Feel Free To End This Now

That's not what I want, of course, but a loss today would officially kill this season. I can't even begin to describe what I saw last week. That's how bad it was. The defense let the Cardinals march down the field and never really recovered. Sure, you can say they gave the offense the ball for three straight series only down by two. That's a valid point. The opposite of complimentary football was what we saw out there on Sunday. When the defense held, even without getting a sack, the offense sputtered.

After the opening drive, you saw the vision for McDaniel's offense. Yes, there seemed to be a lot of RPO stuff, but Herbert had a clean pocket and was spreading the ball. He was locked into Ladd, but it was working. Hampton was running well, but it seemed like they no longer trusted him after the fumble. They force a long field goal and get a miss off the upright. They drive down the field and Harris gets blocked into him. No one seemed realize the ball was on the ground and momentum completely shifted.

You could argue that momentum really shifted with the 4th down sack. Maybe because I have seen 4th down calls not work out well for us of late and because I am used to Harbaugh kicking, I would have settled for a 10-10 tie. There was no reason for Pipkins to be in there at all. The rotation is a stupid idea and going back to Harbaugh's comment that Pipkins was one of the 5 best linemen this summer even before our new center went out for the year was alarming. He got blown up and the play had no chance.

My biggest concern was the lack of run blocking. I saw a stat that the majority of the rush yardage was after contact. Hampton is the only guy capable of breaking tackles and they really shied away from him after the fumble. They could not open up any holes. We haven't had a 1,000 yard rusher since Melvin Gordon and I know McDaniel (and the guys he brought in) were supposed to finally fix that. I don't know who's fault the blocked punt was, but it seemed like it was due to happen. I believe the last one was vs the Jets but I might be wrong. But we weren't scoring and were losing the field position battle. It felt like the Cardinals were going to bring down the hammer in some way. That led to the McBride touchdown and we couldn't cover him all day. I saw the clip of him spitting twice in our end zone to fire himself up after the game. It's going to be a lot of Traitors fans in there today, so I'd love the see the Bolts shut them up. If they lose this game, going to Buffalo won't matter.

All throughout the summer, McDaniel talked about how hungry this team was. They haven't won shit and Harbaugh has gotten back to where people have enough expectations from the outside for them that they call us failures when they lose. They didn't look hungry, especially on defense. The players all say they love O'Leary, but played like shit for him. I know the "we wasted Minter with Roman narrative" is getting louder. We know that none of our corners are real shutdown guys. Donte Jackson had a great season last year but looked shockingly mortal on Sunday. The same goes for Heeb and Hart. I know it's one week but my personal concern that Hortiz cares more for depth than talent popped into my brain more than once. With our injury history, I get why depth is so important. But if all the guys who constitute that depth suck, where are we really gonna go? For one week, against a banged up and subpar (supposedly) line, Mack, Derwin, and Tuli didn't do shit.

So now it's onto the Raiders. With other teams, you'd say its a get right week, blah blah. We can clean all that up, blah, blah. This team needs to show up in a big way. I don't care how or by how much, they have to win. Last week, you saw Herbo get itchy with that throw to Davis. Davis isn't fast, is often hurt, and can't really return. Of course, KLS can't return kicks because he is also always hurt. But it was an awful play and there is no way Davis ever catches that. Matt "Money" Smith suggested that Herbert could throw a go ball to Johnston, but I'm yet to see him get a contested catch when it matters. Harris I'd hoped would have leap frogged him on the depth chart. But I think he made a ton of blocking mistakes Sunday, beyond being pushed into Hampton. It's gutty for Ladd to go today, but we seem to be lost without him. The second half of the game looked like a playoff contest from the last two years. We've scored ONE TOUCHDOWN over those two games. That's crazy. The tight ends were working and then McDaniel went away from it, like he did Hampton. Herbert cannot be playing hero ball. No one in the NFL can. Guys need the quick game, a running attack, and tight ends who are weapons.

It's 15 minutes till kickoff. Gotta run. Have an easy fast for those of the faith.

Time to Bolt up or shut up

JIC,

RLW