Questionable Defensive Approach?

I thought Maxwell and Lane played really good (both in man and zone), but what really hurt us, was that we couldn't play man like we could if we had Thurmond and Browner playing. When we played the 49ers week 2, we played more man coverage which allowed us to spy the quarterback more easily (Kaepernick hurt us running today). I'm not saying Maxwell and Lane didn't play good (Maxwell: 1 pass defensed, 1 interception Lane: 3 passes defensed), becaused they did, but they don't match up anywhere as close to as well as Browner and Thurmond do man to man against those 49ers WR's. If we could've played more man, we would've stopped the run much better. I would've liked to see how Kaepernick would've done if we went man coverage and tried to stop the run better. It may just be me, but we we're stopping the run pretty well during couse of the game, until that last run by Gore (oh my, that sucked). If we would've had Browner and or Thurmond, I have no doubt in my mind (assuming we play quite a bit more man coverage) we'd win this game. Is anyone confused how we allowed 7 points to Drew Brees, then 19 to Kaepernick (Yeah I know, it was a road game). It's because we match up good with teams that want to pass to set up the run, We seem to do great against the teams that we can play man to man with. If we played a lot more man, it would've truly tested Kaepernick's abilty to beat us with his arm (which if he had to do, I'm extremely confident he would've been incapable of doing).


Offensively: Clean it up (Get Percy back!!!!) and we'll be fine. I think of all teams we'll play (regardless if the have he best defense or not) they present the best challenges to our offense. Credit to there defense, they were really tough today.

Disappointing special teams performance overall

Just my thoughts

Our defense provided several memorable stops and a turnover. The difference was that we couldn't capitalize on them when we needed to. We really need Percy as much if not more than Ninners need Crabs. Our power run game also missed an extra dimension (speed) be it RW keeper on option read or a threat like Harvin in the backfield. Just my opinion.