Drunken Ramblings: Week 1
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God we looked good early. That’s what pisses me off about this loss. Normally I want to win the toss and defer every single day, but for some reason on Thursday I wanted the ball. The crowd was revved up. Goodell was in the building. Give me the ball and put KC in a 7-0 hole before they can blink. Bam. Got everything I wanted. Even that horrible pass to Dwayne Allen on the first play of the season couldn’t slow us down. Gillislee punched it in (twice) and our offense already looked like it was seeing the field in a red-ish glow while identifying all weaknesses in the defense like Arnold in Terminator.
Then KC fumbled (what up Jordan Richards) and we were off. It’s 14-0 and that’s the game. Warm up the bus in the first quarter. Which brings us to the first big swing in the game. The Gronk drop into the 4th and 1 stop. First of all, I do think that was a drop in the end zone. It's a tough catch but both his hands were on it. Need that to be hauled in. Second of all, I do think it was an incomplete pass, but that was closer than people think. With the call on the field a tuddy, I thought it might be tough to overturn it.
Third of all, I still think going for it was the right move. I totally understand making it a two score game, and the momentum swing you give KC by getting stopped. But come on. You have to be able to get that yard. Every single time. Not most of the time. Every time. Not only does it give you a throat stomping score, but also KC should never be able to go 90 yards the other way in your face anyway. It’s a no brainer. So spare me. I’m not mad at the call. I’m mad at Gilly. That run was blocked well enough to get a yard. I don’t care about his tuddies. I care that he was stopped in short yardage in gotta have it situations. Twice. The most unhelpful Gilly on earth told Sam that Rhaegar Targaryen was on his second wife. The least you can do is move the football 6 inches.
It was weird seeing Tom look so off. I have negative infinity worries about him moving forward. I would be ready to predict he wins regular season MVP but someone always seems to come out of the woodwork with a career year to rob us. But I do think he throws more than 30 tuddies, less than 8 picks, and over 4200 yards. He's gonna be dominant. He just needs to get to know his boys. I’m not even sure he could pick Phillip Dorsett out of a police lineup yet, let alone hit on go route 60 yards down field. But a couple of those passes were flat out bad misses. The oline played pretty well but Tom got a little jittery back there a few times, jumping out of the way of ghosts. He had a few dimes, the one to Cooks being the highlight, but he had far to many airmails. It’s always been and always will be mechanics with Tom. The good news is mechanics are easy to fix.
Hey Gronk, you accidentally changed your mailing address to Eric Berry’s back pocket. It’s not a great neighborhood, and I’d love for you to get the fuck out of there as soon as possible. Listen, I understand Berry is a big time talent. But Gronk is the premiere tight end in the league. No one should ghost protocol him like that. Berry should slow him down, sure, but maybe 5 grabs for 60 and hopefully a tuddy. Save the 100+ yard games for the scrub safeties in the league. But I’m sick of hearing that Gronk was simply shut down by a top safety so I shouldn’t be upset. That’s not supposed to happen. He is the biggest match-up problem in the league. Kindly play like it, especially when Jules died a week ago and we need you. By the way, RIP in peace to Berry. Great player and better person from what I hear. Hate the injury situation in this league.
Would have liked to see more Burkhead. I think? I don’t know, it’s not like he was on fire out there, but he had 1 catch for 8 and 3 carries for 15. Chris Hogan had that many carries. Is that a joke? Sexy Rexy looked like he could be THE GUY in the preseason. It’s not like much else was working.
The defense was a debacle. It’s hard to process. It was especially bad once High went down but it wasn’t great while he was in either. The two things Bill always stresses, well it’s one thing really, is no big plays, and make them sustain long drives. It’s two means to the same end. The bend don’t break defense. If you make them go the full field and you don’t give up big plays then opponents need to put together 10+ play drives to score 6 on you. If you settle for FGs you don’t beat us. Unfortunately we spent all night settling for FGs in the red area and we let the Chiefs have two scoring plays of over 70 yards and two scoring drives of over 90 yards. WTF.
The front 7 had a decent amount of pressure but they were getting gashed in the running game. People (cough, Alan Branch, cough) were being pushed out of holes so easily I though they were my post coffee shit. (clean it up Johnny, god!) It was mostly the check downs that were driving me insane. You always expect that with Alex Smith and a Patriots defense but it looked like no one was covered out there. The shallow crosses were going for 8 yards minimum. And when the pass rush did start to get there Smith simply had to dump the ball in front of him 2 yards to a running back who was NUDE in the middle of the field. I’d love to know what the linebackers were doing, because it must have been fun as hell if it was distracting them from actually playing in the season opener.
The secondary I was happy with, surprisingly enough. When Alex Smith pops off you'd think our secondary was to blame but I didn't feel that was the case. I thought Malcolm Butler played way better, up to the standard we expect of him. That PI call was bogus, I don’t care about that. And Gilmore was legit, man. Alex Smith wasn’t even looking at him, and when he did throw that way, Gilmore had his hands all over the balls like any good prom date in the back of the limo. (Clean it up! Jesus)
On the long Tyreek Hill tuddy I’m not sure who to execute for that. I’ve heard that Gilmore thought we were in cover 2 but we were in quarters, meaning he's responsible for a streak up that sideline. He thought he had help from Dev in cover 2. Clearly one of them was wrong. I will never find out for sure, but the way Gilmore was glaring at Dev after the play makes me think Dev was in the wrong there. I don’t expect to see miscues like that from those two going forward. They were both electric all game, that one play aside. Dev’s tackling was a major highlight for me. He forced two punts by himself on third down plays that easily could have gone for a first.
I don’t have too much else to say. I didn’t see a loss anywhere on our schedule before week 1. I still don’t see another one. This isn’t the time to panic. But I will say it made week 2 a lot more interesting. Let’s settle this ship down and get back on track.
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