Cash

Very good point, although we should really just look at 49ers draftees who were with the team pre-Harbaugh, which removes Aldon Smith, Colin Kaepernick, and Bruce Miller (FB). Actually, looking at the 49ers' last two drafts, they're kind of underwhelming for such a good team. Obviously Aldon Smith is a big-time difference maker, but Kaepernick didn't play a down last year and they went 13-3. Bruce Miller is a fullback. Kendall Hunter & LaMichael James are decent players, but very replaceable. No one else ever plays, near as I can tell. Anyway, the point is that the 49ers have a loaded team, but it's mostly loaded with players drafted before the current head coach was hired. And yet the team was terrible then. Granted, there've also been some free agent signings, but it really looks like the big difference is coaching. Which is an argument against "continuity," but I'd like to get a little more nuanced here. Think about some of those 1st-round picks who are/were starting for the 49ers. Alex Smith, Vernon Davis, and Michael Crabtree were all considered busts at one point or another. (In fairness, Davis turned it around under Singletary, but that wasn't until his 4th year in the league.) Most teams would have parted ways with at least 2 of them, if not all 3, well before Harbaugh was able to turn the ship around. Alex Smith even re-signed with the 49ers after his contract expired. So in that regard, here's a very strong case study for continuity. But "continuity" in this case doesn't mean retain the head coach, it means retain the players. Which I agree with. (Example: Obviously we all want Byrd & Levitre back, but what about McKelvin? He's a comparable bust to Crabtree or Smith, and he's shown this year that he can help a team in the right situation. And maybe the next coach can get a little more out of him.) I don't want Gailey fired in favor of someone who will truly blow it up, cutting veterans left & right because they don't suit his system or whatever. I do want Gailey fired in favor of someone who might do a better job of getting our talented players to play up to their abilities. And if that guy doesn't show any of that ability in a few years, then fire him and try again. But I think there is real value in a certain amount of roster stability, as long as it's conditional. For example, when the 49ers re-signed Alex Smith, it was with the full understanding that he had no claim on the starting job and was likely to be a backup. That's an extremely rare attitude for a first-round pick, let alone #1 overall. In the case of Fitz, once we have a replacement starter on the roster, he'll probably need to be cut, just because he's making starter money.

Don't know a ton about him yet, but from what I've read so far, sounds like a stay-away. Every positive profile I've seen has basically read, "He wasn't that great in college, and his numbers are underwhelming, but he has all the physical tools. Think about how good he COULD be with the right coaching!" I reserve the right to change my mind as I find out more info, but for now, I say no thanks.

I notice you're still ducking my questions. Here they are again, to save you the trouble of going back a page: 1. "Would the 49ers have righted the ship (winning records, playoff appearances, etc.) by keeping one of the coaches they fired from 2003-2012 instead of firing them?" 2. "Would the Bills have made the playoffs by now if Gregg Williams, Mike Mularkey, or Dick Jauron had been retained as head coach?" I'm guessing the answer to #2 is no, based on your comments above? But I'll be honest, I'm having trouble understanding your argument here. You say that blowing things up after 3 years won't lead to winning, and use Spurrier as an example of a guy who was thought to be the savior, but sucked. But Gailey's just as bad. Shouldn't the Redskins have kept Spurrier in the sake of continuity? You say you weren't on board with giving Jauron a 4th year, but you are for Gailey. Why? In hindsight, do you wish we'd kept Jauron longer and given him a 5th year? If not, what has Gailey shown you in the last 3 years that suggests that unlike Jauron, he is a good coach that will turn things around? How is Gailey different from Spurrier or Jauron?

Plus his contract is expiring, so even if he looks good, you need to sign him to a new deal, and he needs to be willing to take it. After being inactive for 14 straight games, with the coach heavily implying that he's too stupid to learn the playbook, would T-Jax be very interested in returning, even after starting the last 2? If he was promised the starting job and given a significant raise, probably. But that would be a huge risk for the team based on just 2 starts in meaningless games. The T-Jax trade was a minor gamble that lost. There's no way of turning it from a loss into a win, so I have no problem with keeping him on the bench for the last 2. If nothing else, just so that he can't be sold as the change we can believe in next year, based on a couple decent performances in meaningless games. The guy's been a starter for what, 3 seasons? If he was going to be anything great, we'd have seen it by now. He's not terrible, but he'll never be a major upgrade over Fitz. And if we're going to bring back Chan, we should be swinging for the fences with our next QB, not trying to bunt for a single. If we swing and miss, the team crashes, Chan's fired (that's a good thing), and we take another swing at both coach and QB.

My concern is that Fitz is made the fall guy, and Chan is brought back and allowed to draft "his guy" at QB in the first round. Because I expect that "his guy" would be cut out of the Blaine Gabbert/Christian Ponder/Jake Locker mold, and the team would fail miserably. But that sets up Gailey to be the fall guy in 2013, and whatever new coach is hired will stick with Blaikian Plockert for another year or two and continue to fail miserably. That sets up Nix to be the fall guy, and at that point, it's a "blow it up" situation. I feel like there's some merit in continuity, but more on the GM level, and with the understanding that we need an upgrade at QB. I really think there's enough talent on this team right now to make the playoffs, and that's *with* Fitz at QB. Improve the coaching and QB, draft well and re-sign our free agents, and we could really build something.

4-3 vs. 3-4 really doesn't matter much. Most of the best Ds these days play a hybrid anyway. Unless you've got a real 3-4 guru like Wade Phillips, you're better off just sticking with whatever fits your personnel, and for us that's a 4-3. (And even Wade Phillips greatly adapts his 3-4 to suit his personnel. The Texans play more of a 5-2 this year.) Plus, our biggest problem is that our players are almost always fooled or out of sync on misdirection. We usually do fine against vanilla stuff (see that recent stretch against bad teams where we held them all well below their season averages). All of Seattle's big plays were on misdirection, and that's been typical all year. Usually the big plays we give up on the ground come down to 1 of two things. On Wilson's first TD run, both Mario and Bryan Scott went for Lynch, which left no one to pick up Wilson. That's #1, and it's a problem of either the players not properly knowing their roles, or being enough out of sync that they made different reads of the play. #2 happened on either Lynch's 54-yard run or his TD run, I forget which. After the game, Barnett talked about how he was supposed to cover the B gap, but was worried about Wilson keeping it, so he freelanced to Wilson's side, and Lynch went right through the empty B gap. Barnett did the same thing on one of Chris Johnson's long TD runs when we played Tennessee. If one guy doesn't trust his teammates to do their jobs and freelances, it can go well if he happens to guess right and/or is an amazing physical freak. However, it more frequently results in a good play for the offense, as long as it's a well-run offense. Anyway, I think both of those problems are mostly the result of coaching, but not so much scheme-specific stuff as leadership stuff. It's the coaches' job to get everyone on the same page and trusting each other, and they've failed miserably in that regard. I continue to say that there is enough talent on this defense for it to be at least competent. Probably not good enough in the back 7 to be dominant for a whole season, especially if our young CB's don't improve, but definitely talented enough to be middling.

One additional point: Nix defended Gailey/continuity by using Marvin Lewis as his example of a guy who struggled for a while, then got a QB and WR (while failing to note that the Bills passed on both of those players in that draft). For the record, Lewis went 8-8, 8-8, and 11-5 in his first 3 years on the job, taking over a team that went 2-14 the year before and 12-36 over the previous 3 years. In comparison, Gailey took over a 6-10 team that had gone 20-28 over the previous 3 years, and has gone 15-31 so far in his first three years. In closing, I do not think the Marvin Lewis comparison is legitimate. While Lewis' record can be a good argument for continuity in general, I don't think his record is applicable to Gailey's, and that's the question at stake: Not "is continuity good," but "is Chan Gailey continuity good?" I say no, and other than Belichick's tenure with the Browns, I haven't seen any evidence that more Gailey might lead us to the playoffs.

Wow, that's depressing.

My point is that I'm curious as to what you think in response to my question: "Would the 49ers have been better off keeping one of the coaches they fired from 2003-2010 instead of firing them?" There's no way to prove a right or wrong answer, but I'm curious what you think. Or if you think the wording is unfair, how about, "Would the 49ers have righted the ship (winning records, playoff appearances, etc.) by keeping one of the coaches they fired from 2003-2012 instead of firing them?" If you're willing to answer that question, I have a follow-up: "Would the Bills have made the playoffs by now if Gregg Williams, Mike Mularkey, or Dick Jauron had been retained as head coach?" Again, no way to prove a right or wrong answer, just curious as to your honest opinion.

Yes, although several of them were posted while I was looking for the link in question. Forgive me if I missed it, but I didn't see anything answering the question, "Would the 49ers have been better off keeping one of the coaches they fired from 2003-2010 instead of firing them?"

So would you say that the 49ers should have kept Dennis Erickson, Mike Nolan, or Mike Singletary on board in the name of continuity? http://en.wikipedia....9310:_Struggles Mariucci was fired despite making the playoffs, Dennis Erickson was brought in, then fired after 2 years and a 9-23 record. Mike Nolan was brought in to rebuild, went 16-32 in 3 seasons. He was retained for a 4th, and fired once the team started off 2-5. Mike Singletary was hired as HC after going 5-4 as the interim HC. Singletary was under fire, but retained, after a full season of 8-8, but fired after going 6-9 the following season. Then Jim Harbaugh was hired, and the 49ers are 23-6-1 since. The 49ers were totally on the "blow it up every 2-3 years" cycle that you claim we're in, yet they got out of it by firing their coach. Do you honestly think that if they'd retained Erickson or Nolan or Singletary, they'd still be this good now? Or better yet, that firing Erickson and Nolan set them back, and they might've become a dominant team a couple years earlier? I really want to know. I'm not saying I'm definitely right, but I'm confident that Chan Gailey isn't a good enough head coach to lead this team to success without elite talent across the board, and I'd rather get rid of him now than later. I felt similarly about Dick Jauron after the 2008 season. He was retained for the sake of continuity, and the team only got worse. My guess is that if Gailey is brought back (and I agree that there's a good chance of it), the team will start off with a bad record and he'll be fired midseason, a la Jauron or Nolan. Unfortunately I can't find the link, but I recently read a good analysis (I think by Tim Graham, but not sure) of coaches whose first 3 seasons were all losing records. (EDIT: Here's the link, and it was Mark Gaughan who did it.) Only about 12 head coaches (EDIT: 11 in the last 25 years) have been brought back for a 4th season, and of them, only Belichick had a winning season (EDIT: playoff berth) in year 4, going 11-5 with the Browns. I just don't see anything in Gailey's record with the Bills that suggests that he can do significantly better than what he's already done.

Thanks for passing along. Presumably two practice squadders will be promoted to fill the spots. Too bad Easley's hurt. He's made some nice plays on special teams, and with Jones out & the season over, it's a perfect time to start him (along w/ Stevie and Russell Wilson T.Y. Hilton Chris Givens T.J. Graham) and see what he can do. Then again, given Chan's comments this week, it sounds like he has zero interest in developing for the future and 100% interest in sticking with what he knows, to try to save his job.

Is that why he drafted Lawrence Maroney in the 1st round, Stevan Ridley in the 2nd, and Shane Vereen in the 3rd? (Ridley & Vereen in the same draft, no less.)

Certainly that's a reasonable concern. Here's my take: I'd like to see the Bills as concerned about the QB position as they are about the DB position (I know that's more than one position, but still). And I mean more than just "they draft DBs #1, they should draft QBs #1 instead". I would have freaked out if they'd drafted any available QB over Dareus. (Gabbert & Locker had bust written all over them and Ponder would've, except he was such an epic reach no one was expecting him to be eligible for the bust label.) I'm all for them drafting a QB #1 or #2 if they feel there's a good guy available (obviously Aaron Williams over Dalton/Kaepernick back-to-back stings a lot in hindsight), but that's only part of the picture. I'm getting a little off track, so let me try to summarize. Fitz is not the biggest problem we have, but he is *a* problem. We want/need a better starting QB. In hindsight, it was a mistake to sign him to that contract extension, though I was fine with it at the time. I would hate to see that same kind of commitment given to a retread like Alex Smith or Kyle Orton or whoever, but I'd rather have a Fitz-comparable retread on a short-term, cheap deal than Fitz himself. Why? That way we would have more possibilities to strike gold. Maybe we trade for Joe Webb and he beats out the retread in camp and goes on to be really good. Maybe our 2nd or 3rd round rookie beats out the retread and has a solid year, a la Dalton or Russell Wilson. Maybe the retread has a Rich Gannon (yes!) or Fitzpatrick (no!) style late-blooming renaissance, and leads us to the playoffs. Or maybe all of our QB lotto tickets lose, and we bring in some new ones the next year. The bottom line is that prior to this year, Nix/Gailey had done nothing to address upgrading the present or future of the starting QB. Levi Brown and Thigpen never had a chance to be better than decent backups. This year, Nix did make two marginal moves, both of the "retread" variety: signing Young and trading for T-Jack. Neither worked out, and that's fine, but at least there was some effort. What I'd prefer to see would be that effort combined with efforts on the draft front, and maybe on the "unproved young QB with potential" front rather than the "retread" front.

The only thing I'll defend Chan on is this, and only partially. He emphasized that it was a screen they hadn't showed to anyone all year (presumably that includes preseason). So there was no film on it for the Rams to study. Yes, the Bills screen all the time, and yes, teams have been sitting on those screens more in the last few weeks, so I don't give Chan a pass on this one. But he's generally good with the screen game (a Pats-fan friend of mine always says Chan's the best in the league at screens), and the Bills run a lot of different screens. Even if the D knows that the next play is a screen pass, and even if they know it's going to a RB, they can still easily get burned by some of the fancier misdirection screens we sometimes run. So I don't think it's crazy for Chan to defend that call by saying that they hadn't run that particular play yet this season. Full disclosure: I didn't see the play in question, and I'm assuming it was something that played off of plays we've run a lot before -- i.e., make the D think it's a play they prepared for, then surprise them. Anyway, I completely share the outrage over Chan's other comments. Really just indefensible, and very frustrating to listen to. Beyond everything else, I'm sick of hearing about how close we are. We heard that under Jauron, too. When bad teams play other bad teams, it shouldn't be surprising that the games are close at the end. But whether we barely win or barely lose, we're still a bad team. We played like a good team against KC, Cleveland, Jacksonville, and parts of the NE games, and that's it. Arizona and Miami were absolute garbage when we played them -- if we'd played well at all, we'd have won both games by 2+ TDs.

Very good piece. I continue to be a huge fan of Dareus.

With Fred out, Gailey has come out and said that Spiller will get almost the full workload. However, he also said 2 weeks ago that Spiller would get 60% of the carries, and that was proved false. Also, Choice came in to replace Fred last week, and got a significant amount of work both this year and last when Fred wasn't able to play and Spiller was tearing it up. Most significantly, Choice was *always* the RB on the goal line last year, and most of the time this year. This year, regardless of whether Fred was healthy or not, Chan has shown a slight willingness to play Spiller at the goal line, but has generally taken him out of the game once we get inside the 20. So in advance of the game, here's your chance to predict what the breakdown will be. I included questions 1 & 2 because it's possible for Spiller to get 100% of the work, but still be grossly underutilized. Please vote for what you THINK will actually happen on Sunday, not what you HOPE will happen.

The bolded part is the most frustrating. We've really only been forced to pass in 2 games this year (Jets & 49ers). The first Pats game ended up a blowout, but we had a multi-TD lead in the 3rd quarter, and coughed it up quickly in part because we kept passing. The smarter teams, especially more recently, have been stacking the line, or at least sticking in their base/run D when we go spread. And then Chan responds by sticking with the spread and trying to throw the D out of their base set. The Houston game was probably the best example. I'll give Chan this -- the offense is at its best when we're running out of the spread against a nickel or dime D, which we seemed to do more of earlier in the year. But he doesn't seem to realize that the offense is at its worst when we're throwing out of the spread, whether we're against a run D or a pass D.

Serious question: When we got the ball with almost a minute to go and 2 timeouts, needing a FG to tie, what was your confidence level? I.e., what did you think the chances were that Fitz would lead us down the field to tie or win the game? Personally, mine was about 10%, and the only thing that surprised me was that he completed one nice pass. But I missed the first half, and maybe I wasn't being fair. So I'm curious where your confidence was at, since you're defending his game. And for the record, I think Chan puts Fitz in position to lose way too often. Let's put it this way: I don't think Alex Smith would be a significant upgrade over Fitz, and Smith went 13-3 last year and 6-2 this year (6-2-1 if you count the first Rams game that he was knocked out of). Our backs are better than SF's. Our receivers were definitely better last year, and probably still better this year. Our line is probably not as good, but not far off when healthy. Our D is definitely not as good, but it's hard to say how much of that is coaching. So I agree that Fitz is not our biggest problem. But just like Harbaugh switched to Kaepernick the first chance he got, I would like to switch to a QB that is a part of the solution, rather than just "not our biggest problem." Problem is, I don't know who that would be, and most of the options floated around are weak at best.

Fixed your punctuation/capitalization for you. And I would argue that with our backs and O-line, we should be much higher than just 7th in rushing. 1st is probably asking too much, but top 3 is reasonable. And our passing rank is very low despite us passing too much because we are bad at passing the football. When Fitz throws a lot, we don't get many first downs, and thus can't get many yards. The more he throws it, the easier things get for the defense, so even going to 100% passing wouldn't get us many more passing yards.

By that logic, no bad team should ever be able to get good. And yet it happens every year. Good teams have continuity because when something is going well, you try not to change it. Thus, continuity and winning go hand in hand. But it's the winning that causes the continuity, not the other way around. Do you really think that if we'd kept Dick Jauron for the past 3+ years that we'd have made the playoffs at any point? Chan Gailey is not a competent coach, is not young or inexperienced, and has shown very little tendency to correct his mistakes. No amount of continuity will transform him into a good coach.

If the Bills ran the Alex Smith 49ers offense (not the Colin Kaepernick 49ers offense), they would definitely have a couple more wins this year. Instead, they run the Tom Brady Patriots offense.

No, I am not glad, I'm quite disappointed. I actually had genuine hope this year, unlike the last few. I'm still dealing with those hopes being crushed. And watching the games with fellow Bills fans on Sundays isn't as fun once the games are meaningless. Yeah, technically still in the hunt, but c'mon. I think even the coaches and players realize how bad they suck at this point. I know I'm now completely hopeless and demoralized. So no, not glad at all.

You idiots don't know beans about the NFL. The run game won't be successful until your passing game forces the other team into a prevent D with 7 defensive backs 20 yards from the line of scrimmage. THAT'S when you hit them with the ground game, dummies.

Agreed.