Yeah, I know we just lost a tough game.

You know what I say?

I don't care. This season was awesome.

We just had a regular season where we just went 13-3. We saw our QB solidly establish himself as a quality starter going forward. We saw a coaching staff take a bunch of players who were bumbling around without direction and instead turn them into winners.

Are there still problems? Can we still get better. Sure! We have real needs we need to address (particularly at WR and OL).

But let me see hands from people who thought we'd be two special teams blunders away from a super bowl six months ago? Beuller? Beuller?

I come on NN and I'm disgusted. So many people screaming bloody murder. Fire Crabtree! Fire Alex! Fire Williams! We even have one fool saying we need to fire out coaches.

The ship has been righted. We're heading strongly in the right direction. While no-nothing fans scapegoat, the team acted like men and rallied around Williams, because these guys are classy pros. They understand that errors happen, even at the highest level, and that you don't blame a backup punt returner for performing like a backup punt returner.

I am PUMPED UP about this team. The Niners matter again. We're going to be good again next year. We're going to continue to improve and we can hang with anyone, in any game. We play hard for the whole game.

So, yeah, you know, I'm disappointed with the way today's game left. But you know what? I give every single player on this team a standing ovation. Even Kyle Williams. Especially Kyle Williams. Because this is a TEAM, and it's a team that's worthy of our support.

I think, like a lot of people, I'm frustrated at Dorell, and Klay's missing jump shot, at the fact that I'm missing Reggie when I really shouldn't be.

And if we wanted, we could take some solace in the fact that our big three hasn't been healthy and all on the floor together.

But I think the real reason we've struggled this season, more than Curry's fouls, more than Klay's struggles, more than the inadequacy of some of our role players, is summed up by three numbers:

.554, .486., and .484.

Those are Curry, Lee, and Monta's TS%.

Curry's is .027 below his career average, and .041 below last season.

Lee's is .101 below his career average, and .043 below last season.

Monta is .053 below his career average, and .052 below last season.

Now, my point isn't "horrible Mark Jackson, he's putting these guys in a position to fail," or even "these guys suck, get rid of them!" After four games each, I don't think there's any reason to feel that these numbers represent who these players are.

My point is, rather, that the problem is that these three guys, so far this season, haven't been getting it done. Curry, who we expect to be excellent, has been averagish. Monta and Lee have been terrible.

I've only watched one game this season in its entirety - and it that game I saw Curry committing dumb reach fouls and I counted four "bad Monta" plays (there may have been more, but there were at least four). In other words: so far neither of these guys have demonstrated that they've improved their flaws from last season.

Yeah, the bench scoring is a problem, and Dorell's vanishing shot is a problem. But in the NBA, your best players are the ones you rise and fall these three guys are achors pulling us down. More so than anything else (and certainly more so than tinkering around the edges of the roster - the difference between signing Fesenko and Nate, for example) this is what's going to make a difference this year.

If these guys don't figure out how to put it together it's going to be a really long season.

Watching the Chandler numbers jumping around, and some people freaking out because they don't want to pay him that much, and others freaking out because they want to pay him more so we get him, I've been thinking about how to fairly evaluate how much a player is worth.

The cap is about $58m. Most teams end up spending a little over the cap. But lets break this down.

A "max" salary varies, based on experience, but I'm going to take the middle level and say that a max salary starts at about $17.5m.

Now, for starters, I'm going to suggest that the truly elite players (Howard, LeBron, KD, etc) are actually *underpaid*. Why do I say this? Simple - there's a max salary. You see teams happy to go far over the max - eg Kobe's contract will pay him $30m. KG's pays him $21m. But clearly basic economics suggests that the presence of a cap means that some players getting the cap will be underpaid.

Second, the very worst players in the league are probably overpaid. Same principle - there's a salary floor. The worst players in the league are not much better than the best players not in the league, who would happily do the job for less.

Third, I'd like to posit that there's not a smooth, linear continuum of player value. Even aside from the previous two points, if the best player in the league is worth the max, and the worst player is worth the min, the middle player in the league is NOT worth halfway between the min and the max. In fact, I'd suggest that there are, roughly, a couple of tiers:

eg "Elite Players" - LeBron, Howard, KD, etc. Clearly worth the max. Call them group one.

eg "Replacement-level players" clearly worth the min. Call them group six.

I'm going to posit three other categories of players. Obviously, these categories are a little rough.

Group two: "Really really good guys who aren't truly elite." Chandler and Nene are in this category, for example. Probably Amare, too. Manu Ginobili, probably. Bynum.

Group three: "Quality starters" - guys who are better than the opposing starter more often than not. Boozer. I'd put Curry in this group, although we're all hoping he'll grow into group two. Deng, probably. Lamarcus ALdridge. Danny Granger.

Group four: "Spot starters/quality backups." Guys like Dorell go here.

Group five: Back of rotation guys - Amundson, etc.

Now, I don't want to quibble about a lot of specific evaluations of guys, just talking in abstract building a team.

It seems to me that to be in title contention, you need 1 group one guy, 1-2 group 2 guys, 2-3 group 3 guys, 2-3 group four guys, 2-3 group five guys, and you fill out your roster with the replacement level players.

Now you can always add a player at the minimum, so we can actually exclude the group six guys from salary cap consideration.

Now, the cap is $58m, but nobody actually spends that little to win a title. The actual cost of a title team is much closer to $70m. So let's use that number, which is still just below the tax.

You pay your elite guy 18m.

$52m.

You have two group 2 guys averaging $13m. (That seems to be the going rate for guys like Chandler, Nene, etc).

That leaves $26m.

Two group three guys at $7m, average, each.

That leaves $12m.

Round out your rotation with two group four guys at $4m each, leaving $4m. You add two group five guys at $2m each, and then add players at the minimum to fill up your roster.

Ideally, say, this is a team that looks like KD (group 1), Chandler and Amare (group 2), Curry and Igoudala (group 3), with Dorell and Rony Turiaf (group four) coming off the bench Amundson as your emergency backup big man. Maybe Iggy's a group two, so what about Deng or someone like that?

That's a title team, isn't it? Heck, I'd say that's a running-away-with-the-title team, most years. Couple of question marks (backup point guard, for example) and they'd want to go over the tax to solidify their depth, but that's a really really good team, no?

Why am I going through all these contortions? Simple:

If you agree that Chandler is a group two guy (and I think he clearly is) then something in the $14-15m range is totally reasonable for him - especially when you consider that he's a group two guy at the most important position on the floor.

The big problem with overpaying is paying someone over their "slot." So for example Monta (a group four guy) is getting paid like a group two guy. And Lee (a group three guy) is getting paid like a group two guy. Biedrins (a group five guy) is being paid like a group three guy.

Going beyond that, however, I'd say that the fact that my hypothetical team is likely to be some dominant means that, in practice, you can overpay a couple of players and still be in contention.

In other words, the problem isn't particularly any one contract (and it's not Chandler at $15m). The problem is consistently paying players a group or two above their actual quality. You see this all over the place - Carmelo, Boozer, Joe Johnson, Rudy Gay, etc.

But if stars are underpaid because of the max salary, I have a real hard time looking at Chandler at $15m and thinking that contract is a problematic overpay.

I like to ask this question in the preseason, as part of a process of setting reasonable expectations.  Part of the reason I like to do this is because I think people come up with inappropriate definitions of success at times. 

For example, someone might say we have a successful season if we make the playoffs. But given where we're coming from, if we go 10-6, and miss the playoffs on tiebreakers to the Rams, and 10 wins doesn't get a wild card, well, given where we were last offseason, and how much harder our schedule is ... isn't that a successful season? 

By and large, when talking about a losing team, I hate coming up with a definition of success that depends on how other teams do. That is to say, making the playoffs is great - but the team has probably had a better year if they go 10-6 and miss the playoffs (which I admit is unlikely) than if they go 7-9 and make them. 

Even talking about win totals, however, is somewhat suspect. For example, I expect Arizona and the Rams to be better than they were last year. And instead of the AFC West - the second weakest division in football last year - and the NFC South who was only so-so (remember, all those teams have their records inflated by playing the NFC West) we have to face the NFC East and the AFC North. So we could hypothetically be a much better team than last year and still go 6-10 or 7-9. 

Therefore, I think it's useful to think about other measures of success. What do you want to see?

First of all, I want to see that Harbaugh gets the pro game as a coach. Does the team adapt its scheme, and win the battle of halftime adjustments? 

Second, I want to see player development. I want to see the offensive line play show that it might be a strength in future years. I'd love it if we went into the next season confident about our QB situation (either because Smith improved a lot, or because Kaep took over and showed us enough). But mostly I want to feel confident about our O-line going forward. If we have that, I think the QB situation will take care of itself. 

I want to see Gore average more than 4.5 YPA attempt, but I'd like to see him in the realm of 15-16 carries a game. 

I want to see Smith complete 62% of his passes, with an under 2.8% int%, and a YPA over 7. If he does that, I'm probably going to want him back. 

I'd like to see 60 yards/game from Davis, although I recognize that this isn't entirely in his control. As a marker of team success, anything less means the team isn't maximizing it's talent. I want to see Crabtree playing like he's on the same page as the QB. 

I want our passing attack, overall, to feel dangerous. If by the end of the season, I'm excited when they come on to the field, if the feeling in my gut is, "Oh boy, let's see what they're going to do this time!" then something is going right. (Last year it was more, "oh god, here we go again ... please don't do <blank>").

I want our pass defense to be able to come up with some big stops when it counts.

Lastly, really, I want to see development towards these goals over the course of the season. Given the short offseason, and the fact that a new coach doesn't usually transform a team until his second season, the team has a lot of rope with me. Unless the wheels come off completely, I'm willing to be patient this year, so long as by the end of the year we're looking like a team that could achieve those goals over the course of a full season - I fully expect some early season hiccups. 

I may amend this list over this week, see if I come up with new benchmarks. Obviously, wins are great - but like I said, if we hit all these benchmarks, go 10-6, and somehow miss the playoffs ... well, I'll be a little bummed, but you won't hear me complaining about it (much). 

What are your benchmarks for success? 

People are starting to make predctions. I'm a big advocate of the notion that opinions are like - well, body parts everybody has that don't smell so good. Nevertheless, I'm shocked at some of the optimistic predictions about this team. 

So I starting thinking about it. Why are some people so optimistic when others are so pessimistic? Why is there such disagreement about our team?

And then it hit me. While we have some talent, we have the wrong talent. Yes, we have Patrick Willis and Vernon Davis and those guys are legitimately top players. Unfortunately, it doesn't matter. 

Continue reading this post »

Some interesting data here. Basically it looked at the WP by a player's opponent, and compared their number to the average of that team's opponents. 

http://wagesofwins.net/2011/08/11/beating-their-opponents-introducing-wins-prevented/

Some real surprises, before I discuss my reaction to the data:

First of all, Curry ranks first(!) in point guards! He's considered a substantial defensive plus (which sounds absurd, but there's a caveat coming which I'll discuss in a moment.)

Monta comes in 22 among SGs, but is also a slight defensive plus (same caveat applies - wait before it before you jump to conclusions). 

Dorell comes in 18th among SFs, and is a slight defensive plus. 

David Lee comes in 33rd among C's (they have him listed as playing 61% of his minutes there, so count him as a C) - and is a substantial defensive minus. 

The big caveat here is what those defensive numbers are measured against - and ends up not being league averages, but rather team opponent averages at that position.

In other words, Curry is a substantial defensive plus because he was significantly better than the other guys we had out there playing defense at the point guard position (some combination of Law, Lin, Monta, and Bell). 

Monta comes in as slight defensive plus because he was a little better than the other guys we had playing SG - Reggie Williams et al. 

And Lee comes in as a substantial defensive minus because he was a lot worse than the other guys we had playing C (Udoh, Biedrins et al). 

This makes some sense as a way to evaluate players defensive contributions, because it avoids punishing a player for being surrounded by poor defenders. This, however, basically makes comparisons across teams pretty pointless - eg, Rondo is clearly a much better defender, but because his team is a much better defensive team, his relative defense shows up in the stat sheet less. 

The other caveat has to do with positions. It's not clear exactly how Arturo did this, but he says he did it game by game, which means that Curry may be look better than he was by virtue of the early-season defensive switches the team sometimes employed. (Sometimes! If your response to this is along the lines of "it's BS because Monta always took the tougher assignment," go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200 - Monta sometimes, mostly early in the season, took the tougher assignment even when it was a PG. Sometimes. Not always.). 

So really the rankings are really more along the lines of, "What's the impact on a team if they lose this player?" rather than making comparisons of absolute value. He's looking for a way to evaluate, as he says "players who a better defender than you would expect given their team and/or system."

I suspect someone will look at this data and say, "It says Curry's a better defender than Howard, he's on crack." But of course it doesn't say that at all. But it's interesting that, in addition to Curry, Kevin Martin (who I generally think of as a near-Monta-level defender) scores really well here - who's backing him up?

But even with a player like Monta who ends up with a more plausible ranking, there's the issue of this data not really being consistent with the +/- data we have. eg, +/- lists Curry as a slight negative on defense, and Monta as a huge one. 

Interesting. Generally, I trust +/- more than this data because doing the position adjustment this data requires on a play-by-play basis defensively creates some rather huge room for error. Nevertheless, this is an interesting and ambitious attempt to start analyzing defense, and while there's clearly a way to go yet, it's worth looking at. 

I feel like the next 17 days are going to tell us a lot about this squad, particularly if we have Curry back and healthy. 

Friday, Utah at home. No back-to-back game issues. If we beat them, that's the first time we'll have beaten a team without a ready-made excuse ("second half of a back-to-back" "they're the clippers.") Utah is expected by a lot of people to be pretty good. I think they won't be as good as they were last year but still a convincing win might start to put us on people's radar. 

Then we have a big road trip. And the thing about that road trip is that only one of those games doesn't look winnable: Chicago on the second night of a back-to-back. If we were going to have any of those games on a back-to-back, that's the one I want, because that's the one I would have most expected us to lose anyway.

But Detroit, Toronto, NY - we have to be able to win some of those games if we want to be a playoff team. And they Detroit and New York at home. 6-2 over that stretch would really put us on the map. 

On the other hand, we've got some real question marks. Lee seems to be really struggling without Curry on the floor, and the zone totally discombobulated us. I don't think that happens with Curry, but certainly if I was an opposing coach, this game said to me, "Go to a zone the moment Curry steps off the floor for the rest of the season, until they prove we shouldn't."

I expect Jerry Sloan, at least, to notice that. 

On the other hand, if we go 4-4 on this stretch we're not shooting ourselves, but definitely making life difficult. 3-5, 2-6, on the other hand, and we just might be the same ol' Warriors.

All bets are off if Curry is still hurt. With 6 games in 10 days, we'll be running Monta into the ground if we don't have Steph. 

Dave Berri just posted an article where he lists the WP at the midpoint of every player and every team.

WP is one of those really useful stats, which appears to have an incredibly high R2. You can see a sense of its accuracy looking at his chart, because he lists the total WP for each team and their actual wins. It's rarely off by much. Here's the chart:

http://www.wagesofwins.com/AllTeamMid0910.html

And a coupe of comments:

The Warriors are one of the few teams with a big gap between their WP48 and their actual wins, with a prediction of 16 wins but, of course, only having 13. This isn't too surprising given how bad a defensive team we are, and the fact that basketball stats aren't said to capture a lot of defense.

That being said, the overall accuracy of the WP numbers for teams should, I think, give people pause before they dismiss it. The largest discrepancies between predicted and actual wins are us (3.1 wins fewer than predicted), New Orleans (3.6 wins fewer than predicted) and Philly (3.3 wins fewer than predicted). Those are the only three teams where Berri's methodology misses by more than 3 wins. That's, quite frankly, amazing. 

Anyway, here's some interesting things that leaped out at me looking at those numbers:

Brandon Jennings vs. Stephen Curry. Remember early in the season when Jennings was putting up huge numbers, and everybody was saying he was the better player? Not so fast. Curry WP48 .099 Jennings .063. Curry is looking like the better pick. (This is no doubt due to Jenning's horrid fg%). A WP48 of .1 means that the player is average ... so neither of these guys are great, yet, but they're both young enough that we can expect to see their numbers rise. (Monta's WP numbers took a jump in his third season.)

That being said, Evans and DUJuan Blair are being more productive as rookies than our guy. Interesting that a second-round guy is leading the way here. 

Staying on the draft decisions: Oden wp48 .316, Durant .240. I think because of the scoring numbers Durant as perceived as a better player. Of course, he's played a lot more minutes, and health was one of the arguments for Durant at the draft (see Bill Simmons comments about watching Oden walk), but ... interesting.

Some Warriors specific stuff:

You get a sense of how big a problem our injuries have been 'Buike has a WP48 of .256, which would make him our most productive player (assuming Raja Bell and Acie Law's high numbers are functions of tiny sample sizes - but the sample size argument raises questions about 'Buike as well).

Biedrins is having a terrible year, right? No, it turns out: Despite having one of the worse years of his career, he's still at .2 WP48 - twice as good as an average NBA center. Who here would have guessed that Biedrins contributed twice as much, per minute, to our wins as Stephen Curry did? (Again, notice the overall accuracy of the WP48 predictions before you say that means the stat is broken.) My feeling is that this is an example of how most fans overvalue scoring and undervalue rebounds.

Stephen Jackson's WP48 as a warrior: .035. As a Hornet: .082. He's a lot better for them than he was for us (no surprise there) but he's actually still not very good. (no surprise there, either). Jamal Crawford:  WP48 .087 - don't be fooled by Atl's improvement, it's nt because of him. 

This one is a shocker: Monta Ellis WP48: .049. A lot of us lamented his decline in efficiency ... but I didn't think it was this dramatic. He's been much higher in the past. This is a huge warning shot. 

Turiaf almost as good as Biedrins? Turiaf -.07, Biedrins +.02. The difference of .027 WP48 is equivalent to adding Josh Smith or Chris Bosh for NOTHING.

Anthony Randolph: .117. Above average, but not by much. Considering how raw his game is, I find this encouraging. 

Looking beyond the Warriors:

The Lakers top 3 players in WP48 won't surprise anyone: Kobe, Gasol, and Odom. However, their ranking in WP48 will: Gasol .359, Odom .275, Kobe .184. Compare that to the amount of press each player gets. 

An analysis of WP48 would be complete if I didn't include the player who makes the least sense according to this stat. Troy Murphy, WP48 .315. Has he changed from who he was as a Warrior? The overall accuracy of these numbers at predicting wins makes Murphy's individual number hard to dismiss. I still don't want him on the team, but this is a weird one. It's far and away the biggest difference between my (and everyone else's) subjective opinion of a player and his WP48 value.

How goos is Lebron James? Compare the current Warriors to Cavs not named Lebron. We look like the better team, according to WP48. Man, superstars make a difference in this league. 

Anyway, I think the table is really interesting, and should provide room for fun discussion. What leaps out at YOU about this chart? 

Kawakami is reporting that he expects a Monta trade demand this week, and Monta is seeking permission to talk to other teams about a trade.  He reports on how Monta feels that his attempts at being a leader are being undercut by Nelson. 

The article

Shades of Webber? We have a young, talented player who Nelson rubs the wrong way ... who then gets shipped out. Of course, Nelson can't coach the resulting mess, so he follows suit.

This isn't at all similar to Jackson - Jackson's a role player at best anyway, who was overpaid and getting pretty close to over-the-hill. Losing Jackson costs us nothing. But being forced to trade Monta, especially under unfavorable circumstances?

Furthermore, giving Monta's representatives permission to find a trade is a nightmare. They have a vested interested, and that's trading Monta for a little as possible, so his next team has as much talent as possible. 

Nelson has to go. Now. It's possible that Monta doesn't want to play for the Warriors anyway because of Rowell, but if Nellie is driving Monta away, it's time to pul the trigger and try to salvage something.  That might buy us the time we need for Cohan to find a buyer so we can get rid of him.  

(No comments saying "Its Kawakami" as if that means its all b.s.  His track record on this sort of thing is actually pretty decent. Not perfect, but pretty good. Whenever he posts something predicting trouble, he's slammed by fans of the team - who never seem to apologize when he's later proven right.) 

If Monta can pout his way out of town, isn't Randolph next? We already know that Randolph and Nellie don't get along (Yes. We know. Take off the blinders and watch Randolph's body language as Nellie jerks his minutes around) so he's next. You can't get equal talent back when you're trading a disgruntled player.

The drafting of Monta and Randolph are two of the few bright spots we've experienced in the last couple of years. Are we really prepared to throw them all away?

I'm disgusted and disappointed. If this goes down, don't you know that Curry is going to start making his calendar for when he can flee, too?  This is going to get worse before it gets better. 

This isn't a predictions post. Rather, it's a ... what do we have to do, post. 

It's rare that you see a team lose to a middling team and yet hear so much enthusiasm from that team's fans, but that's the situation we're in. All of a sudden, a lot seems possible. Maybe it'll be a mirage ... but maybe not. 

That being said, we're also in a pretty deep hole. Arizona beat the Giants yesterday. That gives them three wins outside the division against decent-to-good teams ... against the Niners' zero. And they still have Detroit and Tennessee to play. Meanwhile, we still have to play Philly, while they get Carolina. 

I watched a lot of the Monday Night game last night, and Zona looked really good. A lot better than they looked against us in the opener. 

Leaving aside the game against us, it looks like Zona will be favored in 7 of their other 9 games - potentially putting them at 11-4 pending their result against us. I think that makes our game against Zona a must-win, so let's say we win it, putting them at 11-5, but we have the tiebreaker. So 11-5 gets us the division. 10-6 probably does not.

That means we need to win eight more games. Sweep the division, that's three. Detroit and Tenn, that's five. And this is where Zona's win last night really hurts ... because last week we could say, "Okay, we need to win two of Jax/Chi/Hou" ... but now winning two of those is no longer enough, but, of course, only two remain on the schedule.

That means we're going to need to, in addition to sweeping the division, in addition to sweeping Detroit and Tenn, in addition to sweeping Chicago and Jacksonville ... find another game to win. We will need to beat Indy, Green Bay, or Philly. 

And it gets worse. Zona gets GB on the last day of the season, when GB might have nothing to play for. So we might need to win TWO of indy, Green Bay, and Philly.

Kind of intimidating. On the other hand, if we can make a run of it, it should put a dent in the "NFC West is weak" talk for a while. And it's worth remembering that Arizona has been nothing if not inconsistent the last two years, so they may fall apart. Yeah, I know, that's kind of wishful thinking on our part, so I wouldn't count on it.

So the margin for error has shrunk to just about nothing. 

On the plus side, though, we might have an offense for the first time in a long time. 

One of the frustrating things about internet discussions is that anybody who tries to be a realist gets ridiculed as a naysayer. In another recent thread, for example, some of us tried to make reasoned arguments about why we're not drinking the Shaun Hill kool-aid, and "middle grounders" accused us of being the nay-sayers with as little logic as the guys saying "Shaun Hill Rullz."

This isn't an "I told you so," post, but rather it's a chance to take a look at a bad game, where we got some real unlucky breaks, and use it to help us take an honest assessment of this team. 

1) Let's start with Shaun Hill. People have wanted to hype his record while ignoring the teams he played, but here's the simple truth: it's not clear that Shaun Hill has ever beaten a good team. Hill was terrible today. I'm not even that upset by the INT, which we could have recovered from. (Anytime a ball is tipped and becomes an INT, bad luck was involved. That being said, when the ball is tipped by the intended receiver, the QB's accuracy comes into question).  But Hill just didn't get it done today. Under 50% passing. A 5.2 YPA even when you account for the long pass to Morgan (where Morgan created most of the yards after-the-catch). This was a truly bad performance. 

2) The defense. I'm less worried about this defense that some will be, after giving up 45 points, but that's partly because I didn't believe the hype. Look, Clements isn't a shut-down corner, and never has been. He's not going to magically become one at this point in his career.There will be renewed calls for Manny Lawson's head, but that's typical fan short-sightedness. No, he wasn't good today, but people were calling for his head after the preseason, praising him like mad after four games, and are going to be calling for his head again today. But he's learning a new skill set, and that's going to come in fits and starts. Freaking out about the pass-rush, against a team with a great pass-blocking OL, is scapegoating.

 I really think what happened here is that our guys got dispirited in the second quarter, and that's a real concern. Of course, it's hard for them to get their mojo back when the offense keeps putting up 3-and-outs. It would have been nie to see some veteran leadership stand up, but what this defense really needed after the bad breaks of the int and the fumble was for the offense to say "hey, we're still in this thing," and they couldn't deliver. 

I'm mostly concerned about the NT situation. If this defense can't stop the run, it's going to struggle against everybody, and the Falcons just had too much room to run wherever they wanted today. 

3) The coaching. This one hurts, because today the team looked a lot like it did when coached by Nolan. The total inability to handle adversity. I'm still digesting Kawakami's diagnosis (that Sing is getting out-tacticed by opposing coaches) which bears thinking about, but essentially we saw, today, the team that had the same personality we'd seen for the last couple of seasons. Despite Sing's exhortations, these guys got punched in the face and they didn't get back up. Now, in my opinion Sing is entitled to his rookie-coach mistakes, just like anyone else, so the whole timeout thing isn't that big a deal - no way anyone could have anticipated that crucial a blown call - but the abject failure of his coaching philosophy in this game is a cause for concern, to say the least.  

4) The lack of maturity. I'm not the only one who wants to strangle Dre Bly right now. Coffee's a rookie, so he gets a pass this game, but wow.

What I'm not worried about:

1) The run game. No, Coffee's 3.8 average isn't exciting, but the truth is we had to get away from the running game because we fell behind. 

2) Josh Morgan. After his drop last week, a lot of people seemed to be giving up on him - but anybody who puts more stock in that drop then they do in his 61 yarder is crazy. That 61-yarder was something HE created, after the catch. That's special. With Hill forced to throw long deeper because of the scoreboard, Morgan put up his best numbers of the year. This guy is a keeper, who, at the moment, is not on a team that's going to showcase his talents that well. The same will be true of Crabtree if he gets onto the field this year. As with VD last year, you have to look beyond the stats to see if they're delivering, and not just call them disappointments because of low catch totals. 

Morgan has done a lot to convince me that he's going to be one of our long-term staters at WR. 

Where do we go from here?

Maybe we should call this section "Playoffs? You want to talk to me about playoffs?"

The truth is that we can still win our division pretty easily, and earn the right to get demolished in the playoffs. And I guess that's progress. Our biggest needs right now are o-line and QB. The problem, of course, is that it's not so easy to pick a QB. With so many young QBs playing well right now, it's really easy to forget about Russell, Smith, Leinart, and Young - drafting a QB in the first round is still a very expensive crapshoot. 

I'd rather see the team focus on the lines in the first two rounds. Get me a great OT (honestly, I understand why we grabbed Crabtree, but Oher would be a shoo-in for rookie of the year if linemen could get a fair shot at those prizes). Get me a NT or a guy who can get to the QB. We've got two first round picks next year, which are both likely to be top 15. Let's solve the big problems. A quality QB may slip to the second round, let's grab him then. 

I just read a comment in another post which ended:

"No pass rusher. . . we’re dead in 2009."

I was thrown by the pessimism. I started to respond in that thread, and decided I wanted to go into a little more depth.

We had 30 sacks last year, tied for 16th in the league. That's not "no pass rush." That's the definition of a league-average pass-rush. But did you know if we got 5 more sacks last year, we would have been a top-10 team in sacks? 

All this talk about how terrible our pass-rush is, well, it's just not accurate. I know, I know sacks aren't a perfect measure of a pass-rush. But the mind-set summarized by the above quote, the pathos over letting Everette Brown get away, appears to be not justified.

Our pass defense? 12th in the league in YPA. Again - not spectacular ... but better than average. Our rush defense was 8th in the league (for all the talk of our defensive line being a disaster, it doesn't look like that from the stats). 

Our "horrible" third down defense? We allowed the first down 38% of the time. 12th in the league. 

These aren't spectacular numbers, but they pretty consistently one thing: league average, or maybe a little bit better. 

There's one area were our defense was below average (and, in turns out, below average by a lot): turnovers. We only managed 12 picks, and we only forced 12 fumbles. Those numbers put us solidly in the bottom of the league.

Remember, with all this talk, that we're really talking about a league-average, or slightly better, defense ... with the caveat that we're really not a big-play defense. (This harkens back to my draft comments, too: adding league-average players isn't going to help us much, if at all. We need big-play guys if we want to upgrade this defense.)

I think we can all remember some key drives last season when it seemed like our defense just couldn't get off the field. A quick look at the relevant statistics, however, shows that our defense wasn't really the problem.

If you want to know why we were 7-9 last year, the answer is really on the other side of the ball:  While our QB's yards-per-attempt was decent, they led the league in sacks. For half the season we were starting J.T. O'Sullivan, who put the ball on the ground or threw a pick once for every ten times he dropped back to pass. We led the league in fumbles, and were tied for 26th in interceptions thrown. 

Not counting on any improvement from running the 3-4 consistently (and we clearly looked better once we dropped the whole hybrid thing), and not counting of much larger production from Manny Lawson or Ahmed Brooks, not counting on Balmer turning into a quality player, or any improvement from the free safety position, what should we expect from our defense? 

Something a little better than league-average. 

Our offense, on the other hand, should improve just from cutting out the negative plays: we led the league in sacks allowed last year, and I've already mentioned our INT numbers.  Both of those should improve with the removal of Martz's offense and JTO. (And it's worth repeating, JTO fumbled or threw an interception approximately once for every ten times he dropped back to pass). Rachal looked like an improvement once he got onto the field, and Marvel should be an upgrade over the different guys we ran out there last year (if he can stay healthy, but if he can't, we're no worse at that position). 

I don't know what to expect when it comes into translating this into wins. A league-average team can get six wins or it can get 10 wins with a couple of good or bad bounces of the football. I do know that nobody should be writing this team off as non-competitive because of our defense. Such an opinion is simply not justified by our performance last year. 

FOOCH'S NOTE: While I know folks will disagree, I thought this was a well thought out FanPost and thought it was worth moving to the front page.  After all, the offseason consists of the draft AND free agency.  Still some questions, but there are answers out there.  And don't forget to check out our San Francisco 49ers 2009 NFL Draft Grades.

Everybody seems very down on this draft, and a few people have railed against the team leadership for not doing enough to improve this offseason. 

But I want to point something out:

At the end of the season, our weakest areas were RT, WR, QB, and PR (and on this team, the pash-rush is a combination of DL and OLB play). That was the team's checklist. 

Well, look at what we did:

RT was upgraded with Marvel Smith. If his back is healthy, he's a significant improvement at that position.

WR was improved by drafting the best player available. Heck, Crabtree might have been BPA if we drafted fourth. Think about that: we improved arguably our weakest position by drafting one of the best players in the draft. You can't ask for more than that.

A young quaterback for the future? The team made a low-risk play to add that player to the roster, and can play is smart: stash him on the bench for a year or two, let him learn properly, do everything right that they did wrong with Alex Smith. If they don't like what they see, they can cut him at little cost. He may not be the solution, but he's an fascinating possibility. This is a smart way to approach the QB position.

In other words: in three of our four positions of greatest need, the team addressed the problem by adding an appropriate player. In half of the positions of need, we improved by adding a player who's expected to be an above-average NFL player. 

And we did all that without making huge salary cap commitments, and while picking up an extra first rounder for next year. 

The team still has pass-rush concerns, but there's actually hope for improvement there as well: by getting away from the hybrid system, we should put our existing players in a better position to succeed. Balmer, when drafted, was clearly a year or two away, so we can expect to start seeing contributions from him. And the new scheme should give us a chance to see what we have in Lawson, who, thanks to injuries and misuse, is really still a question mark.

(The pass rush situation isn't just about getting the right OLB, remember. Improved D-line play should help free up our existing OLBs to be more effective.) 

So not only did we improve in 3 of 4 areas of need, it's not totally unreasonable to think that fourth area of need will be improved this year, too. Plus we have two first-round picks next year to fix whatever doesn't work.

 The team still needs impact defensive players. Sack-machine pack rushers are very expensive in the free agent market, and you tend not to find them in the second round. If the team likes what it sees out of Davis, maybe it's not a QB we go for with those first rounders, maybe we can try to trade up for a sack machine next year. We'll certainly have a much better sense of what we still need after having our team spend a full year under the new coach. 

What the team didn't do is pick up a defensive player who we can all get excited about. I thing that's were the whining about Brown is coming from. Whether or not he ends up being that good, he's a player who we could all get excited talking about. See past year's fan enthusiasm about Jay Moore or Joe Cohen.

But this team was more than a year away from a championship at the end of the season, and we took good steps forward since then. I don't see what everyone is complaining about.