|
|
|
|
|
Niners offense has problems
By David Zizmor October 3, 2007 |
||
|
|
|||
|
The Alex Smith injury comes nothing of a surprise the way the San Francisco 49ers have been playing so far this season. Maybe having a couple of weeks to reflect on how the team is going will help Smith get back in the groove when he returns, in a couple of weeks. Also not having Trent Dilfer in there will shake things up just enough as the Niners would be in better shape when Smith comes back. Smith will get three weeks off with the injury to recover including the bye-week which is coming up after the Niners game with the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday. It isn’t a surprise that Smith got hurt. The biggest thing you might notice each week is the offensive line has been bad, and that is why Smith was injured in the first play of game. It was a missed assignment on the offensive line that led to Seattle’s Rocky Bernard, the Seahawks humongous defensive lineman, to run right up the middle and practically sitting on Smith. When you get a player that big falling on top of a quarterback, injuries are always a possibility and this is what happened to Smith as he separated his shoulder and he was kind of lucky it wasn't any worse than what it is. The Niners are lucky that Smith is only out for a couple of weeks. What do the Niners have to gain? They are playing horribly and give credit to the team the defense has held this team together right now because the offense is looking as bad as the Raiders offense last year. The Raiders offense last year was horrendous and its really coming down to the offensive line because this has nothing to do with Frank Gore. Gore hasn't changed and he's still a really young guy and he looks like he has been running as hard as he's been running, but he looks like doesn't have a faith in the offensive line. Gore is not able to break through he had lots of space last year that was the year the 49ers offensive line were able to open up huge holes for him. This year no such luck part of that is because teams know about Gore and they're planning for him and they plan on putting a lot of guys in the box to stop him but at the same time the offensive line is not helping him at all. He's getting hit right at the line in the back field and when it really comes down to it your not moving forward your going backwards and you look at Gore's statistics this year they are a far cry from what they were last year. The passing game has suffered the same way the offensive line isn't pass blocking well. Just like they're not run blocking for Gore, they're not pass blocking for Smith and when Smith drops back and has two seconds to throw the ball, because someone is in his face or hitting him it doesn't matter if he's Steve Young or Joe Montana he's not going to make plays. You can't make plays when you don't have time to throw the ball. Look at the Patriots playing the Bengals last Monday night Brady had all the time in the world to throw the ball and Brady had all the time in the world to throw the ball in each and every ball game and as a result he's racking up 300 yard gains like they're going out of style. If you have a good offensive line you can do anything in this game we've seen that time and time again and right now the Niners offensive line looks horrible as a result we can't tell anything about the 49ers because they're skill positions might be okay. Their wide receivers are still lacking, but Gore is still a Pro Bowl caliber running back and Vernon Davis when he's healthy is one of the better receiving tight ends when given a chance . But Smith doesn't have anytime to throw him the ball and were never going to know because there's no chance they're never going to get the ball. Until this offensive line improves itself and who knows when it will there's going to be a lot of problems and the Niners don't know if this is a simply a matter of bad coaching if it's a change in the coaching from last year and "Norv Turner just don't leave me" because that has something to do with it. Maybe it’s a matter of Larry Allen and Jonas Jennings being a year older and some of the other guys on the line like David Baas and some of those guys being young and inexperienced and nobody really meshing together. What it all comes down to the offensive line is not getting it done as a result the Niners offensive as a whole stink. They will continue to stink until they do something to fix it and hopefully in a couple weeks when they have a bye. The Niners will be able to sit down and take an extended look at the tape and figure out what they're doing wrong and fix it but until then the Niners are coming up against the Ravens and that's going to be a tall order for Dilfer and the offensive line that's not doing well. Baltimore has a active front seven and those kind of guys aren't the ones you want to face when you have a bad offensive line. David Zizmor covers 49ers football each week and co-hosts Sportstalk on 1690 KFSG Sacramento. |
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||