Just to get this out of the way immediately, I obviously took a backwards K in my prediction of a so-so T.O. performance this week. Three things though. First, the stats couldn't account for T.O. having 2 catches for 120 yards and a touchdown on plays where he blatantly committed an offensive pass interference that was not called. Second, and perhaps I had an influence on this, 67% of those of us who voted on the preview poll thought that T.O. would have less than 100 receiving yards, and only 9% correctly predicted that he would have over 150. Finally, T.O. still has a negative DYAR (-7; ranked 65^th) and a lopsided expected yards discrepancy (-133) even after the second best yardage game of his career. In fact, his expected yards discrepancy per game actually got worse, dropping from -8.6 to -12.1. So I guess what I'm saying here is, "Yeah. I was wrong, but I wasn't as wrong as you think." Sunday's performance by T.O. was totally unexpected based on the stats, and therein lies a major limitation of statistics: It is good at predicting "typical" performance, but not so good at predicting "atypical" performance.

Now, with that out of the way, I'd like to focus on what most 49er fans have been focusing on since Sunday, and I don't mean the choice between roasting and deep frying the Thanksgiving poultry. I'm talking about the atrocious performance of the 49er offense in the red zone against the Cowboys. Most of the blame over the past 3 days has been centered around Mike Martz's play-calling...you know...the pass-run-pass tendency that even I picked up on a couple of weeks ago. Well, there's a dirty little secret, borne out by the stats, that tells me that Martz may not be as much of an offensive genius as most NFL fans think he is.

IN THE RED (ZONE)

We all know the legend of Mike Martz. He turned a guy with "bag boy" and "Arena League player" on his resume into a Super-Bowl-winning, multiple-MVP quarterback. He was the ringmaster of "The Greatest Show on Turf." Hell, he even gilded Jon "The Interception Machine" Kitna's right arm. What's become obvious over the years, though, is that his offense is bred for easy situations. Versus a defensive genius (See Bill Belichick), or when the pressure is on (See Super Bowl XXXVI), however, his offense can be amazingly inefficient. It's great at racking up yardage, but it's not so great at succeeding in the situations that most impact the outcome of an NFL game. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the red zone.

Below is a chart showing the efficiency of Martz-led offenses both overall (black line) and in the red zone (red line):

*Martz only coached the Rams offense for 5 games during the 2005 season.

After the jump, I'll explain the chart, explain why talent hasn't been as important as you think, compare the red zone stats with other field zones, and see how the 49ers did in their SVW situations...

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Two weeks ago I threw out some possible conclusions we could make about the NFC West after one week of football.  I wouldn't say things have necessarily changed all that much as it is still hard to draw too many conclusions about the division.  Well the Rams still suck, but that's rather obvious.

Arizona Cardinals
The Cardinals find themselves at 2-1 heading into the Meadowlands as the first NFC West team to face the Brett Favre-led Jets.  The Cardinals of the recent past were known for their offensive fireworks and poor defensive efforts.  To date though, the Cardinals have put together solid defensive efforts, the loss to Washington notwithstanding.  The Redskins are a solid squad and I certainly would not qualify that as a "bad loss," even if I was a Cardinals fan.

The Cardinals face an upcoming 3-game stretch before their bye that will definitely test them to the limits.  They visit the Jets and then host the resurgent Buffalo Bills and a very Dallas Cowboys squad coming off their first ever win at Lambeau Field.  The next three weeks will tell us a lot about the Cardinals AND the 49ers as the 49ers have an equally tough stretch at New Orleans and then hosting New England and Philadelphia.  The Seahawks are only getting healthier so this could be their chance to climb further into the divisional race.

Seattle Seahawks
Speaking of the Seahawks, after defeating a god-awful Rams squad, John Morgan happily doused himself in the Kool-Aid:

The Seattle Seahawks are a damn good football team. That's the perfect, rational description of their talent, skill and depth. Seattle is a Super Bowl contender. They took the worst part of their offense, built it back from the ground up, substituted the worst football player in the NFL with a good, complete and underappreciated running back in Julius Jones, resigned vital parts of their defense and had a hell of a draft. Somehow losing two games caused the miasma of ESPN-like reactionary thinking, panic and outright stupidity to crawl into this team, onto this site and into my brain.

But this win was ejaculatory. The frustration, doubts and stupidity are out of my brain. And if I have to purify this site with flames, I will to get back a place I can talk Hawks with intelligent fans.

On the one hand, the Rams might be on their way to an epically bad season.  As has been mentioned with the 49ers, beating a crappy team doesn't make you a good team (shlecko ©).  However, I also think Seattle reached rock bottom and if they get completely healthy, they are going to be a good team this season.  I think Arizona and San Francisco improved themselves enough to challenge Seattle, but they're certainly going to be dangerous the rest of the way.

St. Louis Rams
It's certainly easy to feel bad for a team struggling the way the Rams are struggling.  At the same time, when the Rams were ruling the division I don't think their fans were feeling bad for everybody else.  Quality play seems to come in cycles and right now the Rams are definitely in a downturn.  They've even benched Marc Bulger for the ageless one Trent Green.  I'd imagine the odds of Scott Linehan lasting the entire season are dropping rather precipitously.

I think it's safe to say that if the 49ers don't sweep the Rams, something is clearly wrong.  The Rams are bad and their fans are moving way past wearing brown paper bags to games.  Much could change between now and their first matchup in mid-November, but I'm not really holding my breath.

Conclusions
For now, the NFC West is a 3-team race.  Divisional wins will be huge for tiebreaker purposes.  Given the fact that each team has to face the AFC East and NFC East, wins will be at a premium and as previously mentioned 9-7 or possibly even 8-8 could do the trick.  All three teams face a tough stretch of games in the next three weeks.  Aside from the games mentioned above, following a Week 4 bye, the Seahawks play at the Giants, host the Packers and visit the Buccaneers, heading into a Week 8 showdown at Candlestick.  Suffice to say, the next month is huge.

My intial plan was to post some of the player quotations and some analysis on what they had to say.  Unfortunately for me, most of the quotes lacked the kind of sizzle that make for good analysis.  So, instead, with one week down and a big 49ers-Seahawks divisional showdown fast approaching, let's reassess where the NFC West is as a whole.  Based on performances today, it might be safe to say that the division is up for anyone to grab...except maybe the Rams.

Seattle Seahawks
Over at Field Gulls, John Morgan is definitely not pleased with the Seahawks performance.  Of course, if the 49ers had been smacked around 34-10, I'd probably be just as pissed.  The Seahawks struggled in all aspects of the game, and while their defense certainly wasn't abysmal, I don't know if John's use of the word "fine" is the best descriptor.  Not in bad shape, but even they have plenty of room for improvement. 

As some of us mentioned before, that running game is going to have to work to become more impressive.  Falling behind early didn't help matters, but Julius Jones and Maurice Morris just doesn't inspire fear in anybody.  Jones is certainly talented, but we'll see if he can break through and return to his somewhat respectable 2006 performance.  As for Seattle's special teams?  Well, this video isn't pretty and I don't just mean the blurry picture.  We'll have plenty to preview going forward this week.

St. Louis Rams
I really don't think week one could have gone any worse for the Rams.  For a while it looked like they could come away with keeping DeSean Jackson quiet on punt returns, but then he busted one for 60 yards.  VanRam went so far as to even consider beginning a discussion about the #1 overall pick.  I do think Philadelphia is a talented team and I'm not stunned that Donovan McNabb appears to have finally bounced back from his knee surgery.  That kind of surgery usually takes more than a year for a 100% recovery.  Once they get Reggie Brown and Kevin Curtis healthy, the Eagles will be dangerous.

The Eagles aside, probably the only highlight was Randy McMichael with a solid debut for the Rams.  I certainly think there are enough bad teams in the league that the Rams will win some games.  In spite of the 49ers flat effort I feel a little better facing the Rams.  However, while the Rams are not a playoff bound team, they are definitely not as bad as they appeared today.  Steven Jackson missed a significant amount of time with his holdout, so he probably isn't quite 100%.  The Rams definitely need to work on their pass protection as Marc Bulger is going to get killed before the end of the season otherwise.  While awful this week, I'd like to see how they play against the Giants in their home opener.

Arizona Cardinals
Well, we know how these guys looked.  Considering how poorly the 49ers performed, the Cardinals probably should have put 30+ on the board.  They left 11 points out there on two drives because of one moronic personal foul and another poorly time chop block.  While we can blame JTO and company all we want, the Cardinals got pressure to force the two O'Sullivan fumbles.  He had issues with staring down his receivers and I'm kind of surprised he didn't throw more picks.

Kurt Warner remains the 49ers nemesis as even in the face of impressive pressure at times, he made things happen, particularly with Anquan Boldin.  The 49ers would get them to 3rd and long and then give up a first down catch.  Even the Cardinals running game was slightly less than stellar and yet it seemed like they were taking care of business when it mattered most.  The Cardinals only averaged 3.8 yards a carry, but they made some important gains on short yardage situations.

I would also briefly like to address the luck situation.  Luck is often taking advantage of an opportunity.  I definitely don't think the Cardinals were lucky to the beat the 49ers today (in fact I think the 49ers were lucky to not lose by more).  However, it felt at times like things were bouncing the Cardinals way all day long.  Every punt seemed to bounce just right.  A Warner pass would be deflected by a defensive lineman, only to end up in Anquan Boldin's arms.  Things like that.  It's not sour grapes because I wouldn't be surprised for the shoe to be on the other foot in some of these games.  Nonetheless it's certainly frustrating when your team is not on the receiving end of those lucky bounces.

Conclusions
I don't have a separation section for the 49ers because obviously we have been and will continue to discuss them plenty.  For now, while the 49ers certainly were not wildly impressive today, they did enough for me to be hopeful in what for now is a wide-open NFC West.  If the Seahawks can get bodies back I still think they're the team to beat in this division, poor running game aside. They are certainly better than they showed today, particularly their defense.  However, it won't be easy work for them in the division.  The Cardinals show a certain spark under Kurt Warner that will definitely make them a tough out.  It's hard to judge their defense against a developing 49ers offense, but they definitely can bring some heat at times.

I remain somewhat hopeful for the 49ers season because if the season goes anything like this for the likes of Seattle and St. Louis, the 49ers and Cardinals both could conceivably win the division.  Even though the Seahawks will improve this season, I think the 49ers will as well and the Rams will certainly not be this awful (or maybe they will).  If an NFC West team walked into the playoffs at 8-8 I would not be remotely surprised.  Of course performances in the coming weeks could certainly change my thoughts on all of that.