The San Francisco 49ers have one preseason game under their belt, and there was some good and bad. The offense got going on the ground, but was inconsistent through the air. The defense got good coverage from the secondary, but we did not see a consistently effective pass rush.
On Monday, Chip Kelly made what will be his regular appearance on KNBR to discuss the previous day’s game. He had plenty to discuss about the game, but the most clarity likely came with this comment about the game plan:
“We weren’t trying to do a lot of things. We were very simple in our game plan. Just trying to go out there, it’s our first game, let’s get some things underneath our belt. There was nothing game plan-specific where we were trying to do this, or play real fast doing this, or run this series in combination. It was very generic from an offense, defense, special teams perspective.”
This is not exactly a shocking revelation, as I think every preseason game discussion includes some mention of vanilla play-calling. Of course, given what we saw from the 49ers last night, it will be interesting to see how much it changes once the games count.
On the defensive side of the ball, we saw some blitzing, but the pass rush was relatively weak. The unit got three sacks, but otherwise the Texans quarterbacks seemed to have enough time. Maybe we see some more blitzing, and particularly more exotic blitzing when the regular season arrives. I imagine we might get some cornerback blitzes mixed in as well.
On the offensive side of the ball, things did not get too crazy. Gabbert struggled to connect on some of his shorter passes, but if he is going to end up being the starter, opening things up will hopefully create some kind of rhythm. For now though, we’re left to judge the offensive and defensive production without quite seeing everything on display.