The Niners

I only watched the 4th quarter, but I was generally happy with the victory.  I'll definitely take a victory over the dangerous Seahawks on a Thursday night.  People are going to gang up on Alex Smith, but I'm not worried about him.  Maybe we won't win a Super Bowl with him, but I think we can.  Smith fits in really well with how our team is constructed.  Sure, there are a few elite QBs out there, but in the absence of one of those elite, I can't picture a better fit for the Niners than Smith.

Some things to think about:  Smith sprained his finger.  Everyone says it is fine, but his downhill play these last two weeks came after the injury.  I imagine this has something to do it.  In the past, Smith has played through injury and generally done poorly during those stretches.  It isn't all "coaching and confidence."  Sometimes these dudes are hurt and trying to do too much.  At the QB level, the tiniest things will make a difference.

Play calling and situations.  During the Giant's game, the play calling was terrible.  They got Smith out of a rhythm by bringing in Kaepernack too much.  They didn't switch up the calls and fool the Giants like we did against other teams.  We became too predictable and gimmicky.

We did the same against the Seahawks last night, except the Seahawks couldn't do anything on offense.  For instance, we were inside the 10 yard line with the game at 10-6 and ran three run plays before settling for a field goal.  Later, we got the ball up 13-6 with 2 plus minutes to play and ran the ball three times before punting back to Seattle.

In both of these cases, I thought we should have thrown the ball on 2nd down.  I know on a possession before, Smith had thrown an INT in the end zone.  We didn't want a repeat.  I get it.  And we ended up winning anyway.  I just think you gotta go for the jugular when you have the chance and when the other team expects the run.  Any time you become one-dimensional, you become weak.  I guess my point is that I trust Smith to make this kind of play.  I don't trust him to convert 3rd and longs.  But on 2nd and longs with the opponent gearing up to stop the run, he can be dangerous.

I suppose I shouldn't argue with success.  The Niners played it safe and still won.  The Seahawks might have the best secondary in the NFL and our passing game is our weak spot.  Wilson could do nothing all night, so just holding the lead and giving them bad field position proved smart.

But if we flip this logic and look back on the Giant's game.  We lost that game in the 1st quarter when we only put up 3 points despite dominating the quarter.  We missed a field goal and were unable to get in the end zone early.  Had we been up 10-0 or 14-0 in the first, that game is totally different.  We force the Giant's to play catch up.