49ers OC claims he didn't use real offense during 42-13 loss

Shadowhawk":1ku6dfop said:

QuickLightning' said:

Here's your stats to back up the point.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap100000 ... -formation

They ran 9% of their plays from the Pistol in Seattle and only 2 snaps against Arizona... that figure jumped up to 45.3 in Green Bay and 54.9% in Atlanta. I think it is pretty obvious looking at those numbers they were trying to set Green Bay up to game plan for a more generic offense.

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Nope, sorry. Because the Yahoo article is making the claim that Roman began to scale back the playbook to set up potential playoff teams AFTER the New England game. But you have made the case in multiple posts on this thread that they started limiting their use of the pistol IN the New England game:

QuickLightning' said:

Up to 30.9% of the plays, according to the article. Peaking in week 14 against Miami then dropping back down for NE, Seattle and Arizona respectively as they approached the playoffs.

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QuickLightning' said:

I was reading earlier (after the divisional round of the playoffs) that they ran something like 10% of their plays from the pistol in the Seattle, New England and Arizona games

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So if they stopped using the pistol as much in New England but didn't start "scaling back the playbook" until Seattle, it follows that not using the pistol as much isn't proof that that were "scaling back the playbook." And as I said in my first post on this thread, there are many reasons why San Francisco might not want to use the pistol in a particular game--defensive personnel, familiarity with mobile quarterbacks, etc. That doesn't mean they were scaling back the playbook, only that they were adjusting their gameplans for each specific opponent. And as many people on this thread have said multiple times, it would be beyond foolish for an offensive coordinator to start going to a vanilla offense when there was still a chance that they might not earn the first round bye or even win the division.

Look, you're going to believe this theory because it takes the sting out of an ugly loss. We're not going to believe it because we are of the opinion that Seattle's 42-13 victory meant a hell of a lot more than you want to admit. But answer me this: we've had dozens of 49er fans on this board offering every excuse imaginable for your team's loss. If it's so obvious that they dumbed down the playbook to rope-a-dope potential playoff teams, why is it that NOBODY thought to make that case before when they tried every other excuse you can think of?

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Marvin49":unk53d60 said:

None of this was because he was "shaken". Seattle fans like to say that it was, largely because they see their own QB as unshakable and would like to use it as a point of emphasis when comparing the two QBs.

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Marvin49":unk53d60 said:

Kaep doesn't get shaken. If you knew much about him, you'd understand that.

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Marvin49":bbr9v1tb said:

I guess, you know.....Harbaugh is such a jerk. When he isn't tossing dwarves he's skinning kittens. It would logically follow that his OC is a downright liar.

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Shadowhawk":2yjvco5o said:

Marvin49":2yjvco5o said:

None of this was because he was "shaken". Seattle fans like to say that it was, largely because they see their own QB as unshakable and would like to use it as a point of emphasis when comparing the two QBs.

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I find this accusation particularly amusing given how you started your very next paragraph:

Marvin49":2yjvco5o said:

Kaep doesn't get shaken. If you knew much about him, you'd understand that.

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Physician, heal thyself.

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Marvin49":10shxpnd said:

Who said they started scaling back the playbook in Seattle? I think they started in New England...and they won there.

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Except, of course, when he intentionally doesn't. In mid-December, after the Niners pulled out a 41-34 victory over the New England Patriots to improve to 10-3-1, Roman consciously decided to dial back the offense in order to keep potential playoff opponents off balance.

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Marvin49":1nh1c6h1 said:

In my post I said that the Seahawks were good. Never argued otherwise.

The "point" I was making that you call nonexistant was simply that the 43-13 win wasn't everything you guys seem to think it is. Do you really think that if they played again the score would be the same? Do you really think that the factors I listed played no role whatsoever in the outcome of the game? If you do then I feel sorry for you. You are in for a rude awakening.

The Niners and Seahawks are gonna battle this year in a big way. Its gonna be a tough division. To read the posts on this site tho you'd think it was a forgone conclusion that the Seahawks are the better team. All you have to do is look at the score of that last game. That proves everything, right?

The problem is that it doesn't. It proves nothing. You still lost the division. You are still 1-3 vs Harbaugh. You still only split the division series. You were still 3-5 on the road. You still lost to the team the Niners eliminated in the playoffs.

The problem with annoining yourself the king in the offseason is that very often it doesn't happen in the REGULAR season.

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Shadowhawk":3tfj881s said:

Marvin49":3tfj881s said:

Who said they started scaling back the playbook in Seattle? I think they started in New England...and they won there.

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From the Yahoo article that started this thread (emphasis mine):

Except, of course, when he intentionally doesn't. In mid-December, after the Niners pulled out a 41-34 victory over the New England Patriots to improve to 10-3-1, Roman consciously decided to dial back the offense in order to keep potential playoff opponents off balance.

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http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl--o...victim-of-his--niners--success-022509392.html

Who said they started scaling back the playbook in Seattle? Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports did.

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"My post-New England mindset was to hold back and try to save things for the playoffs," Roman says.

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Shadowhawk":2wr73j5d said:

Marvin49":2wr73j5d said:

Who said they started scaling back the playbook in Seattle? I think they started in New England...and they won there.

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From the Yahoo article that started this thread (emphasis mine):

Except, of course, when he intentionally doesn't. In mid-December, after the Niners pulled out a 41-34 victory over the New England Patriots to improve to 10-3-1, Roman consciously decided to dial back the offense in order to keep potential playoff opponents off balance.

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http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl--o...victim-of-his--niners--success-022509392.html

Who said they started scaling back the playbook in Seattle? Michael Silver of Yahoo Sports did.

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Marvin49":1tol1evg said:

uh...nothing wrong with what I said. You just don't like it because you want to believe that Wilson can't be shaken and Kaep can.

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Scottemojo":3izslp1m said:

Marvin, I am sure you are well versed in all things Niner, though I have probably watched all their games twice myself. However, you appear to know damn near nothing about the rest of the NFL, like most Niner fans we see here.

I personally think Roman is pretty smart. So smart that he watches how other teams play against pistol looks and tailors his game plan quite well. The Patriots have a pretty effective scheme against the pistol, having seen it twice the year before with Tebow, and absolutely killing it the second time they saw it. Seattle held Cam Newton to three offensive points earlier in 2012 and in the few looks in the first half Roman did use it, we killed the look. Makes sense, Seattle practices against it every day. As it turns out, no pistol QB scored more than 14 on us last year in three games. Besides, the Niners were too far behind to pose a serious run threat from any look, so why use the Pistol? The Cards have pretty good edge speed too, and in week 17 it makes perfect sense to not show a lot of what you have planned in two more weeks against a team unlikely to put up more than 20 (the Cards). But if you think Kaep's production against the Pack has anything to do with not showing them plays, you are daft. The Pack couldn't put a finger on him, only 4 of his yards were after contact. Sometimes coordinators just shit the bed by not being ready or in Capers case, lining up in 4 and 5 man man coverage looks, which just made QB runs easy. In Kaepernicks first game vs the Bears, same thing, a defensive coordinator very unprepared for Kaepernick.

But Roman isn't so smart that he didn't get his car towed when hanging with his buddy Silver.

See Marvin, how it's done? There were true facts about 4 teams besides the Niners and Hawks in my post. Go drop the 30 bucks or so on a rewind package, and try to watch games not involving your Niners. You just might become an NFL fan instead of a blind homer.

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Shadowhawk":s89vh1mq said:

Marvin49":s89vh1mq said:

uh...nothing wrong with what I said. You just don't like it because you want to believe that Wilson can't be shaken and Kaep can.

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Hate to break it to you, Marv, but only one person on this thread has made the claim that his team's quarterback can't be shaken. Here's a hint: it wasn't me.

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JSeahawks":1blqdexs said:

Marvin is a football genius. It is known.

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Teqneek":3suba3nc said:

The statement doesnt even make sense... They were still in a fight for the division.. and the season only had 3 games left. What were teams going to pick up against the Seahawks they hadnt the other 13 games? Besides like someone else said. What does our offense scoring 42 points have to do with their inept attempt?

Their real offense with Alex Smith scores 13 at home.. their non real offense with Kaep can barely get a TD against our backups? Doesnt sound to promising for his game plan lol

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Marvin49":26203qcf said:

Oh. LOL. Is that "all that matters"?

That is kinda MY entire point. One game means nothing. The game got out of hand early. Cudos to the Seahawks for the win.

It doesn't mean that the Seahawks are hands down the better team. It means that they were the better team ON THAT DAY.

I mentioned the GB games, Atlanta...all of that not to say "we beat them, we're better. My entire point was that its Any Given Sunday.

If Kaep doesn't throw that wild pitch in St. Louis, the Niners would have won by 1.5 games. If David Akers can hit just 1 freakin field goal, it would have been another game.

I'm sure as Seattle fans you can see many similar circumstances in your games.

All I have ever been saying is that the 42-13 result you guys have been harping on means far less than you want it to.

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Giedi":wd5kczws said:

Teqneek":wd5kczws said:

The statement doesnt even make sense... They were still in a fight for the division.. and the season only had 3 games left. What were teams going to pick up against the Seahawks they hadnt the other 13 games? Besides like someone else said. What does our offense scoring 42 points have to do with their inept attempt?

Their real offense with Alex Smith scores 13 at home.. their non real offense with Kaep can barely get a TD against our backups? Doesnt sound to promising for his game plan lol

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Wasn't at least 7 of those 42 scored by the special teams?

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razor150":1gjhii3g said:

Marvin49":1gjhii3g said:

Oh. LOL. Is that "all that matters"?

That is kinda MY entire point. One game means nothing. The game got out of hand early. Cudos to the Seahawks for the win.

It doesn't mean that the Seahawks are hands down the better team. It means that they were the better team ON THAT DAY.

I mentioned the GB games, Atlanta...all of that not to say "we beat them, we're better. My entire point was that its Any Given Sunday.

If Kaep doesn't throw that wild pitch in St. Louis, the Niners would have won by 1.5 games. If David Akers can hit just 1 freakin field goal, it would have been another game.

I'm sure as Seattle fans you can see many similar circumstances in your games.

All I have ever been saying is that the 42-13 result you guys have been harping on means far less than you want it to.

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I said right in my post this game doesn't mean a divisional shift, only that after this coming season it could be seen as one. At the moment we really don't know what it means for the coming season. However the game does mean something no matter how much you try and dismiss it. Close games can go either way, with their being plenty of what ifs, but blowouts not so much. I am sorry good teams don't often get taken to the woodshed like that when they are evenly matched or better then their opponent. Sure it could have been a game that got out of hand quickly and the 49ers weren't able to recover from it (like they did against the Falcons and Ravens) or it could mean they were just plain outmatched. At the very minimum it has destroyed any mental edge the 49ers had over the Seahawks up to that point. My guess is that the game means something in between the things getting out of hand and just being outmatched. I personally expect a hard fought series this year, as I said earlier I don't expect a sweep. I fully expect both teams will win their home game.

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Shadowhawk":2oyqpkl2 said:

Marvin49":2oyqpkl2 said:

Shadowhawk":2oyqpkl2 said:

Green Bay gameplanned like they thought Alex Smith was still starting. Just because their coaching staff utterly failed to do their job, it doesn't constitute proof that this was all some master plan of San Francisco's to hide their playoff schemes over the last few weeks of the season.

To buy this argument you have to believe that SF--a team that, as Marvin so thoroughly pointed out, was suffering injuries to key players and exhausted after two straight road games--was willing to risk losing out on a badly-needed first round bye and even the chance to host a playoff game just to keep their cards close to the vest. Not buying it.

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You not buying it doesn't make it less true.

I realize you guys don't pay as much attention to the 49ers, interviews with players and coaches and the like (I wouldn't expect you to), but its pretty common knowledge that the 49ers spent alot of time in the off week before the Packer game on installing a number of permiations of the Pistol and read-option. The offense they ran in Seattle was vanilla. That doesn't mean that they didn't try to win. It doesn't mean that they weren't throwing deep.

It also doesn't mean that the score would have been any different had they NOT been running a vanilla O. It just means that they kept some things in reserve for later games.

BTW...this isn't the first time they have done this. He often roles out exotic plays and then goes vanilla another week. He'll throw to a DT one week do nothing close to that the next.

This strategy worked against GB. They had no idea what was coming. It clearly DIDN'T work in Seattle. Had it cost them the division it would have been a huge mistake. Thankfully, it didn't and they surprised the hell out of GB. I just remember the stunned look on Clay Mattews face after the game saying that they hadn't seen any of that stuff on tape.

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You haven't proven that it is true. If you are correct that Roman came up with some new tricks for the Packers game, good for him. But the Yahoo article that launched this thread wasn't talking about Roman's game plan for the Packers game, it was making the claim A) that he dialed back the playbook in the last two games of the season and B) did it to keep from showing his hand to potential playoff teams. Not the same thing; for all we know, Roman sat down after the regular season and said, "the usual stuff isn't working. I need to try something new." All you have proved is that he tried some new things in the playoffs. You haven't proven that he ran a "vanilla O" to end the regular season. And the reason why I am skeptical that he did is because that would be a very foolish thing to do with a division title and a first-round bye up for grabs.

You're right that I don't pay as much attention to the 49ers as you do, but I have been a Seahawks season ticket holder for 14 years, and I can honestly say I have never seen a quarterback look so rattled and shaken as Kaepernick looked last December. I don't say it to slam him--I expect he will put together a much better game in Seattle this season--but he looked completely lost out there. What you call a vanilla gameplan, I call the result of a quarterback who, for that game at least, was completely overmatched.

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