The 49ers currently sit at 2-0 in the preseason. They've beaten the Denver Broncos and the Oakland Raiders by a combined 2 points. Normally I'd say a win is a win is a win, but this is the preseason and not the regular season. It's certainly nice to win, but more importantly you want to see the team make progress and hopefully have your #1s looking good against the opposing team #1s.
At this point, halfway through the preseason, it's still hard to really assess the 49ers team as a whole (or maybe we'd prefer to ignore the warning signs?). One of the biggest problems that I see is based on the team's preseason schedule and how practice has developed for the 49ers. In terms of the schedule, the first two games were at home against the Broncos and Raiders. Neither team is expected to be all that good this year. Notably, the Raiders rush defense remains atrocious so we have to take the Coffee/Robinson/Sheets railroad with a bit of a grain of salt.
However, the 49ers practice habits have raised a bit of a question mark in my head. Mike Singletary clearly doesn't take any crap and has been running some tough practices. Heck, the nutcracker alone knocked out David Baas and Patrick Willis, among others. One might argue this is an old school coach with old school attitude. My query is how that intense practice affects the team now versus how it might affect the team later.
The 49ers-Raiders mixed practices seemed to bring out a lot more intensity from the 49ers than the Raiders. The 49ers were making plays all over the field and talking some serious smack about it. One thing to keep in mind with all that was the fact that the 49ers had been practicing in full pads a lot sooner than the Raiders. While the 49ers are probably better than the Raiders, one can imagine the extra time in pads probably helped out in these early practices.
I'm curious if the intensity will wear out the team down the road come November and December? If the team is playing well up to that point it would certainly be a kick in the junk for the team to run out of gas and limp to the finish line. Of course, one might counter that this intensity will build the team up to be ready for the rigors of a potential playoff run. So, what camp do you fall in? Or do you fall somewhere in between?