A Very Falcoholic Discussion: The Bye Week Focus

to our pass defense last week. brian williams and thomas decoud showed up. also curtis lofton proved that he is incredibly reliable this week. most important thing we need to work on for next week is run D. in general however, we need to get our offense on track. our defense tried to keep up with the pats, but our offense just didnt show up.

I think there are some mistaken assumptions about how the 9ers play prevalent here. Allow me to explain what to expect from the 9ers with Gore out.

1. The 9ers defense continues to dominate good offenses. The base 3-4 is very good at shutting down the run and on passing downs they have a Dime package that is very good. ILB Patrick Willis will be focusing on M. Turner and OLBs Manny Lawson and Parys Haralson have gotten enough pressure on K. Warner, M. Hasselbeck, and B. Favre to put them all off their game. The basic 49ers defensive game plan is to be strong against the run, bang the WRs & TE at the LOS to take away the timing routes and make the QB go to his 3rd and 4th reads, which in turn gives the pass rushers more time to get to the QB. They have excellent depth at both CB & Safety and look for situations where they can play Dime and get everyone on the field. On the D-line, RDE J. Smith is a relentless penetrator, NT A. Franklin is just average, and LDE I. Sopoaga is coming into his own and can manhandle double teams (strongest guy on the team). RDE backup Ray McDonald comes in on 4-man fronts to play DT with J. Smith because they are both very quick penetrators. So don’t make the mistake of thinking it will be easy to either run or throw on the 9ers. They’re very good at taking away the easy things.

2. On offense, with Gore out, my GUESS is that the burden will be shifted to QB Shaun Hill, who has proved to be better than expected. Up until Favre’s final throw, Hill had outplayed him and had a better QB rating. Hill also has a QB rating of about 110 in the 4th quarter and has engineered 4th quarter scoring drives in every game so far. He has a weak arm, but makes few mental mistakes and does not rattle under pressure. He’s earned the chance to carry more of the load on his arm. Don’t underestimate him.
Unfortunately, the 9er’s OL is not playing well, with the LG and RT positions being a real liability. If you’re looking for a weakness in the offense, that’s the primary one. The other liability on offense is the extremely conservative play calling by OC Jimmy Raye. RB Glen Coffee is no Frank Gore, so expect to see a lot of M. Robinson, who is a backup RB, FB, QB, and outstanding ST player. They may try some Wildcat stuff when he’s in. At WR, I. Bruce can still get separation whenever he wants and Josh Morgan is an athletic speedster. TE Vernon Davis had two impressive TD catches this last game and appears to be emerging as a receiver – Hill has a good rapport with him. The 9ers haven’t used many 3-receiver sets and zero 4-WR sets, but I suspect they’ll use some more 3-sets without Gore. Otherwise, the standard set is FB, HB,TE, and 2 WRs probably 75% of the time.

3. On Special Teams, the 9ers have very solid kickers in punter Andy Lee and place kicker Joe Nedney – neither makes many mistakes. 40-year old Allan Rossum is the return man, but he’s off to a slow start this year.

What we see on your team is a strong, diversified offense with an outstanding RB in M. Turner, a top TE in T. Gonzales, a good young QB in Ryan, and a few “B” WRs. On defense, you have DE J. Abraham, DT J. Babineaux, and ILB C. Lofton but a very weak secondary and ordinary OLBs. Which is further argument for allowing Hill to attack the secondary with timing routes to back off the Safeties (we assume the Falcons will stack the line and blitz a lot), and then mix in the run enough to make play action work. TE Vernon Davis will be a major target over the middle on crossing and post patterns. WR J. Morgan will be the deep threat, I. Bruse will work the flats with outs and slants, and even FB M. Norris will get the call on screens. On running plays, look for more runs on the left side and flips to Coffee and Robinson.

That’s the way I see things right now, but this may change after we see what the 9ers do against the Lambs next Sunday at home. I’ll try to stop by again, but I think our main Niners Nation guy, Fooch, will be here to post an article and answer questions.

Wow that was stupid…