There has been plenty of discussion here about Mark Roman and how quickly people would like to be rid of him as the starting free safety. He was kind of the fall guy for a secondary that seemed a bit inconsistent at times. Throw in a lack of big plays on his part and it's easy to see how he became said fall guy.
Late Tuesday night Maiocco posted a column about the free agency situations of the rest of the NFC West. At the very end, he threw in a quick little discussion about Mark Roman that piqued my interest. He provided some stats and commentary that might cause some folks to at least re-assess their thoughts on Mark Roman. He mentioned that it's easy to remember the bad when there aren't good big plays to offset that. Additionally, he pointed something out:
The 49ers surrendered 33 pass plays of 20 yards or more this season. The 49ers were tied for second in the league in that category for the fewest "explosive plays" given up. The club ranked 29th in the league in 2007 and tied for 21st in 2006.
It would've been impossible for the 49ers' pass defense to fare that well without Roman doing his job more often than not.
I haven't done any additional research to make better sense of this so I'll open it up to the masses. Was it a matter of just getting eaten up in the shorter plays? If they're giving up a whole ton of 10-19 yard pass plays that's certainly not a good thing. It's something I'll try and do some more research on because it seems like it'd be useful to know.
In the meantime, does this affect your thoughts on Mark Roman and/or the secondary in general?