Week 15: 49ers @ Cardinals

[Samurai]

Glad we were able to take care of business, but giving up 436 yards (more yards than we had), including 234 on the ground, should send a loud alarm to Mr. Wilks that he has a lot of homework ahead of him this week.

[Bald Bull]

Glad we were able to take care of business, but giving up 436 yards (more yards than we had), including 234 on the ground, should send a loud alarm to Mr. Wilks that he has a lot of homework ahead of him this week.

Missing both starting DTs hurt the run D, i think they'll bounce back

[wco81]

Glad we were able to take care of business, but giving up 436 yards (more yards than we had), including 234 on the ground, should send a loud alarm to Mr. Wilks that he has a lot of homework ahead of him this week.

Yeah a couple of times I saw the Cardinals OL drive the 49ers front four back 2-3 yards.

[Samurai]

Glad we were able to take care of business, but giving up 436 yards (more yards than we had), including 234 on the ground, should send a loud alarm to Mr. Wilks that he has a lot of homework ahead of him this week.

Missing both starting DTs hurt the run D, i think they'll bounce back

No doubt missing AA and Hargraves makes an impact. But we just didn't play good fundamental defense. We missed a lot of tackles (Warner in particular) and had trouble covering their tight ends and I am not convinced that just missing two DT's causes those things to happen.

[49er4life1979]

Not their best football for sure but a win is always great. And the Bills gave us a little breathing room by throttling Dallas. Dallas is now a game back of us, but it's really 2 games since we hold tie breakers. Now if Philly also loses tomorrow at Seattle our magic number becomes 2, that is 2 more wins to clinch #1 and a bye/home field.

[Jikkle]

We had poor tackling for sure and it wasn't our best defensive effort but I do think the Cardinals being able to run the ball isn't as bad as it seems.

Missing both starting DTs was a factor as I don't think Davis and Kinlaw did a good job of tying up blockers and allowing Warner and Greenlaw to be clean to stuff the run like they usually do.

And running the ball is basically the Cardinals' bread and butter and pretty much the main functioning part of their offense. They were running even when they were 3 scores behind when most teams would be passing to try to get back into it.

So to a certain extent I do believe part of their running was the 9ers defense more worried about giving up a quick passing TD than worrying about the Cardinals' burning clock running the ball.

I expect they'll be sharper against the Raven's this Monday since this team tends to really focus when it's on national TV against a quality opponent.

[Jikkle]

Not their best football for sure but a win is always great. And the Bills gave us a little breathing room by throttling Dallas. Dallas is now a game back of us, but it's really 2 games since we hold tie breakers. Now if Philly also loses tomorrow at Seattle our magic number becomes 2, that is 2 more wins to clinch #1 and a bye/home field.

Philly is the only team I'm worried about since the rest of their schedule is so easy and it's not hard to see them being able to win out.

I expected Dallas with the Bills, Dolphins, and Lions to lose at least one of those.

Philly losing against the Seahawks would be huge to me because I feel that nearly lock things up especially if the team beats the Ravens' Monday.

Ideally we have the #1 seed locked up going into the game against the Rams because I would love to get guys like Bosa, Williams, and especially CMC two weeks off so they are fresh and ready to go for the playoff run. Not to mention it'd be nice not to have to stress having to win against a Rams team that I feel could be dangerous.

[CrimsonCrew]

The run D was a concern, especially with one of the best running teams in the league coming into town in a week. Keaton Mitchell is done for the season, which takes away a huge big play threat, but the Cards are basically the Ravens-light, so we need to get our run D up to snuff soon.

That said, as noted, we're missing key guys. One player I think is probably being overlooked is Oren Burks. We don't play with three LBs all that often, but in that package he's a starter. He's played about 30% of defensive snaps despite missing this last game and a chunk of the Seahawks game, and PFF gives him at 76 grade. So we're missing three of our starting front-seven, all of whom grade at 76+. That's significant.

DFF isn't very good on defense (hasn't been great on STs, either). I'd like to see what Jalen Graham can do at that spot. And Givens is downright bad against the run. He's a one-gap penetrator. The team lists him at 285 pounds. Let's get 310-pound Kalia Davis some more snaps on base downs. I'm all about penetrators on passing downs, but we need at least one dude at the NT spot. Right now, we don't really have that guy, unless Davis can become that. Even Hargrave isn't at his best in that role. It's something to look at for next season.

Anyway, the good news is that the offense has been able to carry the defense a little bit while the D is banged up. The hope is that we can keep the remaining guys healthy and get our injured players back for the playoff run. But this next week is huge. Win that, and we're in great shape to grab that one seed. But a scoring explosion against Lamar scares me....

[CrimsonCrew]

And yeah, that lack of fundamentals was worrisome this week. Awful tackling, not just by Warner. Seemed like there were about seven or eight plays where two or three guys missed tackles. There was one play where we had three guys coming up to tackle the RB on a swing pass (I don't think it was a screen as he didn't have any blockers in front of him), and not one of them even laid a hand on the guy. Just can't have that against a good team.

We also blew a couple coverages badly. There's some inevitability to that in today's NFL, but got to minimize it. And we did a pretty lousy job of containing Kyler. If we give Lamar the same opportunities, it could be all bad for us.

The Ravens have a really good defense, so we can't rely on the offense to score 40+. D need to keep them near 20.

[CrimsonCrew]

John Feliciano the highest graded offensive player for the Niners again with a grade of 93.5. We need to keep him in the starting lineup. Burford may be the future, but he's not the guy right now.

[Samurai]

John Feliciano the highest graded offensive player for the Niners again with a grade of 93.5. We need to keep him in the starting lineup. Burford may be the future, but he's not the guy right now.

Agree - ride the hot hand. Feliciano didn't allow a single pass rush in his 30 pass-blocking snaps. And McKivitz was our 4th highest offensive player (trailing only Brock and Trent) at 79.7. He has consistently had good grades throughout the season, which seems weird since we are so much better running the ball to the left than to the right. I'm guessing that McKivitz is scoring better in pass protection than run blocking.

Also seems odd that Warner was our 2nd highest defensive player (behind only Ward) since he seemed to miss a lot more tackles than normal. Maybe PFF ignores missed tackles? And despite accounting for 187 total yards, CMC had one of his poorer scores of the season with only 68.4. And his 65.1 run grade was his lowest since our week 7 loss to the Vikings. A mystery to me how the PFF folks score these things....

[RIPskaterdude]

The run D was a concern, especially with one of the best running teams in the league coming into town in a week. Keaton Mitchell is done for the season, which takes away a huge big play threat, but the Cards are basically the Ravens-light, so we need to get our run D up to snuff soon.

That said, as noted, we're missing key guys. One player I think is probably being overlooked is Oren Burks. We don't play with three LBs all that often, but in that package he's a starter. He's played about 30% of defensive snaps despite missing this last game and a chunk of the Seahawks game, and PFF gives him at 76 grade. So we're missing three of our starting front-seven, all of whom grade at 76+. That's significant.

DFF isn't very good on defense (hasn't been great on STs, either). I'd like to see what Jalen Graham can do at that spot. And Givens is downright bad against the run. He's a one-gap penetrator. The team lists him at 285 pounds. Let's get 310-pound Kalia Davis some more snaps on base downs. I'm all about penetrators on passing downs, but we need at least one dude at the NT spot. Right now, we don't really have that guy, unless Davis can become that. Even Hargrave isn't at his best in that role. It's something to look at for next season.

Anyway, the good news is that the offense has been able to carry the defense a little bit while the D is banged up. The hope is that we can keep the remaining guys healthy and get our injured players back for the playoff run. But this next week is huge. Win that, and we're in great shape to grab that one seed. But a scoring explosion against Lamar scares me....

Davis is probably out for the season, or at least the next 3 or 4 games

[CrimsonCrew]

The run D was a concern, especially with one of the best running teams in the league coming into town in a week. Keaton Mitchell is done for the season, which takes away a huge big play threat, but the Cards are basically the Ravens-light, so we need to get our run D up to snuff soon.

That said, as noted, we're missing key guys. One player I think is probably being overlooked is Oren Burks. We don't play with three LBs all that often, but in that package he's a starter. He's played about 30% of defensive snaps despite missing this last game and a chunk of the Seahawks game, and PFF gives him at 76 grade. So we're missing three of our starting front-seven, all of whom grade at 76+. That's significant.

DFF isn't very good on defense (hasn't been great on STs, either). I'd like to see what Jalen Graham can do at that spot. And Givens is downright bad against the run. He's a one-gap penetrator. The team lists him at 285 pounds. Let's get 310-pound Kalia Davis some more snaps on base downs. I'm all about penetrators on passing downs, but we need at least one dude at the NT spot. Right now, we don't really have that guy, unless Davis can become that. Even Hargrave isn't at his best in that role. It's something to look at for next season.

Anyway, the good news is that the offense has been able to carry the defense a little bit while the D is banged up. The hope is that we can keep the remaining guys healthy and get our injured players back for the playoff run. But this next week is huge. Win that, and we're in great shape to grab that one seed. But a scoring explosion against Lamar scares me....

Davis is probably out for the season, or at least the next 3 or 4 games

I totally missed that he got hurt. Well ****.

[49er4life1979]

Not their best football for sure but a win is always great. And the Bills gave us a little breathing room by throttling Dallas. Dallas is now a game back of us, but it's really 2 games since we hold tie breakers. Now if Philly also loses tomorrow at Seattle our magic number becomes 2, that is 2 more wins to clinch #1 and a bye/home field.

Philly is the only team I'm worried about since the rest of their schedule is so easy and it's not hard to see them being able to win out.

I expected Dallas with the Bills, Dolphins, and Lions to lose at least one of those.

Philly losing against the Seahawks would be huge to me because I feel that nearly lock things up especially if the team beats the Ravens' Monday.

Ideally we have the #1 seed locked up going into the game against the Rams because I would love to get guys like Bosa, Williams, and especially CMC two weeks off so they are fresh and ready to go for the playoff run. Not to mention it'd be nice not to have to stress having to win against a Rams team that I feel could be dangerous.

Thank you Seattle! We now have even more breathing room!

[arich35]

Can't believe Drew Lock drove down 90 yards to win.
So now we can lose one game and still get the 1 seed over Lions, Eagles, & Cowboys?

[49er4life1979]

Can't believe Drew Lock drove down 90 yards to win.
So now we can lose one game and still get the 1 seed over Lions, Eagles, & Cowboys?

Yes. We hold all tie breakers over Dallas and Philly. We basically now have a 2 game edge on them because of tie breakers. Our grip on the #1 seed has now tightened.

[zman1]

Can't believe Drew Lock drove down 90 yards to win.
So now we can lose one game and still get the 1 seed over Lions, Eagles, & Cowboys?

Yes. We hold all tie breakers over Dallas and Philly. We basically now have a 2 game edge on them because of tie breakers. Our grip on the #1 seed has now tightened.

Our path to the super bowl looks great right now. Knock on wood.

Sent from my SM-T510 using Tapatalk

[Samurai]

Can't believe Drew Lock drove down 90 yards to win.
So now we can lose one game and still get the 1 seed over Lions, Eagles, & Cowboys?

Yes. We hold all tie breakers over Dallas and Philly. We basically now have a 2 game edge on them because of tie breakers. Our grip on the #1 seed has now tightened.

Our path to the super bowl looks great right now. Knock on wood.

Sent from my SM-T510 using Tapatalk

As long as we avoid killer injuries and don't do dumb things to beat ourselves.