• last week
Transcript
00:00And I think that at least to a certain degree, what we're seeing come through on the text line
00:06and the tweets and just the kind of the engagement that we're getting is, yeah, a lot of you are
00:11taking today as an indicator that the Niners are not very confident in their team. And I don't see
00:18it that way at all. I really think that the Niners all year long will be licking their wounds because
00:25of what happened against the Rams and the Cardinals. Like you don't shake that stuff.
00:30There is going to be a penalty for that. Hopefully the penalty will not be that you
00:34missed the playoffs, but it may well be seeding in the playoffs for sure. You know, you may end
00:41up being the three seed or the four seed or worse or no seed because of those losses. So I do think
00:48there will be a penalty, but to sort of translate that to thinking that the 49ers don't think
00:55that they have what it takes. I did like how on earth, you know, the idea that this team would
01:02be like, well, let's, let's start jockeying for next year, next year. I thought, I thought we
01:08were all under the premise that a bunch of the players that they have right now aren't even
01:11going to be on the team next year. It's Superbowl or bust. I'm not getting off that. I don't believe
01:16that you get off that after eight games at four and four in a division where nine and eight might
01:22get it done. 10 and seven will get it done. And so, I mean, can you go six and three? Can you
01:27beat your three divisional opponents? Yeah. You should be three and O in the division right now,
01:31but you're not. So can you beat Arizona at home? Yeah. Can you beat the Rams at home?
01:36Sure. Can you beat this Seattle Seahawks when they're off a bi-week? Yeah. That's going to
01:42be tougher. I think that it was the first time, but yeah, you can win all three of those. And
01:47then you take your other six games and you go three and three, boom, 10 and seven,
01:51you win the division. I mean, isn't there any room for the people they have playing better?
01:58That's kind of my question. Like that's the other part of this conversation I'm off of.
02:04Chrissy McCaffrey is a big deal. It would be ridiculous to think otherwise.
02:09And I think that in terms of play calling and emotions, obviously McCaffrey is going to bring
02:15a massive jolt to everything that any stadium in which he plays the huddle, the play calling
02:24everything, the sideline massive jolt. But the idea that he is the key and if he is himself,
02:35then the Niners are amaze balls again. And if he's not, then they're dust. I just, I don't,
02:41I don't see it that way. Cause even for example, even if Christian is exactly what he was last
02:46year, whatever y'all have been watching on the defensive side of the ball stays exactly the same.
02:52And I would argue it needs to be better, but don't we leave any room for a brand new defensive
02:58coordinator? Maybe finding some things a little bit. Oh yeah. Do we leave room for Devon Drake
03:04Campbell who had his best game in his last game? Do we leave room for him being a little bit better?
03:10Do we leave room for Dre Greenlaw getting back into the lineup? Do we, do we leave room for
03:16these defensive linemen who outside of Nick Bosa are largely playing together for the first time
03:21getting in concert a little bit more together? Like that's what I think the Niners need.
03:26They're going to need their guys. They have to be better in the second half of the year
03:31without a doubt. And that's why I think that this Tampa Bay game, while not a must win feels like
03:37maybe the biggest game of the year that we've had so far, because you're four and four and Tampa,
03:43you look at last night's game against Kansas city and Tampa Bay is down there.
03:48First, second and third wide receiver, all three of their top three wide receivers were out.
03:53And yet they hung with Kansas city. And if their head coach had, I don't know,
03:59cojones and went for two and tried to snuff out Patrick Mahomes, maybe they beat Kansas city and
04:05give them their first loss. So Tampa Bay is not going to be an easy game. I don't think even
04:10though Tampa will be on a short week and they still won't have three wide receivers, Tampa Bay,
04:15even without all that they hung with Kansas city and they were every bit as good as Kansas city up
04:20until the end of solid football team. It's a road game. Like the way the Niners have played.
04:25I don't assume anything's going to be easy. I do assume or not assume I believe they should win.
04:32Their situation is better and their roster is better. And if they play as well as they're
04:37capable of playing, they will win the football game. But they don't, they haven't been doing
04:41that all the time. And you look at last night and Tampa Bay was nine and a half point underdog
04:46and they had a chance to get to overtime. They had a chance to win the game, but the head coach
04:50chose not to go for two. And this is one where you can look at analytics all you want, but I look at
04:56across the field. And if I'm Todd Bowles and I look across the field and I see number 15
05:02licking his chops and getting ready to get the ball back and he'd get the ball back anyway,
05:07but he would have gotten the ball back with a one point deficit. If you scored and got the two.
05:11And I think how many seconds were on the clock? Like 27, 30. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think I'm with
05:16you. Plus, and he called time out when he shouldn't have left all the time on the clock.
05:23That whole thing, when you're going up against my homes, you have to do everything you
05:26can to not give him a chance. I just, to me sometimes simplify it, right? There's the old
05:33adage that if you're in that situation and you are on the road and especially as the underdog,
05:39and I know that teams don't think that way, like, Oh, we're the underdog, but, but yeah,
05:43a little bit like you're going up against the chiefs. They have not lost a game since Christmas
05:50and they have only lost in the playoffs in the Superbowl one time in the last four years.
05:57So there's that when, when all of those things are sitting there and you're on the road,
06:01yeah, dude, try to steal one, try to steal one, liken it to an NBA game.
06:06Like it is. So tomorrow night, if the golden state warriors get the ball and there's 10 seconds to go
06:13and they're down by two, what kind of a shot would you like them shooting the chef?
06:18I want a three tie the game sends the overtime. Maybe
06:25yeah, shoot a three ball and do it at the buzzer and then run for the locker room and hope that it
06:31went in. John Lynch today on the TK show, our buddy, Tim Calakami, he was talking about the
06:40idea of a trade and a trade of some magnitude and whether or not that is needed to kind of
06:47ignite the locker room. Take a listen. I think that that's not the reason you make moves.
06:51Sometimes that's a by-product of making moves. It excites the clubhouse, but I do believe that
06:56our team, our, our, our locker room, our leadership believes we've got everything we need.
07:02And they think a lot like me when we start getting the Christian McKay, he's a game changer,
07:06Dre Greenlaw, he's a, he's a game changer. Um, who Funga he's been, uh, he's, you know,
07:11when we can start getting these guys back, I think there's, there's a lot right there. Um,
07:16I do watch other sports though. I, you know, you think like the Dodgers who just won it all,
07:21like Tommy Edmond, that was a really good move under the radar. And sometimes those under the
07:25radar, I mean, we've made really good moves, big splash moves like McCaffrey, Trent Williams,
07:30and then off season that not at the deadline. But then sometimes you think some of the better
07:34moves we've made is a guy like Charles Amenahu, who we got some value at for, for the year we
07:40traded for him, but then his deal went on to the next year and Charles played some good football,
07:44turned into a compact for us. So there's a lot of different variables you look at. Um, and, uh,
07:50you know, you always want to try to make your team better. There's things that have to fit.
07:54And, you know, we, we do, um, you know, have to be mindful that there's some tough cap realities
08:00coming in the, in the future. And so that, that plays a part in this as well. This is a great
08:04sound bite because John Lynch sat there whenever they recorded this likely within the last 48
08:10hours or so. Um, he told you exactly what they were going to do, right? He's trying to get Tommy
08:15Edmund and LCS MVP or Charles Amenahu who was really good. And if memory serves from the exact
08:23same team, right. Amenahu who came from Houston. So they made the similar phone call out to Houston
08:31where there's D'Amico Ryan's and there's a lot of overlap, um, from the 49ers organization.
08:36They all know one another well, and then went out and got another defensive lineman from Houston.
08:40And he's literally telling you why he's telling you why it's not a bigger swing. And you can be
08:46frustrated by it. I hoped for something that had a little bit more pizzazz too, but I also accept
08:52his answer, which is a, if you're looking to add pizzazz to the locker room, we, we did. And we
08:58will, their names are Christian McCaffrey and Drake Greenlaw. And when he mentions that cap
09:03reality thing at the end, he's specifically talking about Brock Purdy and he's not wrong.
09:10In other words, we're not taking on any big contracts. Number one. And number two, we're
09:15not willy nilly with our draft picks. We're not sending them out because what we're going to need
09:19big time in the next three years of Niner football to still be good is cheap labor.
09:25And that's found in the draft. No doubt. And they did that this year. And I do think that they've
09:29found a lot of cheap labor and they also have undrafted players who are helping them out. And
09:34I look at what they actually did bring in. And I don't know if he's going to be a Tommy Edmund.
09:39You brought in Khalil Davis, according to pro football focus this year on defense,
09:44he is a 53.5, which is slightly above Devandre Campbell and what he's been defensively. So
09:51you're basically getting the defensive line version of Devandre Campbell. He's 84th out of 124
09:58among interior defensive linemen, a guy who only played 172 snaps, which is about a third.
10:04And when he played, he wasn't very good. So that's who you brought in,
10:09according to pro football focus, depth, right depth. You brought in Devandre Campbell of the
10:15D line. Well, it's different position. I don't know if that's based on this one metric. He
10:22rates very similar to Devandre Campbell, almost identical in what his impact has been in granted
10:29a third of the snaps of Devandre Campbell, where Campbell's played more snaps than almost anybody
10:34on your defense. If I asked it to you this way, who'd you want him to replace?
10:38Cause that's largely what's happening. If you do, if you take big swings at the trade deadline,
10:44Washington just got Marshawn Lattimore. Now there's a corner in Washington. I don't know
10:50the Washington corners, but someone's getting replaced. Someone's taking a seat.
10:57Devandre Hopkins goes to the Kansas city chiefs. Somebody sat down. Juju Smith Schuster got hurt.
11:04And I don't know if he's getting back in the lineup now. So I guess maybe that's sort of
11:08the question that, that we should ask baseball teams do this at the trade deadline as well.
11:14You'll sit there and go, I want this guy. Okay. Who's sitting. So who, who is it that you want
11:21to take fewer snaps for the 49ers who right now is getting them?
11:25Either Malik Collins or Jordan Elliot or Malik Collins. Good. He's been fine. Yeah. I mean,
11:30they've both been fine. Neither one of them has been that impactful. So I would look for
11:35somebody to come in and push them and make one of them the depth piece instead of bringing somebody
11:40to come in behind them. And that's what this is.
11:43Well, I don't know. I mean, that's a competition now to see who, you know, if the cream rises
11:48to the top, you know, like I I'll say this and something I was kind of saving
11:52for a little bit after Steve Kerr because the inspiration for it is buddy healed.
11:57But how many times in pro sports have we watched someone look like one player somewhere and then
12:03come somewhere else and look a lot better? Yeah, that's true. What I mean? So, and I'm not saying,
12:08I don't know the damn thing about Khalil Davis. I have no idea what's going to happen here,
12:12but I'm certainly whenever there's an acquisition, I'm going to jump in with an open mind to see
12:20how that player fits this system when also given a boost in opportunity. You know, like that's the
12:27other thing. When you start, it's like a pinch hitter in baseball. Your average is going to be
12:32like two Oh two. And you can't ask that guy to go hit two 70 because he's hitting the ball. Like
12:38he's out there twice a week getting in that bat. So I don't know how the Niners are going to use
12:43him, but if he gets more snaps, maybe there's more production that comes along with it too.
12:47Yeah, could be. It's a little different with a defensive tackle where you do get,
12:51you know, rotational snaps and you get a chance to go out there and play at least some. And I
12:56don't know what percentage of the snaps he's actually played, but the Niners have not found
13:01any real mainstays in that spot. You mentioned Malik Collins and he leads the team in snaps at
13:07that spot and the rest of them, it's been piecemeal Jordan Elliott. It was Hargrave while
13:12he was healthy. It's been a lot of, you know, givens and in and out and they haven't had an
13:16answer.

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