In the San Francisco 49ers loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the offense didn't seem to be as sharp as it was just six days earlier at home on Monday Night. Both Colin Kaepernick and Joe Staley mentioned communication issues of different sorts in their postgame media availability. Is it a coincidence that the week following the game where the Steelers had the Patriots' radio broadcasts in their headsets, the 49ers had communication issues in Pittsburgh? I'm sure it is, but it still makes for an interesting conversation.
If you haven't read Kaepernick's full transcript, you can find it here, and Staley's is below. Kaepernick said "It wasn't confusion, we were just having a problem with our coach to QB as far as the clarity. Staley said it wasn't the crowd noise but rather communication errors which seems different. Whatever the mystery issue is, let's hope it doesn't repeat in Arizona.
How did you feel about the execution of the offensive line?
It was, I mean, five sacks is not acceptable, so, just by the numbers, not good, and I can only speak for myself, I didn't watch the film yet so, today was not a good day for me. As far as pass pro (protection) I was a little edgy, especially on Harrison, so yeah, not what we wanted to have. But, playing down and situation, I thought the guys did a decent job for what the situation was called from.
On three of the sacks being on third down:
I don't know. We had a couple of communication errors which wasn't good and I think, I have to watch the film really, because I can't speak on what was going on.
Was that from crowd noise?
Um, no. Noise wasn't too much of an issue today.
Does getting so far behind take the team out of it's personality of grinding it out on the ground?
Yeah, but we were moving the ball pretty well in the second half with the passing game, we were able to get down there but then red zone offense was bad today. We have to come away with points when we're down there. I think we were down there there times and maybe came away with three points. We have to come away with touchdowns every time we're down there. That's got to be the mind set so I think that was on one of the areas that we definitely think we need to improve going into next week.
When you say "edgy" what do you mean?
Like he got on my edge.
I thought you meant like you were nervous.
(Laughter) No, no, no, no. Not nervous. When you say edgy, like a tackle gets edgy, he gets a little bit on your edge, and kinda gets a little bit of pressure up field.
Were the younger players on the team being too excited after a win?
No, I think these guys are just eager to play, eager to go out there and show what they can do. We have enough veteran guys, enough guys that have been around for a long time to keep that tempered down. We will have to do a good of refocusing in this week and refocusing guys.
Was it more their run defense scheme or lack of execution in the offense?
You know, it's never, you never want to just say that, "We can control. We can control" and that's our execution. When we are executing like you saw in week one, when we're executing on what we're supposed to be doing, the run game can be like that. But they were definitely, for sure, amped up to stop the run after watching week one, and that was a big priority for them. Hats off to them, they did a good job of it.