49ers @ Saints

[GS Warriors 1]

My thoughts:

- Kaepernick only had 1 good quarter(3rd) while the rest was pretty forgettable. He was playing solidly in the latter stages of the winning streak against middling to bad competition and there's certainly some softer touches left on the schedule but how he's looked against good, solid teams this year is worrisome.

- Ahmad Brooks had a violent, yet legal hit on Brees. The referee said he was either hit in the face or neck but I think the neck is inconclusive, it was more shoulder pad than anything else. Seeing that the shoulder pad is possibly now illegal(?), then what else was Brooks supposed to do? He can't lean with the helmet or else it's going to get flagged and I believe he was still trying to get through the tackle so he couldn't go for the feet. Watching it as it happened, it looked good to me. It's not a 100% given that the 49ers would've closed it out but the odds would've been very high had it stood.

- Kassim Osgood's penalty is just plain inexcusable. He's been in the league for about a decade now, where most of his work has been on ST and he's quite good at it, I think he's a big part of why the coverage units on ST have looked vastly improved this season. You can't give an explosive offense like that an extra 15 yards. When it happened, I knew the game was lost.

- At 6-4, I'm still pretty confident that this team makes the playoffs because of the aforementioned remaining schedule. 10 or 11 wins should be good enough but it clearly won't be enough to get the division. How far they go in the playoffs will depend on matchups. I think they can win a WC game on the road but they would most likely have to play Seattle in the Divisional and I can't see them winning up there.