So ravens win, Cowboys win and Packers still undefeated, bleh....
Much less concerned about that Monday night game in san fran now though. It was always Alex Smith leading that team after all, he just hadn't been put in a bad situation yet
"We're a team. There's no offense. There's no defense. There's no special teams. We're one. We're a band of brothers." – Ben Roethlisberger
Shit. I HATE having to depend on other teams for help.
How San Fran was 9-1 up to that point is mind-boggling.
Defense couldn't stop Joe Flacco for 92 yards.
No one to blame but themselves.
Baltimore plays Cleveland next week... another let down game? I have a feeling it is.
Cleveland? I don't think so.
The Ravens o-line is very good.
At least the Steelers have control of their destiny for the playoffs!
Seems to me the Squawks had no hope in hell against them either. They play the games for a reason. That being said, I hope the Steelers aren't taking the Chiefs as lightly as some of the fans are - namely the suggestions I've seen of starting Batch so Ben can rest his thumb as this should be an "easy win" are ludicrous.
I'm one of the ones who said rest Ben, but I know that this won't be an easy game. The Chiefs are going to come out swinging and we need to be on our toes. As I said in an earlier post, the Chiefs have the twenty eighth ranked rush defense and we need to capitalize on it be playing all the running backs and running it down their throats.
They're a good team at every position except quarterback. You have no idea how many games I've seen Alex Smith throw away. They'd finally gotten good enough to compensate for that mostly, but it was on full display tonight. Would seem to me that they'll have the exact same problem when we play them.
Just like Flacco, the guy panics under pressure, only he makes it even worse by having sub-NFL talent to begin with, while Flacco is at least average. I also think the Ravens have finally figured out that the way to compensate for a mediocre choke-prone QB is to run the dink-and-dunk and occasionally go for the big pass interference. Worked to perfection tonight, though I would remind people that they still only managed 16 points. The 49ers have such a bad QB that they can't even run the dink-and-dunk, so that was really the difference.
They've just been playing really good defense.
Their main problem is that their offensive isn't very explosive. Alex Smith doesn't make a ton of mistakes, but he's also not going to make very many big plays to help them win games. If you can shut down Frank Gore and manage to put up a couple of touchdowns on their defense, then you're probably going to win the game.
Alex Smith's problem against Baltimore was that he does not have the skill to deal with pressure. A game like last night's, Ben would break tackles, Vick would take off scrambling, Brady would get rid of the ball more quickly, Manning would change the play, most other even average QBs would make adjustments and start throwing to the backs and tight ends more, things like that. Everyone has a way of dealing with it if they're any good at all.
Smith, on the other hand, just gets completely exposed under pressure. His default response seems to be trying to step up or scramble, but he's not fast enough to scramble and he's not strong enough to shake off a tackle, so he just eats it, and usually fumbles as often as not (last night was really really lucky for the 49ers in that respect). For their sake, I hope Kapearnick is ready to go next season at the latest, because he at least has a couple obvious tools to potentially deal with that. For the rest of this year, any team that wants to beat the 49ers, there's your formula: Pressure Alex Smith, and he'll fuck up.
true
but also Smith's three main receivers consist of Ted Ginn (a bust), Crabtree (a near bust), and Braylon Edwards (a really overrated receiver outside of one year). Defense nullifies Gore and Vernon and those three guys are just not good enough to help him make adjustments. Assuming he could make adjustments....
"We're a team. There's no offense. There's no defense. There's no special teams. We're one. We're a band of brothers." – Ben Roethlisberger