49ers and Free Agency in 2012 Part 1

Coming off a huge Monday night win against Pittsburgh there is no better time for me to make bold statements about what the 49ers should do during the free agency period next season. Right now moral is high and Niner Nation is floating on cloud nine, the last thing Niners fans want to do is talk about who needs to go and who should be acquired. But, I will.


Bold move #1


The Niners pass defense is their weakest link on that side of the ball, they rank 21st in the NFL right now giving up 239.6yds per game. They do rank #2 in INT's with 21 and #1 in Fumble Recoveries with 14, over-all ranking #1 in take-aways with 35. Starters Carlos Rogers and Tarell Brown have been good in coverage but have had their moments of breaking down. To be fair it is safe to say Rogers is on his way to the Pro-Bowl, it's Brown that really has been more suspect throughout the season. Chris Culliver has been a nice surprise as the nickel DB and seems to have the upside to contribute for years to come. Shawntee Spencer, the former starting DB for the past few years has seen little to no action this year and probably will be cut loose in the off season. With this group, as is, they are struggling to stay up to par with the front 7 of the defense that is dominating the league right now, even without Patrick Willis (Hamstring injury). So, what should the Niners do in the off-season to get better in the secondary?
Well, first resign Dashon Gholdson to a multi year deal. Right now he's tied for the team lead in INT's with 6 and looks more and more like the ball hawk he claims to be. And resign Carlos Rogers who is also a free agent and is the guy tied with Gholdson with 6 INT's.
However the bold move would be to sign Mario Williams as a free agent.
I can hear it now "what are you talking about? Mario Williams is a Linebacker/DE not a DB?" and to that I say "fret not." Look, everyone knows that the less time you give a QB to throw the less effective he will be. Right now Aldon Smith, who has an amazing 13 sacks (a new 49er rookie record), doesn't even start. If you play him even more next season and continue to have Justin Smith and Ray McDonald creating pressure from the DE spots and add in the pass rushing abilities of a Mario Williams QB's won't ever have time to pick apart our average secondary. The ability to get to the QB quicker and more frequently will automatically make our secondary better because of the small amount of time they will have to do their job. Could you imagine a defense where as a QB you come up to the line and you see the likes of A. Smith, J. Smith, R. McDonald, and M. Williams all lined up in front of you?! That would be scary.
The main problem here is that there are no "big name" DB's on the free-agent market in 2012 right now to make our secondary better. The top 3 DB's right now that will hit the market are Cortland Finnegan, Brent Grimes, and Terrell Thomas and I'm not shy to say that I don't know who the last 2 are. The Niners had a great draft class last year so there's the idea that you could draft a DB but let's face it, with where the Niners will be selecting in the 1st round next year (because of their dominating record) the DB's who can contribute right away will more than likely be gone already. Plus, I see interior offensive line being a bigger need in round 1 next year, but that's for another blog.
So basically the Niners should get better on one level by getting superior at another. Coming soon is Part 2 of this blog where I will make a prediction about a bold move the Niners should make on offense, and yes it has to do with the passing game...

Niners 9-1 and now I'm spoiled?

The 49ers beat the Arizona Cardinals today 23-7 and I'm not impressed.

Okay, okay, okay, I'm impressed. Actually very impressed. But, something has settled in. I can't quite describe it. It's something in between confidence and cockyness. Something probably close to how Packer fans have felt since February last year. This feeling is like muscle memory. For any Niners fans from the '80's and '90's you know what I'm talkin' about (cue "Lightning Crashes" by LIVE, which consequently was played before the pivotal Monday night game in the 1994 season that saw the Niners go on to win the Super Bowl). Remember when we used to EXPECT the Niners to win, and win BIG!?! Remember when a 7 point win felt like we failed? Well, suddenly, "I can feel it comin' back again..." that same ol' "why didn't we win by more?" feeling, and it feels good. Kinda.
Look, I love it that the Niners are considered the second best team in the NFL right now and that they've earned it! It's amazing that they now have a shot at winning 12-15 games! But have they spoiled me? Have I already forgotten the past 8 awful losing seasons? Have I suddenly forgot the pain and sorrow I've had over the past near decade that made me start to care more about fantasy football then my actual beloved Niners?
Basically the Niners beat the Cardinals today and I should be happy with that, and the 9-1 record they are now sporting, but I'm not. I'm old school. I remember greatness from the '80's and early '90's and I think this team has a chance to be great! Today they were not great. Period. This offense has got to tighten it up! Smith has got to start cutting down on the over-thrown balls and the WR's (I'm being nice because I'm mostly talking about Braylon Edwards) need to catch the ball when it's put on them.
What was that? You say "just be happy with the win?" Well, a couple weeks ago I was and now it's a couple weeks later and I'm starting to expect more improvement from the Niners. This team has major potential that hasn't been tapped yet. That game today should've been a 42-0 blow out! We'll watch in the coming weeks to see how they continue to flourish and according to the talent level I do have high expectations. Any true Niner fans know the feeling and what I'm talking about... and it feels good, for now.

Now for a prediction;
We get the Packers in the Play-offs and we win. We match up too well in our style of football (and I'm not getting that from Brian Billick)

Giants key in '11 will be the same in '12

Last season I kept telling whoever would listen that the SF Giants season was going to hinge on one player in light of the Buster Posey injury. My proclamation was that as he goes the Giants will go. They needed to fill the formula of having at least 3 hot bats leading the team to make a play-off run like they did in 2010. I was under the belief that with the pitching staff that the Giants were rolling out it was just going to take one spark and that spark needed to come from rookie 1B/LF Brandon Belt. The Giants needed that one push to get them in the play-offs, and we all know that had they gotten there anything could've happened, like in 2010.
So what happened?
It's easy to simply look at Brandon Belt and say I was right. He never lived up to expectations, he under performed and therefore the Giants went no where. His stats definitely would back that up; 9 HR, 18 RBI, .225 AVG, .306 OBP and 57 SO. Not a threatening line to say the least and definitely not a player sparking or leading a team to the play-offs.
So why would I hinge so much on one player? Especially a rookie? And, especially on a defending champion team? The answer is more simple than it may seem; there was no where else to look. Pablo Sandoval was essentially filling the Posey void in the line-up and later in the year Beltran was the gap filler for the void Huff had left (even though Huff hadn't gone anywhere and was actually still in the starting line-up). That left a need for one more bat, one more player to give the Giants a play-off birth. In 2010 it came from a multitude of players (I.e. Uribe, Renteria, Ross) but in 2011 we were waiting around for a third bat to emerge and it never did. Belt made the most sense because his ceiling is so high as a prospect; projected to be a power hitting first baseman who can hit for avg, run the bases and field at a gold glove level.
The problem was consistency, not just from Belt but from the Giants brass as well. Belt was sent back down to the minors 137 times (or so it felt like it), he was pulled back up to the big leagues only to ride the bench a lot and pinch hit occasionally, or enter as a defensive substitution. This inconsistency lead to a small sample size at the plate and early on that sample was not impressive. Consider this though; Belt only played in 63 games with 187 at-bats, hardly enough of a sample to know what he really can do on the big league level.
So why say that Belt is going to be the key once again this season for the Giants? Well, let's look. If we're sticking to the unwritten rule that you need 3 big bats to be a play-off team then we're back to square 2. Posey fills the Posey role (from 2010) and Sandoval fills the Huff role (from 2010 that, as of now, Beltran has vacated). So we need that third guy. I know that the Giants brass is hoping for a resurgence from Huff, and to be fair his career has a pattern of up-year, down-year, up-year, down-year and he's definitely coming off a "down-year," but there are no guarantees there. We could still get Beltran, sign a different free-agent or make another trade, or we can clench our fist tight, squint our eyes and pray hard that Melky will be all he can be. Or, we can put some faith into our best prospect and give him some consistent playing time and see what he can do. Down the stretch last year, when the Giants were already out of it, Belt started to come around in the power department hitting 4 HR's in last 11 games. If he can translate that power into a full season and sprinkle in all the other attributes he possesses then the Giants will have a YOUNG 3 headed monster in their line-up for opposing pitchers to deal with.
I know many are going to be worried about Posey's ankle and Pablo's weight (he's already packed on a ton of weight, just look at U.S. all star Taiwan pictures; not good) but I'm going to keep a close eye on our Belt and see where he can help lead us next year. If he pans out then we should be able to make a solid play-off run. Once in the play-offs nobody will want to face the Giants pitching, and if Belt, Posey, and Sandoval are hitting on the same cylinders then nobody will want to face our line-up either.

The Alex Smith Effect

After the 49ers beat the Detroit Lions on Oct. 16^th Head Coach Jim Harbaugh was seen giving a post-game speech in the locker room while standing a notch above his team, in the heat of the moment he claimed “There’s something remarkable going on here.” Harbaugh was right, there is something going on here, it does have to do with the 49ers, but the remarkable thing going on is not as apparent as even Harbaugh might think. The remarkable thing happening in the 49ers locker room is not their record, it’s Alex Smith. Okay, so no one expected the Niners to be 5-1 at this point in the year and be ranked in the top 5 among most sports power rankings across the land, so I will give credit where credit is due. But I want to focus on Alex Smith and the effect he is having and ultimately will have on, not only the 49ers, but the entire NFL. I will even take it a step further and talk about his effect on the sports world in general.

In 2005 the 49ers selected Alex Smith #1 overall in the NFL draft. As a Quarterback the pressure put on a #1 overall pick is immense, heck even being selected with just one of the 32 picks in first round can put immense pressure on a player. The Quarterback position takes on a little more pressure as a top pick because of the leadership role that player is expected to take. Most QB’s fail when being selected this high. Including 2005, the year Smith went #1, there have been 18 QB’s selected in Round one of the draft; of those 18, only 13 are starters. Let’s break that stat down even more. From 2005 to 2007 there was 8 QB’s selected in the 1^st Round, of those 8 only 3 are starters still (Smith, Aaron Rogers and Jay Cutler.) The other 5 QB’s are; Jason Campbell, who was starting but just suffered a season ending injury which prompted his team to trade for another former 1^st round QB Carson Palmer, all but ending his reign at the helm in Oakland. Vince Young, who showed flashes of his great college self in Tennessee was let go and waits for an opportunity behind Michael Vick in Philly. Matt Leinart, who I think, is still in Houston as a back-up but after I’m done writing this I’ll go down to the bars around USC in downtown and see if I can’t find him droning on about old college football stories. Jay Cutler (not one of the five), yes, he is starting but don’t forget he was traded by then new Broncos Head Coach Josh McDaniels (who now is no longer with the Broncos either), to Chicago. Jamarcus Russell, isn’t just gone from the NFL, he can’t even make an Arena Bowl squad, and has a hard time staying out of trouble with the law. And, Brady Quinn, who according to the last national article written about him, by Yahoo, is a nice boyfriend but still has little to no hope starting in the NFL. The point here is that the expectations were high for these young men and most of them have failed to reach anywhere near those goals. Aaron Rogers Super Bowl win last year is really the saving grace of the QB club since 2005, now enter Alex Smith.

In 7 season’s Smith’s career stats stand at %57.7 Comp., 10,489 Pass. Yards, 59 TD’s, 55 INT’s and a QB rating of 74.3, pedestrian numbers to say the least. The 49ers are 19-31 in those games that he started (sadly that includes the 5 wins and 1 loss from this year as well). Smith missed the whole 2008 season after being operated on. In 2010 the “other QB” the Niners were contemplating selecting in 2005 won the Super Bowl with Green Bay. Niner fans had given up on Smith and rightfully so (although some clowns run around the internet claiming to have known the rising of #11 was coming it was just taking some time, like 7 years of time). Most NFL clubs would have given up on Smith at this point. The interesting fact is that the 49ers didn’t. Why, you ask? Let’s look.

 It’s well documented that Alex Smith had 6 Offensive Coordinators in 6 years, this year Harbaugh brought in Greg Roman who now makes it 7 for 7 for Smith. For years people have mentioned this stat when evaluating Smith and it’s been his double edged sword all along. The constant change has never allowed Smith to get to really know one system. All 7 years have been a brand new learning curve. Therefore Smith has had trouble simply adapting to the NFL life because it’s a different beast every year. The saving grace was that since he was a former #1 over-all pick the new head coaches or their OC’s saw something in Smith, they believed that if he just had some “time” in “their” system he would start to come around, so, Smith stuck around. After last season it was a foregone conclusion that he wouldn’t be coming back but then Harbaugh got hired and what was one of the first things he did? Go play catch with Alex Smith. Now I can’t account for the exact reason why Smith is better this year except for some of the obvious facts that he isn’t trying to do too much, he is managing the game better, and Harbaugh has instilled an offense according to his personnel instead of instilling an offense and trying to make his personnel fit it (like trying to put a square block through a round hole).

The remarkable thing is that Smith should  be gone, he should be a back-up somewhere at this point, he should be mastering the art of clip-board holding and hand signals… but he isn’t. If Alex Smith ends up leading this team to a 12-4 season or better (this is an actual possibility) and takes his team to the play-offs and can make some noise there, then how does the NFL move forward in evaluating first round picks? Do they just chalk this up to a “special” situation?

In this day and age teams have gotten less and less patient with player development. Blame it on salary caps over-valuing the time you can spend on a player trying to get him productive (a whole other future blog post) or that we as a society have gotten used to our lives becoming so much faster and easier that it has translated into sports, we no longer have the patients to wait for an app to download or a first round pick to pan out if he doesn’t produce quickly. Case in point; take the QB’s from 2005 to 2007, only 2 of the 8 are still with their original team (Smith and Rogers). The 49ers alone have acquired 2 other first round picks from that 05’ draft WR Braylon Edwards and CB Carlos Rogers, they even picked up 1^st rounder’s from 06’ and 07’ (S Donte Whitner and WR Tedd Ginn Jr. via Free Agency and trade respectively). Players are being released after only two years’ experience now days, while their original teams assume they aren’t worth the roster spot anymore. Just two weeks ago Aaron Curry was dumped by the Seahawks for a 7^th round pick and a conditional 5^th rounder, gasp! Let me catch my breath… ahh, okay, better. Yes, Curry, the 4^th over-all pick two years ago, referred to as the “can’t miss pick,” missed… apparently. But now he’s in Oakland and starting to impress, imagine if the Seahawks had let him hang around as long as Smith? We still have to see if Curry can make anything of himself in the NFL but I think it’s safe to say that he hasn’t been given a fair shot yet.

And therein lies the problem. If Alex Smith does succeed after 6 seasons of total let down then where do we draw the line with other players? How will baseball teams start to look at their minor league prospects? (dare I bring up a Liriano-Nathan reference here?) How will basketball teams assess their young draft picks? (Dare I bring up any Warriors draft picks over the past 20 years they’ve shipped off too early?). Let’s face it, exec’s don’t want Smith to succeed, if he does then they might start hearing arguments that they need to give players more time to develop, that could force them to keep around players that they were wrong about and they could end up blowing millions trying to make the situation work.

In the mean time I am okay with NFL teams being impatient and the 49ers showing some patients because as Smith, Rogers, Whitner, Ginn and Edward’s have shown some of these players just needed a little time to make something “remarkable” happen.