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bigcatcountry

EDIT: THE RADIO SHOW WILL BE TONIGHT AT 10PM EST/7 Pacific

Another week, another loss. Other than the opening drive our offense stunk in the first half. We turned it on the second half though it wasn't quite enough to pull it out.

I put this loss squarely on our defense. GB definitely had our number. Ryan Grant ran for 129 yards and a TD. Aaron Rodgers threw for 344 yards and 2 TDs. I thought Alex Smith had a pretty good day. 227 yards passing, 3 TDs, 1 INT (and I don't think you can put that one on him). He looked more comfortable, made better reads and throws. I didn't see him locking on to targets nearly as much as he has in the past.

Now if Coach Sing would realize that this team can't play smash mouf football we might be able to get a decent 1st half lead and then play conservatively the second half to preserve it. Oh, and our defense let us down yet again in the 4th quarter (I'll have more on that after the jump).

Continue reading this post »

Glaring similarities with the ownership of  two teams.  Flailing offenses decent defenses and no wins.  The roots at the top are rotted with the excuses of "we are getting there and rebuilding."  Coaching is weak.....not motivational end.....but the execution end.  The firings need to start with the personnel department and then the Yorks need a long vacation. 3 or 4 years.  You are not doing the system any favors.  This is the NFL, there are 17 games and you need to have winners 17 weeks. Go away, I hate being related to a team that thinks they are better than they are.