49ers Destroy Redskins: Colin Kaepernick, Greg Roman Improve—Still a Long Ways Off

                                                                                            from NFL.com

That was more like it. I know it was against a 3-7 (now 3-8) team with a shell-shocked QB and a mediocre defense, but you don’t get to pick your opponents and the 49ers simply took care of business in a game they couldn’t afford not to.

Could it have been better? Absolutely. The offense stalled on some early drives and Kaep threw what should have been a very easy, and probably game changing, pick-six. But that is the nature of football; good teams make the big plays when the opportunities arise, the bad ones don’t. The Niners took advantage of their opportunities all night, and limited the Redskins when opportunities arose for them. We scored on turnovers and found the endzone in the redzone. The Redskins went three and out after recovering a fumble after a lucky non- call, and settled for two field goals. That’s good football right there. That’s encouraging football. That’s 49er football as it’s meant to be played.

Football is also a game of adjustments, and after two consecutive games where it looked like the 49ers were outcoached in the second half, you couldn’t have scripted a more dominating performance in the final quarters of this game. Vic Fangio apparently walked across the stadium and took Kyle Shanahan’s playbook from his hands, or hacked into his headset, or something, because the Niners had all the answers for the Redskins’ simplistic offense. The defense was finally rewarded with opportunities to be aggressive and play in front of a big lead, and boy did they ever deliver.

Aldon Smith is back and ready to party. Er, not party party…He’s back and ready to punish quarterbacks and clown offensive lineman; he’s going to speed rush, bull rush, spin, swim, hit and kick in the dick—anything it takes to put his signature on the game and fear in a quarterback’s eyes. It’s a beautiful thing watching that guy when his mind is right. He now has 12 sacks on Monday Night Football in less than three full seasons. He is tied for the lead among active players in that category with Dwight Freeney—a 12 year veteran.

Some major question marks surrounding the team:

Colin Kaepernick played one of the better games of his career. I’d argue it was his second best game this season, following the Green Bay game. The Jacksonville and Tennessee games come to mind too, but he had a dominant running attack those games, whereas he was pretty much asked to shoulder the load in this one and he largely delivered. Sure, the Redskins have a secondary led by DeAngelo Hall and Josh Wilson—nothing to write home about—but Kaep was mostly on the money with his throws and reads.

He did make at least one glaring mistake though. On third and five from our own 32 yard line Kaep took the snap and after moments of hesitation, set his feet and fired a bullet towards Boldin. Perry Riley read him the whole way and stepped in front for a likely pick-six if not for his cement hands.

The problem here wasn’t even that he almost threw a pick—it’s that he almost threw a pick after coming off his correct read to throw it to the wrong read. To Kaep’s left Kendall Hunter had swung out to the sideline, waiting for a short pass a few yards off the line of scrimmage. Hunter was essentially uncovered, with Brandon Merriweather the only defender around, and he was two yards passed the line to gain waiting to attempt a tackle. Key word: attempt. And Kaepernick saw all of this; he stared at it for a beat and then came off it. For what? For a chance to force the ball to Boldin, of course.

 Kaep looks left—can't quite time up his eyes directly on Hunter—and decides to go instead...

...to his right for no discernible reason whatsoever

which leads to this blurry clusterf**k of screengrab

which thankfully led to this, as opposed to 10-10 tie.     (all screengrabs from NFL.com — full highlights HERE)

Kaepernick has time and again referred to his job as a QB as being to ‘give his playmakers an opportunity to make plays.’ Was there ever a better chance to let Kendall make a play? Make the easy throw, put the ball in his hands and let him take on Merriweather one-on-one in the open field. He didn’t and almost threw a pick in the process.

Inexcusable.

Greg Roman was much better in this game. The run game got more creative, much to the titillation of John Gruden. We finally saw some of those misdirection runs and multiple pulling guards that we’ve come to expect from G-Ro. Some were more successful than others, but it was nice to see him go back to his bread and butter, instead of slamming his head into a wall running the same stretch play with Frank Gore over and over.

Still, this game wasn’t some sort of panacea for the reservations I harbor for Roman. I’m sure I’ll be writing something in the very near future about my issues with him as our offensive coordinator. Nothing about this game particularly lessened my worry about those issues. That said, give credit where credit is due, and the Niners scored three more touchdowns than the opponent, so I’m not going to criticize too harshly in the immediate aftermath of such a performance.

I already hit on the defense a little earlier, but let’s double-dip here and really take time to appreciate their dominance. Alfred Morris was averaging 5.0 ypc coming into this game and was held to a very respectable 3.7 ypc. RGIII was stuck throwing passes within five yards of the line of scrimmage all night long. The tackling was superb all around. The pass rush was finally unleashed and they absolutely wrecked Washington in the second half. It helps when you’re playing a QB with some serious issues, but it's not as if Washington was considered to be a second coming of the Jaguars heading into this game, and no one is denying RGIII’s pure talent, so it’s not as if we beat up on an infant or anything.

Let’s be honest: Defense can’t be played much better than that.

So what’s the major takeaway? We are a good team. We can be a great team. We can be a Super Bowl winning team. The offense just needs to give the defense a chance. We need to sustain drives to give them a rest, and we need to score points to allow them to unleash some aggression.

That is the key to this year’s team: Can we be aggressive, can we maintain aggression?

This isn’t the 2011 Niners. Conservative football won’t fly around here anymore. That doesn’t mean we need to throw it 40 times a game. Not at all. But we do need to start fast and we need to finish off opponents before they know what hit them. Our best blueprint to win is no longer to turn a game into a slugfest. It’s to hit the opponent in the mouth early and then slug them continually before they can shake it off. Be the aggressor and stay the aggressor.

We need to be less Ali and more Tyson. Forget floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee; we need to hit like a bull and then hit like a bull again.