kearly
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It seems like a distant memory now, but Russell Wilson opened the game 1-10 with an interception, and showed the worst accuracy during that span that I have ever seen from him. It was a very tough game for Wilson, but it also revealed his greatest strength: his poise. All the cliches he spouts, he really means every one of them. Especially the one about taking things one play at a time and living in the now.
That Wilson was able to keep his composure and close out the rest of the game with some semblance of decency is an achievement. If Matt Hasselbeck were to start that bad, or if Dave Krieg were to start that bad, they usually didn't recover. You just knew you were in for a long night. Even at home. Wilson could have easily been the story Sunday Night for all the wrong reasons, but he did just enough to kick out of the three count.
And I know everyone is throwing tomatoes at Colin Kaepernick right now because of his abysmal stat line, but I think he showed incredible poise too. His receivers, outside of Boldin, are a complete joke. Sherman locked down Boldin, and the rest of the secondary combined to contain Vernon Davis. What the hell is Kaepernick supposed to do? Jim Harbaugh is probably the NFL's brightest coach, and he didn't have a clue either.
Prior to the weather delay, Seattle's pass rush was alarmingly absent, every bit as absent as Wilson's accuracy. Those lightning bolts just might have saved us. I know that sounds insane considering the final score, but football is a momentum game, and after that delay Seattle gradually seized momentum and rolled it more and more through the course of the game. When the delay began, I turned to my brother and predicted that Seattle would come out the winner of that delay. Not only because it gave the coaches a chance to make adjustments for Russell Wilson who was clearly struggling, but also to change game plans for a SF team that couldn't run the ball but was stellar in protection.
After the delay, Wilson gradually approached near respectability for the rest of the game, and Seattle's pass rush came alive.
Back to Kaepernick. He really impressed me. A QB with average mobility and a WR corps so utterly smothered in coverage would have easily taken 6 or 7 sacks in this game. Kaepernick had frankly an unreal performance avoiding linebackers and pass rushers, some of whom are faster than he is. I don't know how he did it. Magic? He also beat some fast defenders to the corner and shot upfield for huge gains (I was very surprised by those plays given our team speed). You look at Kaepernick's line and think he was awful, but if you watched the game closely, he was their entire team. They had nothing else. It was all on him.
In the 42-13 game, Kaepernick was very much a deer in the headlights. His one TD was not really a TD and he couldn't manage an offense. On Sunday night, he looked poised save a couple of bad passes late in the game, and did a masterful job extending plays to pass the football and making smart decisions to avoid negative plays. It was the rest of his team that failed him. I find it very comforting that we have SF's number so badly that even when Kaepernick is making tough play after tough play, our team still makes him look terrible on the stat page. I do worry about the other 14 games he plays in though. He may be a silly douche, but dude's a baller.
But the rest of the 49ers team, by the end they were moping around, heads down, battling back an avalanche of injuries. Beaten and broken. They couldn't wait to get off that field.
The two most physical teams in the NFL met, and it ended via knockout. Our team did this to the Cowboys last year, and I thought it was amazing then. But to physically beat up the 49ers and have them begging for a swift death by the end? That's really saying something. 42-13 may have been a more lopsided game, but 29-3 was more soul crushing. This game hurt their bodies, egos, and confidence. There was no fight left in them by the mid-4th. Given how much they hate us, it takes quite a beat down to accomplish that.
42-13 suprised them, worried them. 29-3 was confirmation, and you could see that sinking realization on their faces at the end. When Seattle travels to Candlestick later this year, you think the 49ers will have heavy doubts they can defend home field? You think Green Bay hates playing the 49ers? It's like that but worse for the 49ers and Seattle. Our defense just has their number. The Seahawks are a scheme and personnel nightmare for the 49ers.
Bullet points in hyphen form:
(If someone could tell me how to do bullet points in .net's interface, it would be appreciated. Someone explained it before and I was a dumbass and didn't write it down.)
-My favorite moment in this game, and it's probably top ten all time for me, was when Max Unger misunderstood Russell Wilson's audible for a snap command and bounced a premature shotgun snap off of Wilson's chest. Wilson is not mic'd up, but directional mics on the field caught a very clear "Oh Shit!" from our QB. It wasn't your garden variety S-bomb either. It was basically what you or I would say if we were in a WWII foxhole and a grenade had just rolled at our feet. Appropriately, Wilson pounced on it like a good soldier and protected the good guys from calamity. The "Oh Shit!" was so frantically hilarious, I had to watch it five times before it stopped being hysterical. I wish I could just cut that part out and put it on youtube as a 3 second video.
-Edit: Oh hell yes!
[youtube]sV_SUncm0DM[/youtube]
As funny as that moment was, I bet it was 10 times funnier for 49ers fans. Imagine how hard you'd be laughing if it was Kaepernick screaming "Oh shit!" instead.
-Whoever blew that whistle on the first punt, I hope he choked on it.
-Marshawn Lynch would have probably finished with 120 yards had he vowed to never run backwards before this game.
-Sidney Rice finally got that spinning penalty many of us have seen coming for a while. Is it his last signature spin? I kind of hope so, even though it makes me sad. I don't think it was intentional, but if there is a 5% chance the ball could bounce weird and touch an opponent, then it's just not worth it.
-Spencer Ware was active. Seems pretty clear to me that the team is trying to motivate Christine Michael to improve his pass protection in practices.
-I really like Ware btw. He's not quite in "man-crush" territory, but he just fits our running scheme so damn well. The best thing about Marshawn Lynch is his consistency. Ware has that consistency gene, too.
-John Schneider was shown in his GM viewing room during the game and looked somewhat busy. My brother thought it was a bit odd and asked if I thought anything was going on, and I joked that he was digging up the phone number for Michael Robinson's agent. After being a pleasant surprise against Carolina, Derrick Coleman regressed to his preseason form as a run blocker. Not only are his run blocks weak and rarely stick, but it's become apparent that Marshawn Lynch doesn't trust them. A few times in this game I saw very good blocking, and even a semi-adequate block from Coleman, only to see Lynch spurn a probable 8 yard gain to cutback into the scrum for no gain. It's tempting to blame Lynch for a poor decision, but I just don't think he trusts Coleman to sustain an open field block right now.
-Lynch had amazing fantasy football numbers, but finished with well under 4 yards a carry. For the second straight game, Pete came down pretty hard on the running game in his post-game comments. I forget exactly what he said, but his tone seemed to indicate that changes would be forthcoming to make the run game better. The run blocking up front was actually pretty good in this game, which leaves the only changes I can think of being a change at fullback or a lecture to Lynch for uncharacteristically running backwards so damn much. I'm curious to see what happens. Coleman is a pretty safe bet to be waiver safe, and until he plays in his 6th regular season game he will remain PS eligible. Not saying his being cut is imminent, but if Robinson is amenable to a cheaper deal, I think he'll be back and soon. We are missing him on the field.
-I loved Robert Turbin at Utah State. When Seattle's 4th rounder came around in 2012 I predicted we'd take him right before the pick happened. I thought it was a bit of a minor steal. Since then Turbin has lost his college big play ability and frustrated me with poor balance and being too easy to tackle at times. But Sunday night, he was great. I felt really bad about that big run he had called back on a hold. Maybe the hold was legit, but I couldn't see one from the broadcast angles. Even without that big run, Turbin was maximizing yardage and running tough. It seems like Turbin is the most dependent on his blocking of our 4 tailbacks, but when he gets some decent blocking like he did in this game he can look terrific.
-Does anyone have a screen shot of Sea-Hulk staring lasers into the camera? It was during the shot of Sea-Fence guy standing next to Lime Green Elton John. If you didn't see it, you missed out. Sea-Hulk, if you are reading this, you are my hero.
-Ricard Sherman had a phenomenal game on the national stage, and since the Seahawks defense was collectively the clear MVP of the game it makes sense to give the SNF game ball to Sherman. My vote? The 12th man should have gotten it. There were four, maybe five pre-snap penalties or forced timeouts by SF in this game. As my brother and I love saying, they got "12thmanned" more than a few times. And not to take anything away from our defense or our team, but early in this game things weren't going great and the crown injected the team with energy when you know they'd be unraveling on the road in the same situation. I know Montana and a few others commented on how fast Bennett and Avril looked off the snap. You know why they looked so fast? Because even the OL can't hear the snap half the time. Whatever they do, squeezing hands or whatnot, to communicate the snap is clearly a bit slower than normal. The 12th man brought their A-game in this one. They even got that Guinness world record I thought they had no chance of getting and did it without noise makers with several decibels to spare. It was a legendary night for the 12th man.
-I'm interested to hear what Football Outsiders thinks of our defensive performance in this game. Given how good the 49ers offense was the week before and the season prior, I wouldn't be shocked if this was one of their highest ranked defensive performances "of all time" (since 1991).
-I was going to say that the officials really hosed us in the 1st half, and they did, but when the game was over, the 49ers had almost 40 more penalty yards than Seattle did, so part of me wonders if there was a bit of makeup calls going our way as the game went along.
-There were a ton of holding calls in this game for both teams, especially Seattle.
-Byron Maxwell got his money's worth on his defensive holding infraction. It was so awesome that I didn't even mind the 5 yards.
-Zach Miller is a tough SOB.
-Justin Smith is such a badass. He looks and talks like a former Navy Seal / Army Ranger.
-Paul McQuistan has limits at tackle. You might as well have put me out there trying to block Aldon Smith.
-I was so relieved to hear that Okung's injury was not ankle related. Sounds like he got a turf toe. During my last high school season I had a horrible case of turf toe in both feet at the same time, and while I was able to keep playing by taping up and treating between games, the injury lasted for months and was very painful to play on. In particular it was very troublesome when run blocking (which btw, is what Okung was doing when he got the injury). When drive blocking there is a lot of force and weight that goes on that big toe ligament. I am curious to see how Seattle handles this injury. It might be best to rest Okung next week against Jacksonville and see where he is in a couple weeks when the team visits the Texans. I have no trouble trusting Alvin Bailey vs. whatever Jacksonville throws at us.
Of course, just because I played on two of them in a much smaller, weaker body against other smaller weaker bodies is meaningless. Turf toe can sideline players for several weeks in the NFL, and in extreme cases, it can even end careers (Jonathan Ogden). Hopefully we get some good news on it, but I wouldn't be shocked if we see Okung in a couple weeks or if we don't see him until week 8.
-Russell Wilson rushed the ball 10 times in this game. Career high? Seattle also ran a lot more read option than normal in this game, it felt like. Those SF linebackers looked helpless against it, though at least once a crafty defender used it to cheap shot Wilson.
-Golden Tate has just one punt return, and it went 24 yards. Tate just seems so natural at it. I honestly wouldn't replace him there when Harvin returns later this season. Tate also had a somewhat reckless diving catch on a punt that would have terrified me had it been anyone else.
-Sherman's post game interview was a classic. Calling the doubters names. For as much as he hates Skip Bailess, there is a little bit of Bailess in Sherman's mentality. Hated, yet loves to hate.
-Michael Bennett had a huge game. Him and Avril were monsters at anticipating the snap. It was hard not to notice.
-Cliff Avril is a different player than the Lions version. I think we might have gotten a steal in FA guys. The Lions version was all upfield all the time. This Seahawks version is a 2 gap player who can bull, cut inside or push the edge. He's actually very similar player at LEO to Michael Bennett. Lots of power and quickness with great instincts. Those two plus Clemons? And Irvin blitzing? With the rest of that defense? Not that keeping teams to 10.3 points a game is easy, but the 2000 Ravens had better watch their ass.
-I don't know if this was really the biggest regular season game in Seattle history or not, but it's probably in the conversation, and Seattle won it 29-3. They didn't beat the 2005 Giants 29-3, I know that much.
-Jim Harbaugh keeps his crown as the NFL's most GIFable coach.
I'll definitely be watching this game again. I'll probably post a report on the OL/DL later this week.
That Wilson was able to keep his composure and close out the rest of the game with some semblance of decency is an achievement. If Matt Hasselbeck were to start that bad, or if Dave Krieg were to start that bad, they usually didn't recover. You just knew you were in for a long night. Even at home. Wilson could have easily been the story Sunday Night for all the wrong reasons, but he did just enough to kick out of the three count.
And I know everyone is throwing tomatoes at Colin Kaepernick right now because of his abysmal stat line, but I think he showed incredible poise too. His receivers, outside of Boldin, are a complete joke. Sherman locked down Boldin, and the rest of the secondary combined to contain Vernon Davis. What the hell is Kaepernick supposed to do? Jim Harbaugh is probably the NFL's brightest coach, and he didn't have a clue either.
Prior to the weather delay, Seattle's pass rush was alarmingly absent, every bit as absent as Wilson's accuracy. Those lightning bolts just might have saved us. I know that sounds insane considering the final score, but football is a momentum game, and after that delay Seattle gradually seized momentum and rolled it more and more through the course of the game. When the delay began, I turned to my brother and predicted that Seattle would come out the winner of that delay. Not only because it gave the coaches a chance to make adjustments for Russell Wilson who was clearly struggling, but also to change game plans for a SF team that couldn't run the ball but was stellar in protection.
After the delay, Wilson gradually approached near respectability for the rest of the game, and Seattle's pass rush came alive.
Back to Kaepernick. He really impressed me. A QB with average mobility and a WR corps so utterly smothered in coverage would have easily taken 6 or 7 sacks in this game. Kaepernick had frankly an unreal performance avoiding linebackers and pass rushers, some of whom are faster than he is. I don't know how he did it. Magic? He also beat some fast defenders to the corner and shot upfield for huge gains (I was very surprised by those plays given our team speed). You look at Kaepernick's line and think he was awful, but if you watched the game closely, he was their entire team. They had nothing else. It was all on him.
In the 42-13 game, Kaepernick was very much a deer in the headlights. His one TD was not really a TD and he couldn't manage an offense. On Sunday night, he looked poised save a couple of bad passes late in the game, and did a masterful job extending plays to pass the football and making smart decisions to avoid negative plays. It was the rest of his team that failed him. I find it very comforting that we have SF's number so badly that even when Kaepernick is making tough play after tough play, our team still makes him look terrible on the stat page. I do worry about the other 14 games he plays in though. He may be a silly douche, but dude's a baller.
But the rest of the 49ers team, by the end they were moping around, heads down, battling back an avalanche of injuries. Beaten and broken. They couldn't wait to get off that field.
The two most physical teams in the NFL met, and it ended via knockout. Our team did this to the Cowboys last year, and I thought it was amazing then. But to physically beat up the 49ers and have them begging for a swift death by the end? That's really saying something. 42-13 may have been a more lopsided game, but 29-3 was more soul crushing. This game hurt their bodies, egos, and confidence. There was no fight left in them by the mid-4th. Given how much they hate us, it takes quite a beat down to accomplish that.
42-13 suprised them, worried them. 29-3 was confirmation, and you could see that sinking realization on their faces at the end. When Seattle travels to Candlestick later this year, you think the 49ers will have heavy doubts they can defend home field? You think Green Bay hates playing the 49ers? It's like that but worse for the 49ers and Seattle. Our defense just has their number. The Seahawks are a scheme and personnel nightmare for the 49ers.
Bullet points in hyphen form:
(If someone could tell me how to do bullet points in .net's interface, it would be appreciated. Someone explained it before and I was a dumbass and didn't write it down.)
-My favorite moment in this game, and it's probably top ten all time for me, was when Max Unger misunderstood Russell Wilson's audible for a snap command and bounced a premature shotgun snap off of Wilson's chest. Wilson is not mic'd up, but directional mics on the field caught a very clear "Oh Shit!" from our QB. It wasn't your garden variety S-bomb either. It was basically what you or I would say if we were in a WWII foxhole and a grenade had just rolled at our feet. Appropriately, Wilson pounced on it like a good soldier and protected the good guys from calamity. The "Oh Shit!" was so frantically hilarious, I had to watch it five times before it stopped being hysterical. I wish I could just cut that part out and put it on youtube as a 3 second video.
-Edit: Oh hell yes!
[youtube]sV_SUncm0DM[/youtube]
As funny as that moment was, I bet it was 10 times funnier for 49ers fans. Imagine how hard you'd be laughing if it was Kaepernick screaming "Oh shit!" instead.
-Whoever blew that whistle on the first punt, I hope he choked on it.
-Marshawn Lynch would have probably finished with 120 yards had he vowed to never run backwards before this game.
-Sidney Rice finally got that spinning penalty many of us have seen coming for a while. Is it his last signature spin? I kind of hope so, even though it makes me sad. I don't think it was intentional, but if there is a 5% chance the ball could bounce weird and touch an opponent, then it's just not worth it.
-Spencer Ware was active. Seems pretty clear to me that the team is trying to motivate Christine Michael to improve his pass protection in practices.
-I really like Ware btw. He's not quite in "man-crush" territory, but he just fits our running scheme so damn well. The best thing about Marshawn Lynch is his consistency. Ware has that consistency gene, too.
-John Schneider was shown in his GM viewing room during the game and looked somewhat busy. My brother thought it was a bit odd and asked if I thought anything was going on, and I joked that he was digging up the phone number for Michael Robinson's agent. After being a pleasant surprise against Carolina, Derrick Coleman regressed to his preseason form as a run blocker. Not only are his run blocks weak and rarely stick, but it's become apparent that Marshawn Lynch doesn't trust them. A few times in this game I saw very good blocking, and even a semi-adequate block from Coleman, only to see Lynch spurn a probable 8 yard gain to cutback into the scrum for no gain. It's tempting to blame Lynch for a poor decision, but I just don't think he trusts Coleman to sustain an open field block right now.
-Lynch had amazing fantasy football numbers, but finished with well under 4 yards a carry. For the second straight game, Pete came down pretty hard on the running game in his post-game comments. I forget exactly what he said, but his tone seemed to indicate that changes would be forthcoming to make the run game better. The run blocking up front was actually pretty good in this game, which leaves the only changes I can think of being a change at fullback or a lecture to Lynch for uncharacteristically running backwards so damn much. I'm curious to see what happens. Coleman is a pretty safe bet to be waiver safe, and until he plays in his 6th regular season game he will remain PS eligible. Not saying his being cut is imminent, but if Robinson is amenable to a cheaper deal, I think he'll be back and soon. We are missing him on the field.
-I loved Robert Turbin at Utah State. When Seattle's 4th rounder came around in 2012 I predicted we'd take him right before the pick happened. I thought it was a bit of a minor steal. Since then Turbin has lost his college big play ability and frustrated me with poor balance and being too easy to tackle at times. But Sunday night, he was great. I felt really bad about that big run he had called back on a hold. Maybe the hold was legit, but I couldn't see one from the broadcast angles. Even without that big run, Turbin was maximizing yardage and running tough. It seems like Turbin is the most dependent on his blocking of our 4 tailbacks, but when he gets some decent blocking like he did in this game he can look terrific.
-Does anyone have a screen shot of Sea-Hulk staring lasers into the camera? It was during the shot of Sea-Fence guy standing next to Lime Green Elton John. If you didn't see it, you missed out. Sea-Hulk, if you are reading this, you are my hero.
-Ricard Sherman had a phenomenal game on the national stage, and since the Seahawks defense was collectively the clear MVP of the game it makes sense to give the SNF game ball to Sherman. My vote? The 12th man should have gotten it. There were four, maybe five pre-snap penalties or forced timeouts by SF in this game. As my brother and I love saying, they got "12thmanned" more than a few times. And not to take anything away from our defense or our team, but early in this game things weren't going great and the crown injected the team with energy when you know they'd be unraveling on the road in the same situation. I know Montana and a few others commented on how fast Bennett and Avril looked off the snap. You know why they looked so fast? Because even the OL can't hear the snap half the time. Whatever they do, squeezing hands or whatnot, to communicate the snap is clearly a bit slower than normal. The 12th man brought their A-game in this one. They even got that Guinness world record I thought they had no chance of getting and did it without noise makers with several decibels to spare. It was a legendary night for the 12th man.
-I'm interested to hear what Football Outsiders thinks of our defensive performance in this game. Given how good the 49ers offense was the week before and the season prior, I wouldn't be shocked if this was one of their highest ranked defensive performances "of all time" (since 1991).
-I was going to say that the officials really hosed us in the 1st half, and they did, but when the game was over, the 49ers had almost 40 more penalty yards than Seattle did, so part of me wonders if there was a bit of makeup calls going our way as the game went along.
-There were a ton of holding calls in this game for both teams, especially Seattle.
-Byron Maxwell got his money's worth on his defensive holding infraction. It was so awesome that I didn't even mind the 5 yards.
-Zach Miller is a tough SOB.
-Justin Smith is such a badass. He looks and talks like a former Navy Seal / Army Ranger.
-Paul McQuistan has limits at tackle. You might as well have put me out there trying to block Aldon Smith.
-I was so relieved to hear that Okung's injury was not ankle related. Sounds like he got a turf toe. During my last high school season I had a horrible case of turf toe in both feet at the same time, and while I was able to keep playing by taping up and treating between games, the injury lasted for months and was very painful to play on. In particular it was very troublesome when run blocking (which btw, is what Okung was doing when he got the injury). When drive blocking there is a lot of force and weight that goes on that big toe ligament. I am curious to see how Seattle handles this injury. It might be best to rest Okung next week against Jacksonville and see where he is in a couple weeks when the team visits the Texans. I have no trouble trusting Alvin Bailey vs. whatever Jacksonville throws at us.
Of course, just because I played on two of them in a much smaller, weaker body against other smaller weaker bodies is meaningless. Turf toe can sideline players for several weeks in the NFL, and in extreme cases, it can even end careers (Jonathan Ogden). Hopefully we get some good news on it, but I wouldn't be shocked if we see Okung in a couple weeks or if we don't see him until week 8.
-Russell Wilson rushed the ball 10 times in this game. Career high? Seattle also ran a lot more read option than normal in this game, it felt like. Those SF linebackers looked helpless against it, though at least once a crafty defender used it to cheap shot Wilson.
-Golden Tate has just one punt return, and it went 24 yards. Tate just seems so natural at it. I honestly wouldn't replace him there when Harvin returns later this season. Tate also had a somewhat reckless diving catch on a punt that would have terrified me had it been anyone else.
-Sherman's post game interview was a classic. Calling the doubters names. For as much as he hates Skip Bailess, there is a little bit of Bailess in Sherman's mentality. Hated, yet loves to hate.
-Michael Bennett had a huge game. Him and Avril were monsters at anticipating the snap. It was hard not to notice.
-Cliff Avril is a different player than the Lions version. I think we might have gotten a steal in FA guys. The Lions version was all upfield all the time. This Seahawks version is a 2 gap player who can bull, cut inside or push the edge. He's actually very similar player at LEO to Michael Bennett. Lots of power and quickness with great instincts. Those two plus Clemons? And Irvin blitzing? With the rest of that defense? Not that keeping teams to 10.3 points a game is easy, but the 2000 Ravens had better watch their ass.
-I don't know if this was really the biggest regular season game in Seattle history or not, but it's probably in the conversation, and Seattle won it 29-3. They didn't beat the 2005 Giants 29-3, I know that much.
-Jim Harbaugh keeps his crown as the NFL's most GIFable coach.
I'll definitely be watching this game again. I'll probably post a report on the OL/DL later this week.
