have to blame Doug Whaley. as much good as he has done, he really screwed us by leaving us with only EJ as the backup and getting rid of key players like Fred and Thigpen (the latter he brought back when he discovered what a bone head move that was). We lost the Jacksonville and Cinci games because we had no QB and RB depth and our kick and punt return game has been atrocious all season which really hurts in the battle of field position. also, it was a big swing and a miss on getting any kind of OL help in the offseason and nobody is quite sure why we spent all of that money on Jerome Felton.
he's done a lot of good too, i don't want to discount that (Darby and Karlos were nice picks). but those misses might have cost us the season
and I also agree with Crossman. i've been saying it since day 1 when Marrone hired his buddy who was about to be fired for being one of the worst ST's coaches in the NFL. i've never seen an NFL roster like ours where a team has so many dedicated special teams players (Easley, Boobie, Sanborn, Gay, Thigpen) and we still stink. it's basically a band-aid because Crossman is such a bad ST coach. we saw when Gay or Thigpen weren't in the lineup how bad ST's was. even with all of these guys we are a below avg ST team.