NFL 2014

Although I'm not looking forward to more pass interference penalties, I'm glad the NFL officials are trying to do something about illegal holding in the secondary. I call this the Seattle Seahawks rule. Those guys hold on literally every single play (and take PEDs). It'll be interesting to see how it plays out tomorrow night against a generally pass happy team like the Packers.

I'm feeling real down on the Niners. Our defense has hit a breaking point with injuries and suspensions. Just way too many, although it looks like McDonald might be innocent. And so, for the Niners to be as good as last year, our offense must improve. Our receiving corps are improved over a year ago -- some even saying we have the best in the league. I'm optimistic about Carlos Hyde being a great 2nd option at tailback. But the big issue, to me, is still Kaepernick. I know pre-season means nothing, but he didn't lead a single touchdown drive during the whole thing. He's bad in the redzone, he can't read defenses, we needed to simplify the playbook for him, he has slow mechanics (if you ask me), he doesn't make progression reads, he telegraphs his passes, which is why a lot get batted down, and he takes an incredible number of delay of game penalties because he doesn't know the plays. And the read-option is defendable. It looked good when no one was prepared for it, but NFL defenses can easily stop the read-option, so it amounts to little more than one more run formation that can be occasionally useful.

I hope to be proven wrong, but this is the year where we should get a definitive understanding of Kaepernick as a quarterback. All these past two years, fans of his have been making excuses: he's only played a handful of games, he'll get better, his receivers suck, etc, etc. (ps - no one ever made any of these excuses for Alex Smith and they applied equally if not more). So now, all those excuses are gone AND the Niners will need to rely on the offense more. We'll see if he is up to the task.

On the flipside, I don't see why everyone is so down on Kansas City as a regression team. They almost beat the Colts in the playoffs after losing the best player of the field. Alex Smith played out of his mind - a far better game of QB than Kap has ever played. I guess they lost some guys on the o-line, but they were 11-5 despite a lot of injuries last year. I dunno.