Pettine: Stays or Goes

[smuggler]

Their biggest advantage was personnel, not scheme. Pettine might not be the guy, but he's not the first to be replaced, either.

[3irty1]

Its a fair set of points, but you have to do something to arm Pettine or his replacement against this 49er team and its eventual copycats.

My disappointment isn't scheme. It's prep. They looked like a team than had never seen an option before.

You hire Barry Alvarez to yell at them about staying home and doing your job/assignment and show some Nebraska/Osbourne tape. Then spend some money on an ILB who can make them pay for running that.

Probably need a better DT too.

You can never be too deep at DT or ILB, and those are certainly needs. In general any NFL team that knows a run is coming every play can't also be giving up 8 ypc through 6 foot holes. That first half last night looked about how I always imagined it would look if the worst NFL team played against the best college team any given year.

I think deficiencies of prep, scheme, talent all had to stack together to produce that horror show. You're right though that prep/gameplan is particularly egregious if only because this wasn't the first time this team was savagely beaten by those 9ers.

[texaspackerbacker]

This is the wrong time to ask hahahahaha. A gut reaction was asked for, though. Our D absolutely stunk yesterday, and it sure looked like a lot of it had to do with scheme. I voted to give him one more year, but it wouldn't bother me a bit to see him gone sooner.

As some have said, though, a large part of the problem is shoddy personnel. One D Lineman, Clark, is NFL quality. The other 2 or 3 just plain got man handled yesterday, and really it's been like that most of the time (Keke, though, came in late and made one decent play). Our DBs pretty much all failed miserably in their other job - backing up the front 6 or 7 stopping the run. Beyond that, though, they generally seemed to regress this season in pass coverage anytime we didn't get a big pass rush. And Martinez, I have been one of his biggest defenders all season, but yesterday (I watched a lot of those bad plays immediately on DVR), he just plain took himself out of the play - just no gap discipline at all, heading off in a completely different direction from where the play was. Was that on him? Or was that scheme/coaching? Hard to say. And then there's the Smiths (I saw this painfully on DVR too); They just did nothing on the outside to force runs back inside - like they were hell bent on pass rush even though the Niners were running nearly all the time. I have to think that was somehow by design - and thus, on the D Coordinator, but if so, who the hell is supposed to cover outside of them?

You maybe could defend Pettine by saying he needed to compensate - the coverage guys couldn't cover good enough so heavy pass rush was needed. That was dead obvious on that 3rd and long run for the first Niner TD. All season, the Safetys had to lean outside to help out King for sure and increasingly, Alexander too, thus opening up the middle of the field. It almost seemed yesterday like they went overboard to stop that - passes in the middle, and that somehow opened up things for runs.

Whatever the hell was going on, the Niners did their homework and absolutely outsmarted Pettine. It seemed like the Denver game only more so - getting run on by fairly mediocre RBs. It's like Pettine schemed us to good D until that Denver game. Then for 6 or 8 games or whatever, teams learned how to beat what he was doing. Then, late in the season, he figured out something else, or maybe ran into some teams what failed to learn from what Denver did. Well, the Niners did. Is it Pettine's fault for not figuring out a fix to their fix? Or did he get away with mission impossible most of the season, only to get exposed in the end.

I think maybe big brother LaFleur let it slip to little brother LaFleur sometime before yesterday, "we're damn lucky teams haven't been running it on us".

[Freak Out]

Jim Brown had 120 something yards rushing BEFORE contact yesterday! Holy hell.

[Deputy Nutz]

I like the idea of Wade Phillips, the guy is awesome on twitter, but other than that? I was upset at the poor technique the Packers demonstrated the entire game. Z. Smith flying up field losing any edge integrity, Savage taking one poor angle after another, and on the third touchdown the angle Martinez took was phenomenally poor. Schematically I have no idea how the Packers continually got out manned at the point of attack over and over again.

I wish I could change my vote from keeping to undecided.

[pbmax]

I like the idea of Wade Phillips, the guy is awesome on twitter, but other than that? I was upset at the poor technique the Packers demonstrated the entire game. Z. Smith flying up field losing any edge integrity, Savage taking one poor angle after another, and on the third touchdown the angle Martinez took was phenomenally poor. Schematically I have no idea how the Packers continually got out manned at the point of attack over and over again.

I wish I could change my vote from keeping to undecided.

Here is a sample of how they got outmanned at the point of attack:

https://twitter.com/danorlovsky7/status/1189192536037974016

They ran a similar play on Za'Darius a lot.

[Deputy Nutz]

Here is a sample of how they got outmanned at the point of attack:

https://twitter.com/danorlovsky7/status/1189192536037974016

They ran a similar play on Za'Darius a lot.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1219056387843555329

This is the play where Martinez is one on one with the back and takes the worst angle ever. Also our edge (Frackrell) decides to spill the puller instead of boxing it. Not sure what the scheme calls for but it would be an easier play for Martinez if our end man on the LOS player would have boxed instead of spilled. Nobody attacked the Jet motion either. I coach outside linebackers and our rule for Jet is that we attack it like they have the ball. Our Outside linebackers are also box players never spill players. The Packers are also in a weird bear front with a single high safety in a trips closed formation. Looks really stupid in hindsight. The Packers have no secondary edge on the tight end side of the formation, and are still worried about getting beat in the passing game.

[Freak Out]

Brutal.

[mraynrand]

Who thinks Griffen will be cut by Minnesota for being totally destroyed in the run game by Kittle? Maybe the same guy who cuts Griffen can be hired to let Poutine go.

[Rastak]

Who thinks Griffen will be cut by Minnesota for being totally destroyed in the run game by Kittle? Maybe the same guy who cuts Griffen can be hired to let Poutine go.

It'll be for his cap number, he had a great year actually.


I thought you guys liked Pettine? Were super fired up when he was retained. Green Bay's defense was above average most of the year.

[mraynrand]

It'll be for his cap number, he had a great year actually.

you bet he did. Pettine had a good year too. And yet, both got owned by SF.

[yetisnowman]

I thought the plan was schematically sound. The problem is no one we rotate in on our defensive front makes consistent plays in the running game. No one sheds blocks or explodes to the ball. No great tacklers in space . They get moved wherever a good offensive line wants them to go. How many times did we have numbers where they ran and still couldn't make a play. Cause we got scrubs like Martinez, Lancaster, Lowry, Redmond, a 40yr old tramon and a rookie learning as he goes playing safety. What could Pettine have done? His 2 best defenders are neutralized when the other team can coast to touchdown drives without having to throw a single pass.

[Rastak]

you bet he did. Pettine had a good year too. And yet, both got owned by SF.

I generally don't make decisions like that based on 1 out of 18 games.

[mraynrand]

I generally don't make decisions like that based on 1 out of 18 games.

that's wise

[mraynrand]

I thought the plan was schematically sound. The problem is no one we rotate in on our defensive front makes consistent plays in the running game. No one sheds blocks or explodes to the ball. No great tacklers in space . They get moved wherever a good offensive line wants them to go. How many times did we have numbers where they ran and still couldn't make a play. Cause we got scrubs like Martinez, Lancaster, Lowry, Redmond, a 40yr old tramon and a rookie learning as he goes playing safety. What could Pettine have done? His 2 best defenders are neutralized when the other team can coast to touchdown drives without having to throw a single pass.

You should have seen what happened to Minnesota's #5 ranked defense. I heard they gave up a TD drive in a playoff game with no passes.