Monthly Archives: March 2012

Why Alex Smith Will be Back with the 49ers Next Season

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March 19, 2012

So it’s decided. Peyton Manning’s going to Denver after all. For 49ers’ fans, who were casual observers of the Manning Saga until they were suddenly thrust into the middle of it Friday morning, there’s a feeling of loss today.

On the surface, nothing has changed. The team didn’t have a starting QB under contract before Friday, and they don’t today. Alex Smith was available Friday, and he still has not signed a contract.

Below the surface, however, it seems like everything is different. The 2011 49ers were a team built on chemistry and belief in each other, and it all started with Jim Harbaugh’s announcement that he would be just fine with Alex Smith as his quarterback. We all know how it turned out.

Now, we don’t know what to think. Is Harbaugh’s faith in Alex shaken? Does this mean they can’t work together anymore? What about Smith’s teammates, who took their cues about Alex from their coach? Does the team’s pursuit of Peyton Manning mean that they shouldn’t believe in #11?

No, no, and a resounding no.

Hey, I understand that part of the fun part of being a sports fan is putting yourself in the position of the people we watch and trying to imagine how they feel as events unfold. The problem is, unless you’ve actually been there, you have no idea what’s going on and how anybody feels. So before you make an analogy involving the 49ers’ pursuit of Manning and marital infidelity (an analogy I’ve heard on sports radio several times over the past few days), get a hold of yourself.

You heard it here first. Smith will be the quarterback for the 49ers this year. Not out of loyalty or some other emotional motivation; It’s simply the best fit for him. He’s played in a lot of systems for a lot of coordinators over the years, and for him to get his panties in a bunch and leave the team over their interest in a future Hall-of-Famer would be all kinds of stupid. I know there are still plenty of people who don’t believe Smith can take this team to the Super Bowl, but I never heard any of them say that the reason was that he was stupid.

From the 49ers standpoint, it makes just as much sense. Kaepernick is not ready, and nobody else is available to them who projects to win more games than Smith, now that Manning is on his way to Denver.

The irony is that Smith’s detractors will have to do two things: 1) Be impressed that the 49ers tried to upgrade the position, and 2) welcome Smith back as the best option for the team for next season. It actually removes some of the pressure on him to make up for what many people feel was a sub-par performance in the NFC Championship game last year.

Smith was wise to go to Miami and take the temperature down there. Had Manning signed with the 49ers, the Dolphins were really going to be his only option if he wanted to remain a starter.His visit there does not mean that his feelings were hurt to the point that he wouldn’t come back to the ‘Niners, it just meant that he was doing his due diligence, which, again, is a sign of his intelligence.

The 49ers kicked the tires on Peyton Manning. I think they would have gotten him if they weren’t up against  a desperate man, but John Elway was not going to lose out on his only chance to get out from under Tim Tebow. If you can blame the 49ers for anything, it was not seeing that coming. They could have saved themselves some time and trouble, but it will not cost them Alex Smith.

 

Eli: Mr Clutch? Try Mr. Lucky

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Written February 8th, 2012

As is often the case, I feel the need to start this column with a disclaimer: I have nothing against Eli Manning or the New York Giants. I actually pulled for them in their first Super Bowl win four years ago, and watched this year’s game as an interested, but unbiased, observer (let’s face it, unless you’re from New England, the Patriots are pretty hard to root for).

So the viewpoint I bring to you today, while certainly a minority one, is not one developed in resentment over a game result, but one that started in my head watching the Giants beat the Packers three weeks ago, the 49ers two weeks ago, and the Patriots in the Super Bowl last night.

I have never seen a luckier big-game quarterback than Eli Manning.

I’ll go into specific plays in a moment, plays that kept the Giants’ run to the title alive that Eli had nothing (or very little) to do with, but first, I need to address the “Eli is a Hall of Fame Lock” meme that has taken hold in the sports media after SB46.

Manning’s career regular season record is 69-50. His playoff record is 8-3, but all eight of those wins have come in the Giants’ two Super Bowl runs. The Giants have been “one-and-done” three times in Manning’s seven-year career, and missed the playoffs entirely twice. In one of those seasons, the Giants made the playoffs despite being 8-8, and in the other two, had home-field advantage and still lost their only game.

Manning has the distinction of quarterbacking the Super Bowl champions with the two worst winning percentages, 10-6 in 2007 and 9-7 this year.

Not exactly Hall of Fame stuff, in my opinion, but I’ll tip my hat to him, he’s got something special going for him. Let’s examine how these two Super Bowl Championships came to be.

I’m going to just give one example of Manning’s luck from the 2007 season, but it’s a good one. Guy catches a game-changing pass on the top of his helmet. Yes, Eli made a nice play to evade the rush, and got the ball down there, but David Tyree, or any other receiver, makes that play “zero times out of a hundred.” Chris Collinsworth wasn’t doing that game, but that’s what he would have said.

That was the defining play of that game, and of that season, and for the quarterback, it was sheer luck that it worked out that way. If that pass falls incomplete, which by all rights it should have, Manning, obviously, is neither the winning QB nor the MVP.

This season, I started paying attention to the Giants’ luck in their divisional final game against Green Bay. The New York Times, however, was kind enough to write a story before last nights’ game listing a few regular-season breaks that went the Giants way and kept the playoff fires burning.

In Green Bay, the Giants benefited first from Packers’ coach Mike McCarthy’s controversial decision to rest his starters in the final regular season game, which, combined with the bye week, gave them three weeks between meaningful snaps. The Packers, who also suffered a terrible personal loss with the death of the son of OC Joe Philbin, never got in synch, and QB Aaron Rogers saw his receivers drop six very catchable balls that could have helped his cause. The game turned on a Hail Mary play at the end of the first half that seemed to take Green Bay by surprise, despite the fact that they took a timeout prior to the play. They didn’t have enough players in the end zone when the ball came down, and as a result went into halftime trailing 20-10 instead of 13-10.

Did Manning play well? Of course! He moved the ball against Green Bay’s defense at will in the second half, and kept the ball out of Rogers’ hands. Were the Giants very lucky that the Packers, who flirted with perfection until late in the regular season, picked that day to be decidedly imperfect? Yes, they were.

That luck held in San Francisco. Everyone remembers the Kyle Williams muff (unforced error) and fumble (great special teams play, Manning was on the sidelines) that turned the game around, but I think the two best examples of Manning’s not being worthy of the “Mr Clutch” label were two other fourth-quarter plays.

Eli threw two balls that not one, but two defenders had legit shots to intercept. As an added bonus for him, the first of those two plays knocked out CB Tarell Brown, and it was Brown’s replacement who was exploited for the Giants’ go-ahead TD. That score came just two snaps after the second of these throws, when Carlos Rogers and Dashon Goldson (who was also the one who collided with Brown earlier) interfered with each other’s attempt to make the pickoff.

In neither case did Manning’s intended receiver have any chance to catch the ball. If there had been only one defender present, there would have either been an interception or a drop. Either of those outcomes are acceptable, as the teams each get what they “deserve.” Interception drops happen all the time, and when they do, the defense suffers as it should.

When, however, the ball hits the turf not as a result of a defender making a bad play, but because the pass was so poorly thrown that two defenders had a shot to intercept it, then the QB is one lucky son-of-a-gun, and to have it happen twice in one quarter with the Super Bowl on the line puts a guy into lotto-winner territory.

Were the Giants lucky to win the Super Bowl? I say yes. Again, Eli stood on the sidelines and watched an opposing offense drop pass after pass. When the Patriots had a chance to put the game away in the fourth quarter, Wes Welker dropped a pass that would have kept that drive alive. When Brady got the ball back unexpectedly with a chance to win the game, his first two passes were both dropped. The Giants fumbled three times, with one being nullified by a penalty and the other two bouncing right to teammates.

I’m not saying that Eli Manning doesn’t deserve to be in the Hall of Fame ever. I’m just saying that his first seven years have been marked by inconsistency, and that his two crowning achievements were due more to luck than skill. There’s no shame in that; luck is a big part of any sport. Ask a golfer who just crushed a drive and sees it land in a divot 300 yards away about that.

When we’re talking about the Hall of Fame, however, we need to evaluate not just the end results, and not just the high points, of a player’s career. The Bradys, Montanas and Bradshaws of the NFL reached the pantheon with consistent 12+win seasons, trips to the conference finals and Super Bowls, and season MVP awards. The only time Manning has won 12 games in a season he lost his first playoff game, despite a first-round bye and home field advantage. He has never led the league in any passing statistic.

So raise your glasses and tip your hats to the Giants and Eli Manning today. They won the games, which is what the Championship

Greg Knapp is no “Re-tread”

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Written February 1st, 2012

It started Monday evening, like everything else does these days, on Twitter. First I saw CSNBayArea’s Paul Gutierrez’ tweet saying that the Raiders had offered the offensive coordinator job to Greg Knapp. Hmm, I thought, I wonder how that’s going down with Raider Nation?

So I searched “Knapp”, and smoke started to slowly seep out of my phone. One tweet after another, “Greg ‘take a’ Knapp,” “Let’s bring JaMarcus back, too,” “What are they doing?” and, of course, “retread.”

On the radio today, I heard John Lund on 95.7 The Game lay out a pretty detailed analysis of Knapp’s career, including his time with the Raiders, and his conclusion, along with every guest he had on the show from Indy, was that it was a pretty good hire. What did his partner, Mychael Urban, think? “He’s a retread, John. I don’t like retreads.”

So I thought I’d try to help calm everybody down. First of all, what’s a retread in coaching? Someone who, despite a lack of success, continues to be hired to coaching positions, usually head coaching positions. Greg Knapp has been an assistant coach in the NFL for over 20 years. The Raiders years were  easily the least distinguished of his career, but you can hardly say that he hasn’t been successful. He has coached in the playoffs in San Francisco, Atlanta and Houston, the first two as a coordinator.  You could hardly blame Knapp for the Raiders’ problems those two years, and the truth is the team got worse offensively after Tom Cable stripped him of the OC title.

He has that “demotion” on his resume, but Knapp has never been “fired,” in the sense that Greg Manusky was let go by Norv Turner after this season. He’s lost jobs, but only when the head coach he worked for got axed. He was on Steve Mariucci’s staff with the 49ers when Steve was surprisingly fired, and he got canned in Atlanta when Jim Mora wore out his welcome there. Mora spent the next two years as an assistant, and as soon as he got another head coaching job, he re-hired Knapp. The Seahawks changed their minds on Mora after just one year, and Knapp was looking for work again. Gary Kubiak hired him to be the QB coach in Houston, working with Matt Schaub, whom he had coached in Atlanta.

So Schaub gets hurt, and then Matt Leinert gets hurt, and the Texans are down to C.J. Yates. You all know how that turned out, but you might have forgotten that Knapp was the guy who got the credit for “coaching him up” and winning a playoff game.

There’s a theme in Knapp’s career. People who have worked with him before want to work with him again. Do you think that Matt Schaub would have wanted Knapp to be the QB coach if he didn’t respect him from their days in Atlanta?  Think Shaub was worried that Knapp was a retread?

Here’s another way to look at it, Raiders fans. Let’s just say Dennis Allen really wanted Greg Knapp, but the people in the Raiders’ offices really didn’t like him. There are still many people in that organization who were there when Knapp was there. They know better than any of us what went wrong in those lost seasons, and if Knapp was to blame, they wouldn’t want him back. Would Allen want the distraction of shoving Knapp down the organization’s throat, with all he has to do the next couple of years? No way.

All right, I’m going to make one more pass at this to help Raider fans give this guy a chance. Do you like Darren McFadden, Raider Fans? Of course you do. Well, McFadden will love Greg Knapp. His SF teams were 2nd, 5th and 6th in rushing in his three years there, and the Falcons led the league in rushing in all three of his seasons running that show.

Did you see how Texas ran the ball the last few years? Okay, I can see how you don’t want to give Knapp credit for that, it wasn’t his offense. But the architect of the blocking schemes that the Texans use to run the ball is a guy named Alex Gibbs. Who’s that? Just the guy who put the Denver Broncos running game together that finally carried John Elway to the Super Bowl Championship in the 90’s. Remember those Broncos teams, how 1,000-yard rushers would appear out of nowhere every year? Gibbs did that. Kubiak brought him to Houston in 2008 to do the same thing in Houston.

What does this have to do with Greg Knapp? Alex Gibbs was also on the Falcons staff with Knapp and Dennis Allen. I think you can expect that the Raiders will hire an OL coach with experience in Gibbs’ system, and Knapp will coordinate an offense that will make Darren McFadden and his fans very happy.

I think this is the fourth straight outstanding move by the Raiders. The hiring of Reggie McKenzie, the decision to cut ties with Hue Jackson, and the hiring of Allen were all big steps forward for this team, and Knapp is another piece of the puzzle they’re trying to put together.

Raider Fans, you’ve been through a lot these past ten years, but hang in there. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and it might not be a train.