A few thoughts on the 49’er game.
 

If we were remaking the old Clint Eastwood movie,”The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly,” there was a whole lot of ugly, a lot of bad and not enough good.

To start out with the good, Philip Rivers was little short of magnificent. He put the team on his 44 year old back and carried it to 27 points. If not for the ugly on defense, he would’ve been the talk of the town this morning.

Continuing with the good, the Receivers played pretty well. Without much help from a truncated running game and an inability to attack the third level of the 9’ers D, they did a great job of getting open, making plays, and keeping drives alive.

Without Abdullah’s fumble and the interception, the Offense might have run up 40 points.

As always, this year, injuries played an outsized role.

Jonathan Taylor had a pedestrian night, but he was running behind a line with a RT playing Left, a RG playing RT, and journeymen manning Center and RG. The fact that they gave Rivers time to throw, time to cobble together a 27 point performance, was remarkable.

Not sure if I’d rack it up on the the good side of the ledger, but one of the most significant developments to come out of Braden Smith’s injury is that it looks more and more like we don’t need to ante up a big bucks free agent contract to keep him around.

Needless to say, most of the ugly came on D. 48 points…AAARGH. It was like watching Charlie Brown move from Kicker to DE. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t brought Lucy along to play Corner.

It’s cold comfort that the 49’ers point total was padded by an extra possession gifted to them by Abdullah and an unfortunate int return for a TD. Personally, I take little solace in the belief that they might only have lost by 10.

At the end of the day, I cant help plagiarizing and mangling James Carville’s quote…it’s the injuries, stupid. Not only were they starting a couple of refugees from the practice squad at Corner, but Deforest Buckner was far from healthy.

We were told that the pinched nerve had affected Buckner’s strength, and that was on full display. He was a liability against the run and didn’t have the ability to penetrate and disrupt the pocket. It would have been better to stick with someone like Gallimore.

But, it was the injuries at Corner that created problems simply because they constrain and distort what Anarumo can do. If Gardner and Ward had been on the field, we would have seen a lot of man coverage, a lot more blitzing.

Anarumo could have moved more bodies into the box and tried to take away the things that made San Francisco’s Offense hum.

He could have double teamed Kittle on every snap, chucked him as he released, flooded the short zone with defenders.

Of course, it would have been nice to have at least one Linebacker who could cover a 60 year old in a wheelchair.

The bottom line is that the 49’ers had the perfect Offense to attack our D. A technician at Quarterback, an all pro RB going up against a depleted run D, and and a great TE facing a Linebacker corps featuring Larry, Cutly, and Moe.

I was also impressed with Rivers, with the only caveat being he was facing the team that is dead last in sacks this year.

I think that’s about as good as he can do at this point and the average for him will be somewhere between yesterday and last week in Seattle.

I don't have the words for a write up. Suffice to it to say, although yours is a good one, mine would have been FAR more harsh. So, in the interest of my mental health, I'll just remain disgusted and pissed off for a while longer.

Apparently we are the only team in our division that has had devastating injuries every year for the last 10 years. Poor unlucky Ballard can't get a break.

Lemme see.

Justin Walley goes down in the preseason.
Jones breaks a leg, then goes out with a leg injury.
Richardson goes up against a rubber band and loses.
Braden Smith goes on IR.
Bernhard Raimann, elbow.
Tanor Bortoloni bites the dust.
DeForest Buckner misses games with a neck injury
Charvarius Ward suffers 3 concussions.
Sauce Gardner goes down.

Meanwhile, in Kansas City, the Chiefs lose plan A and plan B at Quarterback and fall to the mighty Titans 26-9.
And, in Cincinnati, Joe Burrow goes down and the Bengals crawl to a 1-9 record in his absence.

Injuries may be a factor of life in the NFL, but I don’t think that anyone here really believes that, when the next man up comes in, you play on as if nothing happened.

If Rivers starts against the dirty ass Jaguars, they will likely end his comeback...they won't let up if they get a clean shot!

I noticed this also in both games the defenders went easy on him, this will not continue

o


If they fuck with Uncle Phil, the entire Colts 47-man roster might charge the field in retaliation ...... Uncle Phil's nephews don't take kindly to people who mess with their kin.

o

Shitcan all the LB's at the end of the season. They are all trash.

We have to re-sign Gallimore. He may not be making flash plays, but he held admirably in Buck's absence.

I liked gallimore this year as well. i just don't understand how we have invested so much in the dline and we still get basically zero pass rush