outlaw4

Good grief. The amount of opinion flip-flopping is David Tepper levels of embarrassing. He's the guy. He's not the guy. And so on. Are we going to fire Canales after today, then? And we wonder why we can't sustain any success as a franchise. We want to tear everything apart the instant there's a bunp on the road. It's all about making progress but progress is anything but linear. Today was not a good day, although it's not like we saw BY from early season that had no real positives to point out. Missed on one deep throw late but nailed an earlier one. Passes generally more accurate than not. Basically, this looked more like a new floor which is still a lot better than the old one. Mistakes were made - gotta hold onto that ball better - but this is when we want to learn them and correct them going forward. And the same goes for the rest of the team because they made far too many mistakes today as well. O-line playing like last year's unit. Run game going nowhere. Canales not having any answers against the constant pressure. Franklin being a dumbass, again. Defense reverting back to their old selves. Penalties galore. With the lack of talent on this roster, we simply don't have the margin of error to overcome major mistakes.

The question wasn't going to be solved completely by season's end regardless. It was more whether there's enough there from BY to say he's part of that equation. Still is after today. There was going to be a bad game in there and today was it. However, it was more the fumbles than anything else. That said, O-line had one of their worst games this season as well. Run game stuffed and way too many pressures allowed. Basically played like the unit from last year.

49ers had the right idea with their team. Problem is that they ended up facing the Chiefs in the Super Bowl twice, a unit that had defeated other teams with much better QBs like Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. Just a bad draw of opponent. As for Purdy, it's less of a problem with him and more that this league, frankly, overvalues QBs in terms of how much they get paid, especially if they're not a top tier guy. Kirk Cousins got around 100k in guaranteed money with the Falcons. Sam Darnold might end up being paid in the same ballpark. Even Daniel Jones got a similar amount of guaranteed money. Basically, one shows mere conpetence and you get a ton of money at the expense of everyone else.

That's almost certainly the end of the 49ers playoffs chances.

Probably more that YGM has a better supporting cast around him.

Dammit, XL. Oh, sorry. Force of habit. Dammit, Deebo.

Football on Thursday Night + Heavy Rain + 2 Division Rivals = One ugly messy game

The type of throws Bryce is now making are those you see mostly from the top 10 QBs in the league. The numbers, however, aren't there yet for a few reasons. - Bryce is still learning the game. He literally went from looking completely lost to showing off first round pick draft pick plays within a span of a season. Just getting to where he is now was a herculean effort that you rarely see. For now, priority should be sustaining what we have now as opponents will certainly try to counter. - Canales is having to figure out how to handle this resurgence on the fly. Personally, I think without Dalton's car accident, Bryce wasn't going to see the field again this season. Whatever ideas he had with the offense under Dalton are out the window. - Bryce doesn't have the supporting cast necessary to put up top 10 numbers. If you want a comparison with someone else, look at Mahomes stats and how they've gone from top of the league to almost out of the top 10 today. He also only has one reliable but aging target in Kelce, a rookie WR, a bunch of other bodies who scare nobody and arguably worse protection. You can't ask Bryce to throw up video game numbers right now much like you can't ask Mahomes of today to match Joe Burrow's numbers.

I'd guess it's a combination of lack of progress from Mingo, Coker/Sanders showing promise, drafting XL, and the fact the Cowboys offered a fourth round pick for him. The potential return from another draft pick - especially when your fourth round pick this last draft has already shown more than what Mingo has - is likely higher than whatever Mingo's ceiling likely will be.

Canales did say when he first arrived about wanting to really establish the run. We haven't always done that, but I like that we tried and there were real benefits that came out of it. I just took a peek and the Cowboys defense is generally not that good but they're the worst run defense we get to face this year. Mike Boone, I hope you're ready to carry some of that weight.

I'm just pleased Canales actually followed my advice and used the running game to churn yards and try to win TOP. That was our best shot and we were so close to pulling it off. Losing Brooks surely derailed our plans some, especially since he would've kept Chuba fresher and been another outlet in the passing game.

It's too early to say for cetain but overall team culture may be the biggest contribution Canales has brought here. When he talked about Brooks reinjuring his ACL, he kept going back to the mental aspect of it. The thing with adversity is that overcoming it is more than just rehabbing, workouts, reps and studying. There's also having the motivation to keep pushing on despite how difficult it may be with injuries, mistakes and losses. At least to me, this unit is playing a lot more like an actual team supporting each other rather than a collection of individuals who just so happen to work together. Whether we can sustain this is going to be the question, but I would hope the team as a whole understands that it's starting to get noticed by everyone. Please keep this up.

Is it just me or has there been a ton of roster churn during this season? Also, who names their kid Velus?

Rico Dowdle's going to be our biggest problem. Our biggest thing in our favor may be McCarthy deciding to put the game more on Cooper Rush's hands. Also, the fact that the Cowboys may be demoralized after that crushing loss on MNF.

Cowboys find a way to lose because they blocked a punt.

I can't recall the last time a blocked punt ended up being a good thing for the kicking team.

Rico's running all over the Bengals. And yet, they call three straight passes. May we be as lucky with that bizarre playcalling.

Wow, Bengals defense leaves a guy wide open for a TD.

That's not really on him, though. Whatever plan we devised for him from the beginning blew up in our faces and that's time we don't get back. If anything, we should feel fortunate that we're seeing some progress we can build upon rather than starting all over again because I doubt even the most optimistic fan saw this coming after how disastrous it looked like at the start of the season. At the minimum, we are still going to have two more years before we worry about extensions which he's going to have to earn. That said, it's the team's responsibility to give him enough to take another step forward.

At least when I listen to the radio broadcast, I get the impression snaps are not consistent. If there one thing that still irks me, it's not getting a center last draft when we had great options available. Seems that everyone that's not Thielen are almost always in the 40~50s range. Not sure how that compares to other receiving corps but... yeah, it's probably not the best.

I still like how they are relying on the ground game and strong defense but it seemed they were trying to put the game more on Hurts hands yesterday. Not sure if I want to do that come playoffs. Being in the same division as the Steelers and Ravens definitely doesn't help. Bengals may be a cautionary tale on how if you have a great QB under a rookie contract, that may be your best window for a SB run. It gets way harder once you dole out the money and you have to make sacrifices elsewhere as a result.

Worst case, there's always another back we can draft next year. Just don’t spend a high pick on one.

How I see things, this year is his true rookie season. Most of what the prior staff taught him is probably of little value now and his 2023 on-field experiences - if anything - taught him more bad habits than good. It's almost as though BY needed to flush all that out of himself and start all over again. That's why I'm not obsessing about raw numbers because he is still very much learning how to play the game properly with just enough good pieces around him that he can make something out of it. We used to have a QB that did stuff like this a lot. In fact, one of the reasons I became a fan of this team. Not going to declare we've gone full circle yet but I'd be lying if it doesn't feel like a blast from the past.

I'm still traumatized from Dwayne Jarrett and Keary Colbert.

Miles Sanders as a runningback is about as useful as Ian Thomas is useful as a tight end.