Nick Mullens should have gotten that Game Ball

This kid is good, and he took some hard hits, but stood in the pocket and delivered. Twice. Both games against us Mullens got hammered a couple of times, and had he been a well known QB, there might have been a penalty or two. But as an unknown, he won't get those calls.

Which is fine by me because they get too carried away with those flags and it's impossible for players to know what constitutes a penalty, and what doesn't. Nick Mullens should have gotten the game ball though, because he was amazing and was the biggest contributor to that win.

But Kyle Shanahan gave it to Richard Sherman...for what? John Clayton was okay with it because "People don't throw at him, so just because he doesn't have any stats, doesn't mean he's not good."

But I would submit that the 49ers could have played without Richard, considering all of the penalties, still would have won the game. Would they have won without all the penalties? There's no telling, maybe, maybe not.

Either way, Nick Mullens should have gotten the Game Ball and Shanny giving it to Richard, imho, is the sign of an inexperienced coach. I think some of the players will question that choice, and if he makes more decisions like this, eventually he have trouble convincing his players to buy in.

Sherm did absolutely nothing in that game. Well, a cheap shot to the back of Carson. But come on, Mullins showed a lot of guts in that game, making clutch throws while getting ready to get clobbered back there.
Pretty lame to give a game ball to Sherm. As usual, it was all about Sherm. Meh

ivotuk":1guy12bv said:

Nick Mullens should have gotten the Game Ball and Shanny giving it to Richard, imho, is the sign of an inexperienced coach. I think some of the players will question that choice, and if he makes more decisions like this, eventually he have trouble convincing his players to buy in.

Click to expand...

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:


This is high level concern trolling, man.

Yeah, you can literally see the players turning against him as they cheer their teammate on. :lol:

https://www.facebook.com/SANFRANCISCO49 ... 651211105/

There's a lot of things you can criticize Shanahan for, but not keeping the players positive and fully on board across what has been two truly atrocious seasons just 100% isn't one of them.

They won their 4th game..........in DECEMBER. And acted like they won it all, hilarious.

One must sooth the savage known as Richard Sherman and reignite the evil known as the rivalry. The easiest way to do that is to give the game ball to NEO.

SoulfishHawk":3qr04xbv said:

They won their 4th game..........in DECEMBER. And acted like they won it all, hilarious.

Click to expand...

Ah, okay, so in your first post the argument was that Sherman getting the game ball made the players unhappy (which is ultimately supposed to lead to the team breaking apart or something, I still don't really get it).

But now the argument is that the problem is that the players were too happy.

Yeah, sure, why not?

I think what matters here is that there's gotta be a problem brewing for that practice squad that just beat the Seahawks.

What that problem is, however, is entirely up grabs, as long as we can end up saying that there's a problem.

I get it. :lol: :2thumbs:

Seahawkfan80":1c5dj49j said:

One must sooth the savage known as Richard Sherman and reignite the evil known as the rivalry. The easiest way to do that is to give the game ball to NEO.

Click to expand...

This is fair.

All week the players made allusions to two things:

1) That they were embarrassed about what happened a couple weeks ago when they played the Seahawks

2) How because of that embarrassment this game extra important for them for Sherman and Robert Saleh.


Anyone who follows the 9ers knows that Sherman's leadership and willingness to go the extra mile for his teammates has been one of the things that's helped hold the team together through this really crappy season. (before anyone comes in saying that's all gonna change and he's gonna tear the team apart, fine, whatever, I'm talking about what has happened not making predictions about what's going to happen)

Anyone who follows the 9ers knew that if they beat the Hawks Sherman was going to get the game ball.

Anyone who follows the 9ers knows that there's two things for Shanahan in the plus column of his coaching tenure so far:

1) His ability as an OC is obvious, and he can spin practice squad QBs and RBs, a 5th round TE, and bottom of the depth chart WRs into a functional offense.

2) Even when things are going really bad (and were almost a full two years in on that), his players respect the hell out of him and they don't quit on him.

Neither of those things by themselves mean he's even a good HC or that the 9ers will ever even be above .500 in his coaching tenure, but they're pretty undeniable at this point.

Sherman did nothing in this game, yet Russ dropped back a few times and no one was open forcing him to scramble and get sacked. Nothing, nope didn't help in run support setting the edge on 2-3 plays. No emotional win for the defense at all. Wasn't the most complete game the 49ers played all season and the only win against a playoff team at all.

??? I never said it made the players unhappy. I said it was all about Sherm, as usual.

SoulfishHawk":1jxcvtt7 said:

??? I never said it made the players unhappy. I said it was all about Sherm, as usual.

Click to expand...

Ah sorry. Your post was right after Ivo's and was expressing agreement with him, so I think I mistook how far that agreement went (and didn't go). That's my mistake. Sorry.

As for it being all about Sherm, as I said above, for the team this week I think it was pretty clear that this week really was about BOTH Sherm and Robert Saleh -- it's why Sherm even specifies that it's important for both of them (and not just him).

So, I know Shanahan and Sherm have a good relationship (they're both insanely complimentary of each other, and there's clips of them joking around together during practice and pre-games), and that Sherm and his teammates in the secondary have a good relationship (again, just from what people say and from out-of-game clips), but I don't think Sherm has the power to make his coach award him game balls.

Rather, he and Saleh were kind of the avatars this week for the team's embarassment from a couple weeks ago. I think Shanahan and all the players already knew where the game ball was going this week (that's the way they'd been talking at least).

Mullens has been pretty impressive imo. Dude can take a hit. I mean, they were blasting him in the 2nd half and he would still get the ball to the receiver. Not all QB's are gutsy like that.

^^^^ Yeah, I've been impressed by him too.

He's played well enough that 9ers fans are now into the idea of trading him for a draft pick, but I think they're dramatically overestimating how much he'd be worth in trade.

The short version is I think he's shown that he might have the long-term ability to be a very good backup/fringe starter in the NFL, but nobody is actually gonna offer much up in trade for that.

At the end of the day he's good at a lot of things and probably better than I thought he was after he blew up on that first Monday night game, but he doesn't have the arm talent that you'd want from a starting QB, and anyone who trades for him knows that when you get him you don't ALSO get Shanahan scheming wide open receivers for him when you bring him over.

Like most guys, you need to see how a QB does in big games that actually matter. I realize Jimmy G is the big deal out there, but has he really ever won huge games?

He's only played 3 games that meant anything to the team and is 1-2. No huge games. We haven't had a huge game since the NFC championship loss to the Seahawks

What is your honest opinion of Jimmy G? Overhyped or do you think he will be very good? Obviously you watch it way closer than we do.

Seattle should trade for him in the offseason.

Is Mullens as good as he appears or is it the benefit of Shanahan who is a top play-caller and play-desiginer. Not saying he doesn't deserve some credit and Beathard didn't do much in the same system. But he may not look as good elsewhere.

Mullen’s = Processes info fast. Gets the ball out quick and is accurate. Does not do great on long throws. Sometimes holds the ball to long. Record 3 and 3

Bethard = Processes info very slow, is accurate on short to intermediate throws and at times does ok on long throws. Can’t see the field and holds the ball way to long. Is a turnover machine. Record 1 win 9 loses.

Jimmy G=. Processes info fast, quick release, very accurate on short to intermediate throws. Does ok to good not great on long throws. Makes good dedications. Record 6 wins 2 loses.


I think Mullen’s and Jimmy are the future, with Jimmy starting (for now). Bethard is as good is gone. Mullen’s is winning games with the same or worse roster that Bethard had.
Kyle is the focal point of offense success. Bottom line. Look at the Falcons and that wonderful offense without Kyle. Now the big question. What does Kyle do in the offseason?


And yes this win was fun for the team and fans. It takes the sting of nonstop ass kicking from you all. Not that 1 win makes up for 10 games. But it’s a start. If the roles were reversed you’d celebrate also. Also yes Mullen’s should have gotten a game ball.

SoulfishHawk":16jxjcao said:

What is your honest opinion of Jimmy G? Overhyped or do you think he will be very good? Obviously you watch it way closer than we do.

Click to expand...

Overhyped is pretty relative, but I think (a) the entire 49ers team was overhyped coming into this season, and (b) if anyone was or is expecting Jimmy G to keep up his performance from the five games he played last year (in which by all the advanced metrics he was the best QB in the NFL) they're absolutely over-hyping him.

For my money, if he can stay healthy I'd be surprised if he didn't end up being an average starting NFL QB or better.

To be fair I'm hedging a little bit here with the "if healthy" clause and "average or better" because his sample size is just VERY small, and we've seen lumps of meat look like they're good over similar sample sizes (Matt Flynn comes to mind) and even bigger sample sizes (Josh Freeman comes to mind).

That said, I'd say "average" or better because the areas he excels (very quick release, consistent short and intermediate accuracy, manipulation of the pocket, progression speed, accuracy throwing from different platforms) are the types of things that tend to be pretty stable over the long term, and his areas of weakness (downfield accuracy -- particularly outside the numbers, interceptions, disconnect between his upper and lower body sometimes) are the types of things that can be pretty volatile, and can be fixed over time (which doesn't mean they always are -- far from it -- they're just the types of things we do see some QBs improve on sometimes).

He's different from Nick Mullens in that Nick Mullens' limitations will ALWAYS be limitations -- you can't really be coached out of a lack of arm talent. :lol:

That said, if Jimmy G ends up sucking, this is HOW he'll end up sucking :lol: :

Lack of accuracy in the deep outside thirds isn't a high volatility/small sample size thing, and over time is just a true limitation of his game. If that's true it allows defenses to compress throwing lanes and clog up the middle, which starts to take away his primary area of strength. And rather than developing a better feel in his decision tree about trying to make a tight throw versus going to the next step in his progression, he's just a gunslinger, and now he's gunslinging into tighter windows too. This is exacerbated by his really exceptional ability to throw off-platform, which ends up hurting him, as because of it he never does the work to get his upper and lower body in sync and to develop in that area (being able to throw off platform well is GREAT, but throwing off platform well still isn't as good being able to throw from a solid base decently).

So, the worst case scenario for him is that at the end of the day you've got a gunslinger who never learns to consistently throw from a solid base and who is missing more than he needs to in windows that have been compressed due to his limitations on some types of throws. With the other stuff he's good at you can still work with a QB like that, but it means you have to limit what you're doing offensively a whole ton to account for your QB's limitations. Shanahan absolutely CAN do that (we're seeing it with Mullens), but a weakness of HIS is that he is a bit of a Boy Genius type and comes off as pretty resentful when with his starting QB he HAS to do that (e.g. RGIII; resigning as OC of the Browns when the front office installed Johnny Manziel as the starter; Matt Ryan bristling at being Shanahan's remote control car on the field in their first season together).

Sorry for the long post. Just like with Wilson here, the webzone isn't a great place to try to have a nuanced discussion about the upsides and downsides of Jimmy G, so I've been bottling this one up for awhile. :lol: :2thumbs:

I, for one, thank you Popeye, Much appreciated.