Week 15 GDT - Atlanta Falcons at San Francisco 49ers

[Gridirongreat#9]

1 minute ago, N4L said:

Yep, and now Aaron Donald is on deck ... 

I was saying this during the game. We needed to play cover 2 against Julio. That way our corners could be aggressive underneath. Cover 3 with corners forces them to defend the deep part of the field and concede the underneath stuff.

Yeah, but the only problem with Cover 2 is you are susceptible to getting beat on a post in the middle if your safety's cant cover ground. Having Harris in there playing cover 2 would be a disaster. 

[Chrissooner49er]

Oh, this team was just craptastic from start to finish, from coaching all the way down to STs. We get a bit of slack and just give it away the very next week. It’s a cycle. 😩

We need to break that cycle and go 2-0 to grab the #1 seed and bye week. 

[straighthate]

This forum is more emotional than my girlfriend when I was in high school. The emotional roller coaster is exhausting. The doom and gloom every game even when we win is crazy, but it’s even worse when we fail to pull it out at the last second.  Which is I guess why it reminds me so much of my high school girlfriend. 

 

 

[757-NINER]

4 minutes ago, Gridirongreat#9 said:

Not to mention we dont have corners who play press man. They need to give themselves a cushion so they dont get beat deep. Long and rangy but not the most agile. 

Meh, that's more scheme design. The question was asked what happened to us creating sacks. We haven't changed how we played on the back-end. We're still doing what we've done all year. We were never primarily a heavy press-man team. We mix it up. We're going to give up underneath throws. That's the design of the scheme. Make you dink and dunk your way down the field. Its still a zone based scheme. We're just running more 'game' behind the zone this year. More morphing into man out of zone looks and things of that nature.

I don't think the back-end has affected the pass-rush in that sense. I think the secondary held up pretty well today. There's just no answer for guys like Julio and Michael Thomas. They're going to get theirs if you don't decide to make the QB go elsewhere. We've faced WRs these last two weeks that individually, you don't have answers for. That wasn't the case previous 13 weeks of the season.

[Gridirongreat#9]

8 minutes ago, straighthate said:

This forum is more emotional than my girlfriend when I was in high school. The emotional roller coaster is exhausting. The doom and gloom every game even when we win is crazy, but it’s even worse when we fail to pull it out at the last second.  Which is I guess why it reminds me so much of my high school girlfriend. 

 

 

That's the point though. Falcons lost in the Superbowl why? They didn't run out the clock. We lost to the Seahawks, Ravens and Falcons because we couldn't run the ball (which is odd) to run out the clock. 

[757-NINER]

2 minutes ago, Gridirongreat#9 said:

That's the point though. Falcons lost in the Superbowl why? They didn't run out the clock. We lost to the Seahawks, Ravens and Falcons because we couldn't run the ball (which is odd) to run out the clock. 

Its not that cut in dry though....

We lost to Seattle because we had a back-up kicker. We can argue over strategy but this ultimately what cost us the game. We also didn't have Kittle and Sanders got hurt midway through the first quarter. Not to mention the absurd amount of dropped passes. 

We lost to the Ravens because Shanny decided to pass instead of run on 4th down...not the same as not being able to run. Maybe we're arguing over semantics here.

And today was just a myriad of problems but if Kittle doesn't fumble that ball or Gould makes that extra point, there's not as much hand-wringling going right now. We just had a bad game. Honestly after the three-game stretch we just endured, we were due.

 

[J-ALL-DAY]

13 minutes ago, 757-NINER said:

Its not that cut in dry though....

We lost to Seattle because we had a back-up kicker. We can argue over strategy but this ultimately what cost us the game. We also didn't have Kittle and Sanders got hurt midway through the first quarter. Not to mention the absurd amount of dropped passes. 

We lost to the Ravens because Shanny decided to pass instead of run on 4th down...not the same as not being able to run. Maybe we're arguing over semantics here.

And today was just a myriad of problems but if Kittle doesn't fumble that ball or Gould makes that extra point, there's not as much hand-wringling going right now. We just had a bad game. Honestly after the three-game stretch we just endured, we were due.

 

Gould's extra point was pretty much a non-factor since the Falcons scored a TD on the last drive. They could have kicked the extra point if they needed to. 

But yeah, we have three extremely close losses that have come down to the wire. Today's 3rd down play call wasn't bad at all, but Kittle just fumbled the ball when he could have easily converted the first down there. That would have killed at least a minute more of the clock and we would have won the game in all likelihood. 

[TecmoSuperJoe]

2 hours ago, 757-NINER said:

Offenses are getting the ball out faster. Its very noticeable, at least to me. That and we're seeing alot of max-protect. Couple that with the losses to injury and you have what you have. I figured offenses were going to adjust and shorten their drops and start hitting us with more quick-hitters and mis-directions. Makes too much sense. Losing Ford and Blair has hurt also. Ford was really doing well on that that strong side and pushing QBs up into the rush. Its a combination of things really.

Yeah, I know. They did it in New Orleans. Still, there are moments when Ryan seemed to have all day to throw, or he would just run up the middle for a huge gain with his legs. It was demoralizing to watch. I didn't expect the drop off to be this bad. Small sample size, and hopefully Ford comes back. 

[TecmoSuperJoe]

I was just reminded about the 1988 season when the squad was 6-5 and coming off of back-to-back losses against the 7-9 Cardinals (blew a 23-point lead) and 7-9 Raiders (only scored three points at home) They also lost at home to the 5-11 Falcons 34-17. Of course they went on to win the Super Bowl. Yeah, it was a different team, and the 49ers now don't have Montana, Rice, Lott, Haley, etc. Still, that team did play up and down the entire year, and it worked for them. 

Went for a run about twenty minutes after the game ended. Definitely helped calm me down. 49ers still control their own destiny with two games left, and that's the important thing. Just gotta pray to the football gods that the defense gets it's swagger back even with the injuries piling up. 

BTW, I know the All 22 isn't out yet, but does anyone believe that the receivers, even going against a skeleton crew for Atlanta, were just consistently covered due to Quinn knowing Shanahan as a playcaller? 

Edited December 16, 2019 by PapaShogun

[oldman9er]

Highly doubt it. Far more likely that Jimmy forgot to bring his testicles. 

[J-ALL-DAY]

28 minutes ago, PapaShogun said:

I was just reminded about the 1988 season when the squad was 6-5 and coming off of back-to-back losses against the 7-9 Cardinals (blew a 23-point lead) and 7-9 Raiders (only scored three points at home) They also lost at home to the 5-11 Falcons 34-17. Of course they went on to win the Super Bowl. Yeah, it was a different team, and the 49ers now don't have Montana, Rice, Lott, Haley, etc. Still, that team did play up and down the entire year, and it worked for them. 

Went for a run about twenty minutes after the game ended. Definitely helped calm me down. 49ers still control their own destiny with two games left, and that's the important thing. Just gotta pray to the football gods that the defense gets it's swagger back even with the injuries piling up. 

BTW, I know the All 22 isn't out yet, but does anyone believe that the receivers, even going against a skeleton crew for Atlanta, were just consistently covered due to Quinn knowing Shanahan as a playcaller? 

Definitely interested in seeing what was happening and how they were able to stop us. The DBs sat down on all the underneath routes and took away the middle of the field. Quinn and the crew certainly out coached Shanahan today.

11 minutes ago, oldman9er said:

Highly doubt it. Far more likely that Jimmy forgot to bring his testicles. 

I do think it is possible that Quinn had the right game plan to stop this offense. Even when Jimmy extended the plays and had time, he had nothing. Now, I don't know if he had opportunities to take shots that he didn't or that there just wasn't many openings. 

[Gridirongreat#9]

1 hour ago, 757-NINER said:

Meh, that's more scheme design. The question was asked what happened to us creating sacks. We haven't changed how we played on the back-end. We're still doing what we've done all year. We were never primarily a heavy press-man team. We mix it up. We're going to give up underneath throws. That's the design of the scheme. Make you dink and dunk your way down the field. Its still a zone based scheme. We're just running more 'game' behind the zone this year. More morphing into man out of zone looks and things of that nature.

I don't think the back-end has affected the pass-rush in that sense. I think the secondary held up pretty well today. There's just no answer for guys like Julio and Michael Thomas. They're going to get theirs if you don't decide to make the QB go elsewhere. We've faced WRs these last two weeks that individually, you don't have answers for. That wasn't the case previous 13 weeks of the season.

My response was to the QBs getting the ball out quicker. The DBs play so far off that a 3 to 5 yard out is a gimme. Rather than if we played press man, those throws aren't there. They are constantly play 5 to 7 yards off. 

[49ersfan]

30 minutes ago, PapaShogun said:

I was just reminded about the 1988 season when the squad was 6-5 and coming off of back-to-back losses against the 7-9 Cardinals (blew a 23-point lead) and 7-9 Raiders (only scored three points at home) They also lost at home to the 5-11 Falcons 34-17. Of course they went on to win the Super Bowl. Yeah, it was a different team, and the 49ers now don't have Montana, Rice, Lott, Haley, etc. Still, that team did play up and down the entire year, and it worked for them. 

Went for a run about twenty minutes after the game ended. Definitely helped calm me down. 49ers still control their own destiny with two games left, and that's the important thing. Just gotta pray to the football gods that the defense gets it's swagger back even with the injuries piling up. 

BTW, I know the All 22 isn't out yet, but does anyone believe that the receivers, even going against a skeleton crew for Atlanta, were just consistently covered due to Quinn knowing Shanahan as a playcaller? 

Well, i don't think this has been a consistent issue (playing down to our opponents). Close wins against the Cards but those are divisional games. 9 point win against Washington but it was a monsoon. Close win against the 8-5 Steelers. Other than that we've had a lot of convincing wins or close losses against quality opponents. 

No team is going to bring their A game every week. We all have bad days at work, whether its a 9-5 or being a nfl player. The saints got demolished by 17 points against this team, and they also dominated the Panthers X2 recently as well as lost by 8 at home against New Orleans. They've clearly been much better 2nd half of the season. 

We just went 2-1 against 3 great teams and every unit of our team has shown excellence this season. We were without several starters and backups today that we will get back soon. And we control our own destiny so nothing has ultimately changed as of today. 

 

 

[N4L]

2 hours ago, J-ALL-DAY said:

Gould's extra point was pretty much a non-factor since the Falcons scored a TD on the last drive. They could have kicked the extra point if they needed to. 

No, the missed extra point was huge imo 

If we were up 3, you could make a strong case to go for it on 4th and 1 rather than kick a FG. Since we were up 2, we had no choice but to kick the ball in that spot. 

If we went for it on 4th and got it, the game is over. If we didn't get it, then Atlanta might have kicked a FG at the end to force OT, or it might have turned out exactly the same way it did, but we would have had the added benefit of a fourth day play to win 

Edited December 16, 2019 by N4L

[Forge]

28 minutes ago, N4L said:

No, the missed extra point was huge imo 

If we were up 3, you could make a strong case to go for it on 4th and 1 rather than kick a FG. Since we were up 2, we had no choice but to kick the ball in that spot. 

If we went for it on 4th and got it, the game is over. If we didn't get it, then Atlanta might have kicked a FG at the end to force OT, or it might have turned out exactly the same way it did, but we would have had the added benefit of a fourth day play to win 

100% agree. I don't know if shanny would have went for it, but being up by only two made the decision for him. He almost had to kick