About our defense ...

Ronaldinho — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:57:00 -0000

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.

We had a great offseason!

Ronaldinho — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:32:17 -0000

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.

SB Nation User Blog: Ronaldinho

About our defense ...

We had a great offseason!