Dochira
What else is new? Is it just me or does Rattay look really flustered under pressure? I know all quarterbacks get rushed eventually, but with Rattay.....I don't know. I could blame the O line for not giving him protection...
Boy oh Boy! With the team in this condition... there's plenty of blame to go around.
1) Ownership. The York's, who took over the team from Eddie were never passionate about owning a football team. They took it over as a business. Their primary goal is to make a profit off it, rather than to win championships.
2) The Front Office. I'm not as hard on Terry Donahue as most Niner fans, simply because his job, unlike most GM's in the league, is to make the team toe the bottom line. To show a profit. Rather than win a Championship.
3) The Coaching staff. When York had his hissy fit and fired Mariucci, he caught Walsh and Donahue flat footed. They weren't prepared with a short list of guys they wanted in there as the new head coach.
One of Walsh's keys to managing a football team was to always have the replacement in the wings, before firing somebody.
The field of coaches available to take the job was limited, Erickson was an old pal of Donahue's. Erickson, who didn't have a great track record was willing to take the job.
Erickson was a below .500 HC for four years at Seattle. And though he won a couple of Championships in college, at Miami, a closer look shows that he won his first with a team Jimmy Johnson put together. And after his second, he skipped town just before the NCAA came in and shut the whole Miami program down because of all the recruiting violations, and court cases the Miami players were involved in.
Erickson is a pretty good college football man. He's not a great, or even a good NFL Head Coach.
On Rattay looking flustered...
It all starts on the offensive line. And the Niners have one of the worst Offensive Lines in the NFL.
Newberry, our best lineman is out for the year. (Even if he comes back for the last couple of weeks it won't make much of a difference because he won't be healthy.)
For years, the team tried to build the line on the cheap, going after 7th rounders and inexpensive Free Agents, thinking they could be coached up. Well, we no longer have Bobb McKittrick as our OL coach, and we no longer have Pat Morris as our OL coach. So there's trouble.
We took Kwame Harris as a first round choice out of Stanford to play Left Tackle. The only problem was... Harris had never played Left Tackle in college. He's not good at it. He was drafted because of his height, weight, and 40 time. Not because he was a dominant player in college. That's trouble.
We took Smiley in the second round last year. Good pick! But they threw him to the wolves, starting him way too soon. He doesn't have a clue what's going on out there. And because of the injury, he doesn't have Newberry to help him out. Even the best of O-Linemen need two or three years as backups before they can walk in and start. Not good.
The result? Rattay, Dorsey, Pickett... put in anyone you want. They'll get their brains beat out. If Rattay looked flustered, I think he had every right to. He hasn't been getting anywhere close to the kind of protection an NFL QB needs. Especially since Rattay isn't a burner like Mike Vick.
In fact, none of our QBs are particularly mobile, which is funny considering the state of our O-line.
Then came the final piece of the puzzle. The big contract going to Kevan
"Dead Money" Barlow.
That was in the tradition of signing J.J. Stokes to a huge contract extension after he'd already proven to be a bust, and making Jeff
"Hippity" Garcia the second highest paid player in the NFL, after he'd proven to be little more than a side show attraction.
There's just so much blame to go around here.
And oh yeah... then there's the defense. Peterson is out... Sapoaga never got on the field, and we're working on starting our 4th string corners?
Right now, as fans, I think the least of our worries is having Rattay in there as the starter.
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