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Week 7 GDT - New England Patriots vs San Francisco 49ers


J-ALL-DAY

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Well, that was a bit of a surprising performance against the Rams. The team played much better on both sides of the ball than I anticipated. Of course though, we come away with another win that has multiple injuries to our starters. Mostert and Garland will certainly be out this week and Tartt has a groin strain so I can't imagine he plays either.

On to New England. I don't like this match up at all for our offense. The Dolphins game was a bit hard to judge since Jimmy should not have been out there, but they had a very good game plan defensively. They were giving our front different looks and we couldn't pick up their blitzes at all while they had Howard/Jones play press coverage on our WRs. Well, guess what? New England can do that...but better. You know BB will make sure Kittle is not a factor and double team him while having his stud corners man up against our WRs. Jimmy is going to have to complete some passes down the field to have a chance. I feel like if we had Mostert, we would have had a solid chance of winning since he would be able to do damage against this front. Without him? It's going to be extremely difficult. Hasty looked good in the 2nd half last game but he's not on Mostert's level and McKinnon has looked pretty bad the last few weeks.

Defensively, we should be fine. Yes, on paper Newton is a terrible match up for a defense that can't stop ANY QB from gashing them, but you know Saleh will prepare for that. Expect a loaded box and our corners on an island more than usual against the Patriots WRs. As long as Allen is not on the field, we should be fine in that regard lol. 

It will be a low scoring dog fight, but I think the Patriots pull it off late unlike last week. I can't see BB losing three straight.

NE 20 SF 17

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I thought we'd beat the Dolphins - we lost

I thought we'd get smoked by the Rams - we win 

No idea what to expect on Sunday. Especially with Mostert & Garland out (on top of our other injuries) 

I'm guessing it'll be a while until Sherman comes back?

Edited by 49ersfan
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3 minutes ago, 49ersfan said:

I thought we'd beat the Dolphins - we lost

I thought we'd get smoked by the Rams - we win 

No idea what to expect on Sunday. Especially with Mostert & Garland out (on top of our other injuries) 

I'm guessing it'll be a while until Sherman comes back?

He's not coming back this week for sure, but to be determined how much longer he will be out. Williams is targeting to return next week against the Seahawks. 

Sherman isn't that big of a loss with Verrett playing at this level. 

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2 hours ago, J-ALL-DAY said:

Yes, on paper Newton is a terrible match up for a defense that can't stop ANY QB from gashing them, but you know Saleh will prepare for that.

I think the 49ers have an excellent chance to beat the Pats, but Newton's legs are my biggest concern. If we lose, it will be because of:

- Newton is their top and primary rusher

- Newton is struggling to throw the ball and trusts his legs more

- We can't stop a running QB

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BB is going to bring the house consistently and put pressure on the O-Line to adjust protections and pick-up the blitz. We've been horrible at it thus far and I was really surprised the Lambs didn't dial up more pressure. 

Not sure what to make of the Pats offense right but nobody knows Jimmy's weaknesses like Bill. I expect the offense to struggle. But I won't predict a loss.

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12 hours ago, 757-NINER said:

 

Not sure what to make of the Pats offense right but nobody knows Jimmy's weaknesses like Bill. I expect the offense to struggle. But I won't predict a loss.

Neither do we. It's bizarre how we can go from nearly 500 yards of offense one week, and Cam tossing 460 of that...to below 300 the next, and Cam can barely complete a pass beyond 4 yards. eh?

I'd say were summarised like this; Rushing offense as a whole has been really good and our OL has been a very nice surprise, passing offense is bottom 5 in the league material. Passing D is still elite, but you can run on us - making our D something like fringe top 10 rather than the top 2 unit it was last year. Still good at taking the ball away, still disciplined.

I'm probably going for a close SF win due to being able to run the ball on us. I also think Jimmy, despite being stressed most of the game, will be able to complete a few long balls which result in scoring drives. If you stop our early down runs, we really are a handicapped team.

Edited by Hunter2_1
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1 hour ago, Hunter2_1 said:

Neither do we. It's bizarre how we can go from nearly 500 yards of offense one week, and Cam tossing 460 of that...to below 300 the next, and Cam can barely complete a pass beyond 4 yards. eh?

I'd say were summarised like this; Rushing offense as a whole has been really good and our OL has been a very nice surprise, passing offense is bottom 5 in the league material. Passing D is still elite, but you can run on us - making our D something like fringe top 10 rather than the top 2 unit it was last year. Still good at taking the ball away, still disciplined.

I'm probably going for a close SF win due to being able to run the ball on us. I also think Jimmy, despite being stressed most of the game, will be able to complete a few long balls which result in scoring drives. If you stop our early down runs, we really are a handicapped team.

Thing is, we are not a great run stopping D. The Wide 9 is notorious for being easy to run against because the wide splits and that has not changed with us. Especially now with our nickelback Williams being out. He's arguably one of our better run defenders as a nickelback and was critical to our success stopping the run in certain fits.

But the true back-breaker is we are horrible....like absolutely horrendous at stopping mobile QBs. 

If McDaniels is smart he'll just spread us out and run read option with Cam and some fly sweeps against our nickel defense until we wave the white flag. Our front 7 was built to stop the pass. Penetrating front 4 with small, quick athletic LBs behind them who can cover in space. We're not really built to hold up against a physical rushing team for 60 mins. It just so happens that our run game got our offense off to fast starts early in games last year so most teams had to throw the ball early and often. That played right into our hands.

If run-blocking is you're strength than you should definitely just base your gameplan around that and timely play-action off of it. Its our lack of success against the run and Cam being your QB that has wondering how we pull this one off.

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5 minutes ago, 757-NINER said:

Thing is, we are not a great run stopping D. The Wide 9 is notorious for being easy to run against because the wide splits and that has not changed with us. Especially now with our nickelback Williams being out. He's arguably one of our better run defenders as a nickelback and was critical to our success stopping the run in certain fits.

But the true back-breaker is we are horrible....like absolutely horrendous at stopping mobile QBs. 

If McDaniels is smart he'll just spread us out and run read option with Cam and some fly sweeps against our nickel defense until we wave the white flag. Our front 7 was built to stop the pass. Penetrating front 4 with small, quick athletic LBs behind them who can cover in space. We're not really built to hold up against a physical rushing team for 60 mins. It just so happens that our run game got our offense off to fast starts early in games last year so most teams had to throw the ball early and often. That played right into our hands.

If run-blocking is you're strength than you should definitely just base your gameplan around that and timely play-action off of it. Its our lack of success against the run and Cam being your QB that has wondering how we pull this one off.

What about if stacking the box? We literally have the worst WR corps in the league (maybe outside of NYJ). We have an outfit of nothing but 3rd or 4th choice WRs. We also have no TE production at all. So the recipe is to stack the box, which is what Denver did. They succeeded largely. Is this something SF can do? 

 

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1 hour ago, Hunter2_1 said:

What about if stacking the box? We literally have the worst WR corps in the league (maybe outside of NYJ). We have an outfit of nothing but 3rd or 4th choice WRs. We also have no TE production at all. So the recipe is to stack the box, which is what Denver did. They succeeded largely. Is this something SF can do? 

 

Well that's what I expect Saleh to do really. Make Cam beat us with his arm by stacking the box to stop the run. And hopefully Moseley, Verrett and Taylor can do enough in man coverage situations to hold up. Our pass rush is non existent so we should just play contain with Cam and not try to get upfield to apply pressure. But that goes against the philosophy really so we'll have to see what the gameplan is for keeping Cam in the pocket. We need to have a spy on him at all times imo.  

But easier said than done. We've struggle containing gameplans designed to spread us out with mobile QBs and run out of 3-4 WR sets. Its a problem Saleh has yet to solve. But your lack of a passing game at the moment does give me a glimmer of hope that maybe we can right the ship. Stay tuned....

Edited by 757-NINER
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4 hours ago, 757-NINER said:

Thing is, we are not a great run stopping D.

Actually, I'd argue that we're pretty good at stopping the run this year.

If you look at traditional stats, here's how we stack up:

  • We get run on 13th most in the league, so a little more than average and we've given up the 14th fewest yards, so again, slightly above average.
  • But, we've given up the 3rd fewest amount of rushing TD's in the league with only 4.
  • We're 8th in the NFL in ypc at 4.1.
  • Our yards per game is sitting at exactly 10th in the NFL with 108.3 ypg. 
  • We've forced the 3rd most fumbles from rushers with 4.

We're consistently above average and, in some cases, top 10 or better. From a traditional stand point, we're sitting somewhere in the 10-13 range as a run stopping unit.

 

If you look at advanced stats, here's how we stack up:

From Football Outsiders

  • Total Rushing Defense DVOA - 7th in the NFL at -22.5% (our run D is 22.5% better than the average run D in the league)
  • Our front 7 is the 8th best in the NFL at limiting yards on average from ball carriers with 3.83 yards on average. This means that the ball carrier usually gets less than 4 yards per carry by our front 7.
  • We're the 6th best team in the NFL at tackling the ball carrier at or behind the LOS at 23%. 
  • When the ball carrier makes it 5-10 yards down field, we're the 8th best team at limiting further yards at 1.05 yards on average. 
  • When the ball carrier makes it 10+ yards down field, we're the 4th best team at limiting further yards at 0.33 yards on average.

To sum up, we're an efficient run defense that's very good at tackling (4th fewest missed tackles in the NFL as a unit, according to Pro Football Reference). Our front 7 is very good at sniffing out running plays at or around the LOS. When the ball carrier happens to make it into our secondary, we swarm extremely well and have disciplined tacklers (excluding Marcel Harris). 

Our biggest issue as a unit is stopping running QB's. Our EDGE players aren't athletic enough to disengage and chase down running QBs. The addition of Jordan Willis should help this, but this is where we're sorely missing the supreme athleticism of Nick Bosa and Dee Ford. Hell, even Ronald Blair was doing a better job of that than our current line. 

This run defense isn't the Jim Harbaugh era elite run stopping unit, but it's good enough to be a top 10 unit. 

 

 

Edited by NinerNation21
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