I’m not saying we don’t have the talent to beat the 9ers, because I think they’re beatable, and we definitely have the talent to get it done. But I think it will come down to scheme. In our first game against San Fran, we were still running the old, vanilla playbook, running Pollard up the middle, and calling pass plays straight from Kellen Moore’s playbook.
The one TD we scored, came from motioning Turpin and allowing him to get downfield.
After that game, I came to the conclusion that McCarthy was lost, and in over his head. In fact, I think that actually was the case at that point in time. Then, we were told McCarthy stayed late at the office and had the assistant coaches stay as well, so they could figure out how to fix the offense.
Since that loss, everything has gotten better for the offense, including our red zone efficiency. And Dak is playing at a consistently high level. He even played well in the loss to Sillydelphia. We should have won that game.
Anyway, for us to win beat San Fran, it’ll have to come down to creativity and scheme, especially on offense. I’m hoping our first outing against San Fran was a fluke and that our coaches were holding back and not showing their cards to San Fran.
I’ve been saying it since last year, motion, motion, motion. We have the personnel to move our players around pre-snap in order to confuse the defense, or make them hesitate about their assignment. San Fran’s defense matches up well against the Cowboys offense. We’re not likely to beat them with our old philosophy where they know what we’re running and just have to stop it.
We need to keep them guessing and not allow them to get into a rhythm. The same ole plays, beginning the game by running our back into the A and B gaps likely will not work. We need to stay creative, run counters, reverses, WRs out of the backfield, roll Dak out, toss it, pitch it, and most importantly motion, motion, motion. If we can do that, we have as good of a chance as anyone to beat San Fran.
I know, I know. We need to beat Philly this week. I think we can, and I think it’ll come down to some of the same things I’m mentioning about San Fran. I think we match up better against Philly but both teams are well-suited opponents as far as personnel.
The most important thing this week should be keeping our scheme as unpredictable and productive as possible. We can’t let them know what we’re running and say, now you have to stop us. We need to beat them with scheme, and passing to set up the run.
