 Two Trouble Areas- by JamesJM (10/4) |
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Actually there are more, but
there are two things that I feel must come together for us to beat the Niners, and I have
seen no indication that we are close to either. First - the running game. We're not there. Against Balt, Atl, & Cinn it didn't matter much. We could have won all three and never had a run from scrimmage. Against stiffer competition, like S.F., this won't cut it. I don't think we need the 100+ yd/game performance, (although that would be great), but we definitely need the 3 1/3yds in a cloud of dust. We should have run more "draws" against Cinn. to at least show the capability. Instead, we tried 7 & 8 hole plays and the blocking was poor at best. Second...we are weak against the mid-range passes up the middle...and compounding this problem is that this is precisely where S.F. excels. Unless we see a very different Defensive effort next Sunday S.F. is going to eat us up over the middle. Getting to Young, (or Garcia), early and often would go a long way to fixing this problem. Those two things bother me the most. But there are others...... "Kick Coverage".....we are not covering well at all. Leave S.F. an opening, and they're going to be on us like stink on sh*t. Keeping Young, (or Garcia), from scrambling us to death. Yup, Garcia looks like he fits the mold, able to dance out of the pocket and slide to a stop 4 or 5 yds after having gotten the 1st down. We have never stopped this. In all fairness, we haven't had to so far this year, are we ready? Keeping Bryant Young away from Warner....this is going to be an all out assault. Warner has not seen pressure like he will see Sunday, and even though our O line did well against Cinn, they hit Warner many times. I wondered, while watching the game, if this was why we saw Warner rolling out of the pocket a little more than we had seen...could that have been preparation for what we'll see next Sunday? Everything considered I feel that we are ready to play the Niners tough, and at home perhaps win the game. But I do not think we are playing on a level that makes us the favorite. If all this sounds pessimistic, I'm sorry. I'm actually not pessimistic, and I think we go into next Sunday's game with the best chance we have had in the 90's to play S.F. at THEIR best, and still win the game. But the exact tools we need for me to say we "should" win are not there yet. - JamesJM |
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