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Transcript
00:00The Niners won. Did anybody miss that part? They won the football game, but we're frustrated.
00:07Why? What is it? What is it for each of you? For me, I just keep going back to the word
00:12underachieving. Nothing, nothing easy. Nothing easy.
00:16Zaza, there it is. But, you know, I just, I don't understand
00:22why everything the Niners have done this year seems to be like they're limping their way
00:28to the finish line every single time. But anyway, before we go to the phones, I want
00:32to tell you about this. In honor of Klay Thompson, coming back to Chase Center tomorrow, we're
00:36giving away tickets to the game, and we'll do that today, and then a Klay Warriors jersey
00:41tomorrow. And so you need to listen at 8 a.m., 12 p.m., and 4 p.m. Now, only one of those
00:48is left. 4 p.m. So be listening at 4 p.m., and we're also putting on the Klay Carnival
00:54at Thrive City tomorrow. We're going to be broadcasting there, Stiney and Goose, so no
00:58matter how, whenever you get off work, if you got tickets, come see us in the Plaza
01:03tomorrow before the game against the Mavericks. So stay locked in for all the details. Find
01:07out how you can win, starting at 4 o'clock today, for your chance to win your way in
01:12to tomorrow's game. All right, let's go to the phones. How about
01:15Jonathan in the City? First up here on Willard & Dibbs. Hi, Jonathan, what are you doing?
01:19Hey, what's up, guys? Just, you know, making some rice. Hey, speaking of rice, Nick, maybe
01:25you start, you should start eating some carbs, bro, because all that wagging beef has done
01:30you no good. Man, I've been watching the game for like maybe three decades plus. This Sunday,
01:39I've seen probably the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen, man. Him getting stiff-armed
01:45by a quarterback for like 10 seconds like he was a little toddler. Man, what is that?
01:51You know, pull him down, bro. What's all that muscle on you? Is this for show? I mean, dude,
01:58eat some carbs and get stronger, because man, a premier pass rusher like yourself shouldn't
02:06be getting embarrassed on TV by a quarterback named Baker Mayfield. I mean, Baker Mayfield,
02:13he's not the size of the late Steve McNair, you know? No, he's not. He's not. Or Ben Ruffles.
02:20Yeah, that was a super random comment, but it's the truth. Enjoy the rice. Don't overcook it.
02:27No, overcooked rice is too bad. Rice has to be exactly right. Yeah, better under than over. I'd
02:32rather have it be a little bit tough than like super mushy. No, rice cannot be crunchy. We're
02:38not doing that. No. But anyway, I don't know. The word embarrassing has already come up a bunch
02:46today. Right. There's no such thing as an embarrassing win. I don't get it. Which part?
02:51The fact that that was embarrassing. You went on the road and beat a team that is a playoff
02:56contending team. Well, but specifically the Bosa play, where he's got two hands on Baker,
03:03and Baker just takes him for a, he takes him for what looked like a 12 yard walk.
03:09Right. And then, and by the way, don't forget, don't forget the backdrop.
03:16The game's over if he tackles him. Exactly. It's over. So I think as a fan, that's part of the
03:24emotion here. When you see your superstar pass rusher, get two hands on the quarterback on
03:32fourth down at the end of the, that's it. That's it. The game's over. Game's over. I stood up.
03:39Oh, the game was over. And then they're just like, no, no, no. Let's go over here.
03:44Yep. And then no, no, no. Let's keep going. Let's go over here. And, and, and, and first down,
03:52I don't know, man. I know Nick was super questionable in this game. I'm going to give
03:55like a little shred of maybe dude, you just weren't right. I don't know exactly what he
04:00is feeling in this game, but outside of his one sack, I really thought Nick Bosa got absolutely
04:08owned in this game. I thought he had a pressure early in the game, which produced a sack for,
04:14I don't know if Sam O got it or if somebody else was credited with the sack, but he was in
04:19on that. And, you know, I'm not going to sit here and defend Nick Bosa for the entirety of the show.
04:23I'm not saying that he had a great game, but he was more impactful than that. And we all want to
04:28look at the one play where he should have gotten Baker to the ground and he didn't. And then Baker
04:33made a great play. And that happens in football, especially when you're trying to be as a pass
04:38rusher, you're trying to figure out how to tackle a guy the right way. It's not as easy as just,
04:43you know, grab him and throw him to the ground because that might be a penalty.
04:46So you have to try to, you know, grab him and bring him down a certain way. And in this play,
04:51he didn't, and you didn't think that Baker was going to do what he did. And then he made that
04:55throw. And it's like, Oh my God. I mean, I mean that that play is Baker Mayfield in a nutshell.
05:01Totally. So I'm I'm I've come to your side of the table with regard to this. Like Baker,
05:06he is kind of a gnat. He, he will do things like that. He's faster than you think he is.
05:12He's tougher than you think he is. He's got a better arm than you think he's got. Like Baker
05:17Mayfield's a good player. I know the history. I know all the punch lines. Baker's a good player.
05:23Dot, dot, dot. Nick Bosa with two hands on a quarterback. That man needs to fall to the ground.
05:30For sure. He needs to fall to the ground. And he's had a lot of that this year. And I don't
05:34know if it's a, where he needs to put down the Wagyu steak and, you know, eat some more carbs,
05:39but there's been a number of plays over the last few weeks where he's gotten hands on people.
05:44Maybe he needs one of those old like grip things where you work on your grip strength, right?
05:48Yeah. And I don't, you know, which it's hard to tell. Cause by the way, Bucky Irving,
05:52Bucky is number seven and Rashad is number one. Is that right? Yep. So they look almost like
05:58I can't tell them apart. And it's kind of funny too. Cause I got Bucky on a fantasy team or two.
06:03And my son Jude has Rashad white on his fantasy team. So literally we're like competing before
06:10the ball's even been snapped. Like the guy, like if you're watching a box game, those guys will
06:14come out and it'll be like, it's white. And I'll be like, no, it's Bucky. And you're like,
06:18I can't tell. So I don't even know. I think it was Bucky. I don't know what drive,
06:23but Nick Bost has got him in the backfield and Bucky just went,
06:28get off of me, Nick, no problem. And takes off up the middle of the field.
06:35So listen, whether Nick was hurt and whether you want to give Nick a pass this, that, or the other,
06:40there were multiple, very uncharacteristic missed tackles by Nick Bosa in this football game. And,
06:49and he's going up against a really good tackle who then got hurt left and a former 49er cast
06:57off came in and stonewalled him to just in school. Yeah. Hard, hard to watch. It's hard to watch,
07:04but I still look at a defense that allowed only 20 points. And seven of those came when the
07:10special teams could not catch the football on a punt. So really, and that was a 21 yard drive.
07:16So for me, it really feels more like 13 points and the offense should have scored 35 or more.
07:25So that game would never have been in doubt. And the Nick Bosa performance never would have been
07:30in question. If the kicker could make a kick or if the offense could actually score a touchdown,
07:36they did score some touchdowns. So like I, I never won for three in the zone, but field goals happen.
07:41Like I do that. We gotta be careful with every time they go inside the 20. That means automatically
07:45they're supposed to score a touchdown. Like field goals happen. They do. I I'm not asking for a
07:50hundred percent. You're not wrong. The percentage needs to be higher, but the offense did put the
07:55ball in the end zone. You know, two beautiful touchdown passes from Brock Purdy. You know,
08:02great. If you can score a touchdown without having to go to the red zone, that's even better.
08:06If they're long, let's let's go to shark in San Leandro. Hi shark. What's up?
08:14What's up fellas, man. Appreciate y'all taking my call. I just wanted to give y'all a little
08:20pushback on how I felt about the, the, the, the Niner gang. So a quick question. I hear y'all
08:28criticism about Bosa's game. I'm more of a basketball dude, man. Go Warriors. We've been
08:35playing crazy by the way, right now. How about that road trip was something. Okay. But we'll,
08:41yeah, we'll get back to that. So my question for y'all is would a player like Nick Bosa defensive
08:50end he did make that bonehead play at the end there that had us all shaking in our boots.
08:57But at the end of the day, the stat lines don't always seem to show how good a player is or how
09:06he's playing. I was wondering if you guys thought it was his effort or is it just a lack of stats,
09:13the lack of tackles and sacks and things like that, because you got to keep in mind that he
09:19is Nick Bosa. So they've game planning for this guy. They send in doubles and all kinds of things
09:25for him. And I don't think I ever watched a play where I felt like he just didn't try. I don't know.
09:31Yeah. So shark, here's how, I don't know how dibs, how you'd answer this. Thank you for the
09:34call. I would answer that. It's neither. I'm not, I'm not questioning Nick's effort at all. And I'm
09:41also not hanging my hat only on as he likes to call them sack of Rooney's. I'm not doing that
09:47either. I would much more like to look at pressures and he's statistically only had three of them in
09:53the game. And then I also use my eye test, which is again, not questioning his effort is questioning
09:59his production. He got stopped a lot by a backup tackle who used to play for the 49ers.
10:08Nick might've been hurt. He was questionable until the last second yesterday. So maybe he's
10:13not playing at his best, but I also dismissed the idea that their game plan informed their
10:18double teaming them, right? That's what happens to elite players. And I don't watch any of the
10:23other elite pass rushers that we talk about. Just get stonewalled for the majority of a game
10:28because the other team is aware that they're good. I've watched a lot of Steelers games this
10:32year. You should see what TJ Watt gets and you should see what he's able to do with it.
10:37And Nick is, has done it in a lot of games this year. Yesterday was not one of them.
10:42Yeah. And I think the overall defense from a pressure standpoint was not great yesterday
10:47either. And so, you know, TJ Watt maybe gets a little bit more help from his teammates. I don't
10:52watch every snap of the Steelers. Like I do watch of the Niners and I look at a Niner pass rush and
10:58you don't get a lot of help from other people. And as a team, from a pressure standpoint,
11:02they didn't have a lot. And I'm looking at QB hits. There were two hits on the quarterback,
11:07Nick Bosa and Malik Collins, and that's it. And you had two sacks. So you had two sacks and two
11:13QB hits. And that tells me that pressure wise, you were mostly non-existent and they don't ever
11:19blitz very often. And so you rush four and they block you with five. And when you block with five
11:24and you rush with four, Bosa is probably going to get either chipped or doubled or both. And so
11:30it is harder on him. I look at the way the Bucks played offensively, not just in this one,
11:37but basically since Mike Evans and Chris Godwin went out and poor Baker's got Kate Otten. And
11:43that's really it. It's really it. And that that factors into the way that I'm looking
11:48at this particular defensive effort. You can say 13 or 20 points. That's all.
11:53That's really all that should happen. He just does not have a lot at his disposal. Again,
11:59the backs are really good and they receive the ball out of the backfield. But Tampa Bay is
12:05completely incapable of a chunk play right now. They're totally incapable of getting 25 to 30
12:11yards down the field. So if you take that off of the table, to me, you watch a team that can only
12:18the only way they can score is to go pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick all the way down the
12:23field, just like they did against Kansas City to tie that game and go to overtime seven days ago
12:29on Monday night. They are capable of that, but that's it. So to me, it's not even a team that's
12:36capable of 25 to 30 points in a football game. They take too much time to do what they're doing.
12:42And so I would expect when you're on 14 days rest and they're on six and they lose their
12:49superstar tackle in the middle of the game. Yeah, my bar for your defense is very high.
12:55It's very high. And the 49ers did not hit it. Yeah, for me, they did hit it because they allowed
13:00only 116 yards passing. To your point, they had no real receivers. And I'm looking at the
13:07numbers and numbers and numbers, unless they're your numbers, right? I don't know if these are
13:10my numbers because I don't know what you're going to say. Well, what I'm going to say is that nine
13:13of the 18 completions were to Irving and Rashad white. So of the other nine, you had five decayed
13:20Otten, which means you had four passes caught by wide receivers. Shepherd had one Miller had one
13:27Jarrett had two. So defensively, that wasn't the problem in the ground game. Irving had 73 yards.
13:34White had 31. They didn't do much on the ground either. So the defense, they only allowed
13:40like 215 yards total. And you gave up the 20 points in part because your special teams
13:48gave him a short field. Listen, I'm less offended by the defense than I am by the special teams,
13:53but those kinds of numbers that you're talking about, leave out all of the penalties,
13:57for instance, that they committed in key moments, especially on that last drive.
14:02So there was four penalties on that drive that doesn't show up in the box score. And that is
14:06absolutely part of my assessment of the way they played yesterday. Dale and Walnut Creek is next up
14:12here on Willard and Dems. Hey, Dale, what's going on? Hey, good afternoon, guys. How are you guys
14:20doing? Could not be better, Dale. Okay, good. Listen, I think I'm calling in to the same show
14:30that I was listening to 10 minutes ago. And 10 minutes ago, you guys were complaining about
14:38the defense and saying like, you know, defense this year, they've allowed people back in games
14:45and what's going on and why is that? And I think the answer to the question, if you just
14:56get down on your knees, or, you know, bend way over us, you'll find the answer. You'll find the answer.
15:06Dale, I'm not sure where we're going. Where are we going here, Dale?
15:10It got, it got, it got, the defense got, the answer to your question got thrown up to the bus
15:17last year by Kyle Shanahan. Sorensen is now the defensive coordinator, Wilks is not,
15:24and that's, and that's not all of it, but I believe that's a large part of it.
15:29And the second thing, what you guys have been talking about just for the last few minutes,
15:36I think you might agree with me. Nick Bosa has not performed up to what we expected him to
15:41all season long. He, he's given the effort, but he doesn't have any moves. He's kind of
15:48like a bull rusher. So I know that they're double teaming him and stuff, but they're double teaming
15:53T.J. Watt, they're double teaming all the other, you know, great guys, and they're performing
15:59better. I think we've got to be honest and say Nick's not doing it, but that's the only small
16:02part of it. Bigger part of it, I think, is the answer lies under the bus.
16:08So you, you think that, you think that this defense would be performing at a much higher
16:12level if Steve Wilks were still the coordinator? I, I look at the progression, the progress that
16:19the defense made last year from the time they started, and then they criticized the hell out of
16:25them. And by the end of the season, they were doing well. They gave up 20 points to Patrick
16:31Mahomes and Andy Reed. You must have missed that. You must have missed the Lions game,
16:35but Dale, thank you very much. I, listen, I, the Steve Wilks thing is forever going to be
16:42difficult for me because when people talk about it, they go, oh, he was a scapegoat.
16:47He was thrown under the bus. He was, he was blamed for everything. And I always go, God,
16:53like, that's not my perception of what happened. I'm not blaming Steve Wilks or Kyle Shanahan or
16:58whatever. It's a team that went to the Super Bowl and was one play away from being champions.
17:03I don't think anybody needs to be blamed for anything. I felt all year long that something
17:10in that building, those guys felt like wasn't fitting. It wasn't jiving with one another.
17:17And so they made a move. And I know people, because of the timing of it and because of the
17:22finish of the season, people blame, they go, oh, Kyle Shanahan scapegoating Steve Wilks. You don't
17:28have to fire people because you lost the Super Bowl. You went to the Super Bowl. That's usually
17:33when people get extension. So there didn't need to be a scapegoat. I think all year,
17:39starting in Minnesota, they felt like things weren't fitting. And it's not fair to compare
17:45this year's group to last year's group, because last year's group had Dre Greenlaw on the team.
17:49This year's group doesn't. Well, this year's group has a bunch of great rookies who are
17:53playing better than some of the guys that they had last year. And Devondre Campbell, again,
17:58second week in a row, maybe third week in a row. He was really good. And he's getting better.
18:03And I do think that it takes time for any new coordinator with any team. And I know that Nick
18:08Sorensen was there last year, but he's now a coordinator for the first time in his career.
18:12It takes time to grow into it and for the defense to get comfortable with him as the coordinator.
18:18And I did not think that yesterday the defense was the issue. And I know that Tampa Bay's offense
18:23is not anything to write home to mom about. But for me, the reason why the game was close
18:28yesterday was not the defense. It was the offense. And it was a specialty. I don't know.
18:32It was the offense either. It was it was the special teams. I mean, if you want to say the
18:36issue special teams, that's the issue. They dropped the ball in the pot. They missed all
18:42of their field goals or most of them. I mean, like that's if you just fix that alone, you win
18:47that game by at least two touchdowns. So I'm not saying the defense is the issue. I'm just telling
18:53you that what I see and this is true for offense and defense alike. What I see is a group that's
19:01not reaching their potential. They're not as good as they should be. And they shoot themselves in
19:06the foot repeatedly at the wrong time. Yeah, that was unfortunate yesterday on that driver.
19:12And then you do have to point out, or you don't have to, but I will that they did hold Tampa to
19:16a field goal after they committed four penalties on one drive. It came down to game time. If Tampa
19:23scores a touchdown there, you're in trouble. You need a touchdown to win the game and you held
19:28them out. You held them to three. So that for me is a part of that. And I looked at it again this
19:33morning as I was watching him back and you had defensive holding face mask, personal foul,
19:39hands to the face. Four of six plays were penalties. And all of that came after your superstar
19:46pass rusher had two hands on the quarterback for four seconds in a game and play. Maybe not quite
19:54that long, but then he got held off. It was at least three and they converted. So none of those
20:00penalties happen if you're, and I'm sorry to do this, but your $34 million guy brings a human
20:09being who's half of his size to the ground when he's got both hands on him for a three count.
20:15None of those things even happen. Cause the game though, it games, they don't get a field goal
20:18first and goal. Niners win 20 to 17 first and goal at the nine and you held them out. And so,
20:25but that didn't happen. If you just tackle the guy back at the 40 yard line.
20:28None of it matters if your field goal kicker can make a kick or if your red zone offense can
20:32actually score or if your quarterback can find somebody who's open on the opening drive of the
20:36game where Ricky Pearsall is wide open and Brock Purdy is coming out cold again. Let's talk about
20:42that. You're not going to put yesterday on Brock Purdy who threw for almost 400 yards.
20:46When we're talking about things that didn't go right. It wasn't great in the first half.
20:51Agreed.