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RFL
Guys, I watched the condensed version of the SF game last night. Obviously, a lot of good stuff. And some glitchy things. We know about the offense. But the defense?
Well, here's what I saw, so you can get out the pitchforks right now.
The big plays--sacks and takeaways--were great!
But, on the other plays … uh, not so much.
I saw us giving up the run in big seams again. Their run totals were limited because of the way the game went. But I did not see us stuffing them.
And the passing game? Sorry, not great. Now, a lot of it was Shanahan scheming guys open. There were a LOT of receivers running through acres of space. Beathard was mediocre at hitting them, but a really good QB would have hurt us.
Sorry to say that I am just not sure about this defense. It's capable of big plays, but reliance on those makes a defense very vulnerable. I really wish we were a consistently solid defense, but I am not seeing it. I think those CB injuries really hurt us.
SF went into the game a top 5 team in terms of yards per carry. In fact right now they're third.
Against the Rams they got appx. 4.46 a carry. If it were 7 games, on defense that would rank 20th.
Given that it is true that the Rams achilles heel on defense is a team that can both run and pass the whole game the way Seattle did.
MOSTLY what has has happened instead is that the other team has to abandon the run to keep up. Not that the Rams have regularly mastered the YPC and kept teams's running production down.
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