Niner Report: That Was Pretty Bad

I'll spare you most of the gory details from Sunday's 41-0 thrashing at the hands of the Chefs. Great googlie-mooglie! HMB decided not to run the Niner Report and prediction on Friday in the fleeting hope that it would induce another victory like the one over the Rams, but instead the Niners did their best impression of the Raiders. It's hard to pinpoint just one area to be worried about because the entire team player terribly. The offensive line couldn't open a hole or keep the Cheifs' defenders--the Chiefs!--off of Alex Smith. Smith played like he did last year, missing open receivers everywhere, and making ill-advised throws into coverage. The defense? Well I think the fact that there is a rumor floating around that Nolan is going to fire the defensive coordinator speaks for itself. Nolan dismissed the rumor hastily, but the defense has struggled stopping legitimate offenses. It's pretty tough to put this all on Billy Davis because the defense really lacks playmakers. As a result, the chances that the Niners go defensive in next year's draft probably just increased exponentially.

Viewer discretion is advised: here is a report card from over the weekend.

Kevin Lynch suggests that Antonio Bryant speak his mind a little more. I don't know how much Lynch drank after the game, but I have no idea why you would ever want a player wearing #81 to ever speak up for the Niners. Ever. Again.

Basically what I think it comes down to is that this team will struggle to win games against teams with any semblance of a good, balanced offense. Against the Rams, the Niners were able to blitz the crap out of Marc Bulger and slow down the St. Louis passing game. This is probably due to the fact that the Rams were playing in only their second game learning a new offense, but so what? The Cardinals racked up 34 points in the opener against San Francisco, despite Kurt Warner's incompetence. The Eagles torched them for 38 points by barely breaking a sweat. So when the Niners go on the road against a somewhat good team--offensively or defensively--they stand little chance. They are just too young and inexperienced, and lack the natural talent to overcome those deficiencies. We'll just have to hope that they go away. At least the Raiders are coming to town.

Speaking of the aforementioned opponent, it should be a pretty ugly matchup. Unfortunately, Aaron Brooks will be missing the party. If you're looking for any type of silver lining, the Niners are favored for the first time all year. Sportsbook.com lists them as 3.5 point favorites as of posting time. We'll be back Friday with more (optimisitc) news and a prediction. Though HMB missed a prediction for the Chief game, we would have picked the result. But since we already used one mulligan, we can't use two, and we'll chalk it up as a N/A, leaving us at 3-0 for the season.