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00:00If you want to ask me if I'm giving the Niners a pass on this day, December 3rd, coming off a double, dare I say a triple bad beat, no, I'm not giving anyone a pass.
00:11You don't have to.
00:12You are what your record says you are, and when you line up on Sunday, your job is to win football games, not to have your dauber down and feel sad about being 5-7.
00:21Listen, I totally get it.
00:22Like I said, if you want to just tap into the disappointment of the season, it's not that I'm not with you.
00:29I'm super disappointed, too.
00:30They're 5-7.
00:31I can't believe this, but the larger thing for me, and again, this is not to say that you can't point to this thing over here and that thing over there.
00:40Kyle messed this up.
00:41They don't throw the ball to Kittle enough.
00:43Sure, sure, sure.
00:44That's all normal football stuff, and I can understand that.
00:48But to me, it is overwhelmed by the unfortunate, the unexpected, the out of their control, players getting shot, dealing with unspeakable family stuff at home, injuries, key, key positions, just catastrophic.
01:08You want to call me soft or a cream puff or whatever, go ahead and do it, but here's my take.
01:15I'm giving them a pass, and I am in no way feeling like the organization is off the rails.
01:23I don't feel that way.
01:25I feel like this is recoverable.
01:28It might be next year.
01:30By the time they can recover, they have gotten a big, huge crop sandwich.
01:36They've been forced to take a bite, and to me, that's the bigger side of this conversation.
01:43That's all.
01:44That's what I'm saying.
01:45Well, for me, I'm not giving them a pass, but I also don't think that the organization cannot be recovered.
01:52I think that this is just a bad year.
01:54It's a bad year that, yes, injuries played a factor, but for me, the bigger factor is the reality that there were three games that you could have won, two games that you should have won, and you didn't win them.
02:07As we get through the end of the year, we can look back and hopefully answer the questions about why, and I hope that Kyle Shanahan has the courage and the strength and the wherewithal to actually do that and look at why they didn't win those games.
02:20Is it special teams gaffes?
02:22Yeah.
02:23Is it defensive breakdowns?
02:24Yeah.
02:25Is it bad clock management?
02:26Yeah.
02:27Is it ineffectiveness late in games?
02:29In the fourth quarter, they've been bad all year.
02:32So we can look at injuries, and there have been some big ones, and we can look at personal tragedy, and my God, they've had a lot of them.
02:38But for me, in the NFL, you can use that as an excuse if you want.
02:43Ultimately, it's next man up.
02:45We hear all them say it.
02:46We all say it.
02:47Everybody believes it.
02:49So when you go to a next man up mentality, then go ahead and be next man up and get the job done.
02:55But what is your expectation of next man up?
02:59There's no sports team out there that we look at and we go, like, okay, the Warriors play the Nuggets tonight.
03:05All right?
03:06If Steph Curry, I don't even want to say that out loud, right?
03:09No, Draymond's not going to play, it looks like.
03:10No, Draymond.
03:11And then let's say Steph and Wiggins and Heald and Kaminga are all unavailable.
03:18Are you really going to be like, rub some dirt on it and next man up?
03:22Well, this is a mixed metaphor because you're talking about four out of 12 as opposed to three out of 22.
03:28Three?
03:29Three?
03:30Well, Brandon.
03:31The whole team is completely decimated.
03:35George has played almost every game.
03:37But not all of them.
03:38Deebo has played virtually every game.
03:39But not all of them.
03:40And this one.
03:41So let's talk about the games they did play and what happened in those games.
03:44Understand.
03:45And that, for me, is where I look at it.
03:47And that's fine.
03:48I'm not refuting that.
03:49But those things, to me, are small potatoes.
03:53Like, in other words, that 49er team.
03:56That team that you're talking about.
03:58The, like, you're healthy enough, go win games.
04:01Right.
04:02That team was disappointingly, like, 5-5.
04:055-5.
04:06Right.
04:07Rather than being what we wanted them to be, which was 7-3.
04:09So I look at the last two games as small potatoes.
04:11Right.
04:12That's small potatoes.
04:13I don't even look at those two games.
04:14But if you're 5-5 instead of 7-3, that's not, hey, major changes are needed.
04:21Like, I don't think that.
04:23No, but changes are needed.
04:24I don't think that.
04:25I'm not saying major changes.
04:26I don't think that.
04:27I'm saying changes are needed.
04:28Such as what?
04:29Such as your head coach bringing in somebody to help him.
04:32Because clearly what he's doing this year, it didn't work.
04:36And whether it's he's too married to the play design or he's not tuned in enough to help the morale.
04:43Because you seem to think that the morale is down.
04:45I think morale is gone.
04:46Well, it's his job to build the morale.
04:48You're the head coach.
04:49You're the CEO of the football team.
04:50And you need to do what you can do to make it so their dauber is not down.
04:55And I'm not just looking at the last two games.
04:57Because backup quarterback against Green Bay, I don't like your chances.
05:01And you go to Buffalo against a team coming off a bye who's better than you anyway in the snow.
05:08I don't like your chances.
05:09I want to adjust the whole the daubers down thing.
05:11Because that's not what I'm talking about.
05:13That's sort of you're making it sound like this is a little.
05:15I want to know what this means.
05:17Like the morale is down.
05:18It means that they have completely lost belief and for good freaking reason.
05:24They are a shell.
05:27They are a carcass.
05:28They are a puddle on the ground based on what we thought they were going to be
05:33and what we would think that they would be able to do because of who they were.
05:37Like honestly, to think that the 49ers could navigate this says to me that you actually think very little
05:44of these great players we were celebrating coming into the year.
05:48I think very highly of Kyle Shanahan and the players that they did have.
05:51But I don't care what coach you are or who you are.
05:54If you lose more than half of what's in your holster, you're not going to have the same output.
06:01Well, they did have the same output, but they had three or four plays that they didn't execute.
06:06So even when they didn't have McCaffrey, you had the second leading rusher in football, and he fumbled.
06:12And you had a kick return that you couldn't contain.
06:15And you had a deep throw against your former All-Pro, and he couldn't make the play.
06:20Right, and Ronnie Bell dropped the ball.
06:22All that stuff. That had nothing to do with all the injuries.
06:25No, but all of that counts.
06:27But to me, those are fine line issues that would suggest, no, not major changes are needed.
06:34Those are annoying losses, and everybody has them throughout the year.
06:39And if the team were fully healthy and not dealing with family tragedies,
06:43I would argue they had every chance in the second half of this year
06:47to sort of rally back the way they have almost every year when annoying losses happen early.
06:53Well, they still do. They've got five more games to go.
06:55Granted, but it's a little bit different animal now than it's been in years past.
06:58Yeah, you go with Isaac Garendo, and you don't have Aiyuk.
07:01You're going to have Trent Williams or not.
07:03And it's Week 14. Normally this happens around Week 9 and after a bye.
07:08Okay, let's boogie. So that's my point.
07:10I don't think that major changes are needed.
07:14I don't either, but you need to make changes.
07:16And if you think that you get through this year, however it ends, and you just run it back,
07:22you're just going to run it back?
07:24Organically, there are changes every year.
07:26Of course, yes.
07:27I do think that, obviously, look at the coordinating situation.
07:30I mean, you're going to bring back Sorensen.
07:31I don't know. I don't know.
07:32I'm saying no.
07:33Yeah, okay.
07:34I'm saying right now, definitively, you don't bring back the defensive coordinator.
07:37You bring somebody in with experience, and you fix the defense.
07:40But I don't know.
07:41You take the special teams coordinator who has been bad.
07:44Your special teams have been bad all year.
07:46The special teams, yes.
07:47It's a reflection of the coach.
07:49But I can't assess.
07:50You don't get to have your unit be this bad and keep your job.
07:52I can't assess Nick Sorensen when Bosa, Lenore, Ward, and Warner, and Greenlaw.
08:01I can't tell you this is a coordinator issue.
08:03I can't do that with a straight face.
08:05I would be like, that's complete remote control argument.
08:09Right.
08:10I can't sit here and tell you the coordinator's bad just because the Packers and Bills, two really good teams,
08:17are going hot knife through butter against the Niners' preseason squad.
08:21Well, let me ask you this.
08:22I can't tell you that.
08:23Let's go back earlier in the year.
08:24When you had Bosa, and you had Ward, and you had Warner playing maybe on less than a fractured ankle.
08:31They were better.
08:32They gave up gash runs to the Rams, and you lost.
08:35You gave up gash runs to the Arizona Cardinals, and you lost.
08:38This defense has been the same no matter who the personnel has been.
08:42That's not true.
08:43They don't pressure the quarterback.
08:44That is not true.
08:45They don't get the ball.
08:46They don't turn the other team over.
08:47That's not true.
08:48They don't get a lot of sacks.
08:49It's not true.
08:50They give up a ton of yards on the ground.
08:51Look at the game log.
08:53Look at James Conner.
08:54Look at your favorite.
08:55Conner Williams.
08:56Why don't you look at your analytics that had the 49ers at that point as only one of eight teams
09:02that had both defense and offense up in the plus.
09:05Right.
09:06Defensive value over average.
09:07DVOA.
09:08Yes.
09:09Like, again, I'm not...
09:10And where are they now?
09:11They're awful.
09:12Yes.
09:13Because they don't have any of their players.
09:14Like, again, I'm sitting here telling you, I understand the frustration of the early season losses,
09:20and we can talk about those, but that's sort of like, that's the micro.
09:26That's the micro.
09:27The micro is, good Lord, you screwed that play up,
09:30and you screwed that game up.
09:31The macro, I'm not at macro.
09:35Get the coordinator out of here.
09:37You suck.
09:38Everything was bad.
09:39They had some poor off-season signings.
09:42Again, I'm admitting what you can point to.
09:44I don't like their off-season signings.
09:46So it's the player's fault, not the scheme or the coordinator.
09:49No.
09:50Whoever signed these people.
09:51That was a poor assessment.
09:53So it's Floyd's problem.
09:54It's not the fact that the scheme is maybe not good enough to where you help them out by,
09:59I don't know, blitzing every now and again.
10:01Obviously, I don't know that that's going to work either.
10:05My point is, it's not Floyd's fault if Floyd is not necessarily good.
10:10It's also the fault of whoever brought him in.
10:13And that's John, and that's Kyle, and that's Parag.
10:16Everything is the whole picture.
10:18It's the whole organization, and I am granting you that they were not good enough when they had their horses.
10:24But they don't anymore.
10:26So to make any assessment about the Niners based on the last two weeks is bananas to me.
10:32No, I'm making the assessment based on 12 weeks.
10:34And your defense has been less than good.
10:37Your special teams have been awful, among the worst in football.
10:40I already said that.
10:41Yes, so I'm looking at changes, and you said no changes.
10:45No, no, no, no.
10:46You said no major changes.
10:47No major.
10:48Is changing a coordinator a major change?
10:51I don't think that's a major change.
10:52Is a coordinator a defensive coordinator, or are you talking about the special teams coordinator?
10:55I'm talking about both.
10:56Your defensive coordinator has never been a coordinator in his life, and he was your coordinator, and he had a bad year.
11:02They had a bad year.
11:03I don't know what to do about Nick Sorensen yet, because again, they were still technically a plus defense prior to everybody who's good leaving the field.
11:13I don't know what to tell you about the last two weeks.
11:16I can't assess anything.
11:17I'm not assessing it on two weeks.
11:18I'm assessing it on 12.
11:20As for special teams, if you want to make major changes there, I would not refer to that as a major organizational change due to the fact that 98% of the people listening to us couldn't even tell you the name of the person that you'd be replacing.
11:35So, yes, there are organic changes on every staff and roster every year.
11:40Well, normally the organic changes here are that those guys get promoted to other jobs, but this is not that situation.
11:46It's not that year.
11:47But major…
11:49Oh, Kyle needs less power, and you need…
11:53No, no.
11:55This has worked, and I believe can work again.
11:58But why isn't it working now?
12:00Is it just because of the injuries and because of the low morale?
12:04Is that the only…
12:05We're not going to look at Kyle at all and say, you know what, Kyle?
12:08Who's not looking at Kyle?
12:09Maybe you've got too much on your plate.
12:11Who's not looking at Kyle?
12:12Maybe Kyle is too married to that play sheet, and he doesn't have enough time or enough bandwidth to do the other things.
12:19I just don't understand why…
12:20When the year is going bad, you have to look at everything.
12:22Sure, look at it.
12:23That doesn't mean you need to make wholesale…
12:25I'm not saying you fire Kyle, but maybe…
12:27Not even fire Kyle.
12:28Maybe you look at Kyle Shanahan, and you try to add a piece to his coaching staff, somebody who can help him.
12:34Somebody who can get his offense back to where it was.
12:36Because this year, the offense has been, in my eyes, predictable and stoppable.
12:42In many ways.
12:43Why?
12:44Because they're running the same stuff, and teams see that on tape now.
12:47Teams are onto it.
12:48They weren't running the same stuff last year.
12:50They were.
12:51And they weren't running the same stuff the year before that.
12:52But defenses now have seen it, and now that they're stopping it.
12:55And Debo Samuel is not the player that he was.
12:57So after 2019, they could replicate it.
13:00And then in 2021, replicate.
13:032022, replicate.
13:042023, replicate.
13:062024, oh now we've figured it out!
13:09Are you saying they don't now have tape on Brock Purdy?
13:12After a full season and a half, now they've seen Brock Purdy.
13:15They had tape.
13:16And they've seen Debo.
13:17And they've seen everything that the Nets do.
13:19They had tape on Purdy when he went…
13:20But why are they stopping him now?
13:21For a ton of reasons.
13:23Because they don't have McCaffrey.
13:24They don't have Ayuk.
13:26Starting with they don't have their horses.
13:27I think that, for me, that is a cop-out.
13:30And I look at defenses, even when they had McCaffrey.
13:33And when they had Ayuk.
13:34Ayuk was a non-factor.
13:36And you could say it's because he skipped camp.
13:38Fine.
13:39Trent Williams was okay.
13:40He's getting older.
13:42I do think that Debo has been largely neutralized outside of kick returns.
13:46Either he's getting older and slower.
13:48Or defenses are seeing now what the Niners want to do with him.
13:52Do you know what's funny about this whole idea that prior to everything going bad three weeks ago,
13:56that the offense had all of these problems,
13:59then why did they have all of these fourth quarter leads that they blew?
14:03And I'm not saying they were as good as last year.
14:06I'm not going to move the goalposts on you.
14:08But why were they seemingly always ahead in the fourth quarter?
14:13Because they couldn't score touchdowns in the red zone.
14:15These are games where they should have had 40 points on the board, but they didn't.
14:18What a request.
14:21Can I request a team to actually score a touchdown inside the 20?
14:25Can you request your team to score 30 or 40 every week?
14:28To me, that sounds like a spoiled fantasy.
14:30Can I request a team to actually score more than 50% of the time in the red zone?
14:34Because that's what mediocre teams do.
14:36Yes, Dibbs.
14:37And this team doesn't.
14:38No one's claiming perfection, but what was going on prior to all of this discord
14:44was not up to par, but it wasn't a disaster.
14:49It wasn't a disaster.
14:50We've said it all year, and I still believe it.
14:52You can be mad about it all you want.
14:54But if Ronnie Bell has a catch, and if this and if that,
14:58and I know people hate the word if,
15:00but the Niners were a breath away, literally a breath away,
15:04from having a record that wouldn't have even,
15:06no one would have even brought up a problem.
15:09You would have had the normal Niner conversation,
15:11where we would have come in here and been like,
15:13I would have liked to see them get the ball to Kittlemore.
15:15Or boy, I wish their red zone percentage were a little higher.
15:19The things that we did last year,
15:21when we could just roll the ball out and win 30-13.
15:25It doesn't always work like that.
15:27Why are you even playing Ronnie Bell, when six weeks later you cut the guy?
15:31Because two receivers were hurt that day.
15:34And Ricky Pearsall got shot.
15:37Chris Conley was a guy who you could have played at the time.
15:39Instead, you play Ricky Bell, Ronnie Bell rather,
15:42and you throw him the ball and he drops it,
15:44and then six weeks later you cut him.
15:46That sounds to me like a you problem, Kyle and John.
15:49So you identify a guy who's not very good,
15:52and then you play him, and then you scheme a play for him,
15:55and he drops it, and then six weeks later you cut him.
15:57Your fantasy team has never had to start someone where you're like,
16:00well, this is a crappy option, but that's what we got this week.
16:03My fantasy team should not be commensurate with the 49ers, for God's sake.
16:07Any fantasy team, any team, any life, any office, any job, any family,
16:12there are days where you're like, crap.
16:14I mean, you literally just said next man up mentality,
16:17and now Ronnie Bell's not allowed on the field?
16:19He's allowed on the field, but if you end up cutting him six weeks later,
16:22that tells me that you misidentified him.
16:24No, you didn't misidentify him.
16:26You should have cut him in the offseason.
16:27In favor of who?
16:29Anybody.
16:30Anybody who you thought could stick on this team.
16:32Ricky's shot, Debo's out, Brandon's out.
16:35Sometimes you've got to get to the end of the bench.
16:38Ronnie was exactly where he was supposed to be, the end of the bench.
16:42And Cowley wasn't ready, and on and on.
16:45So, again, all I'm saying is, to me, to bring up Chris Conley's name
16:51is a little disingenuous.
16:53To be like, oh, well, why'd you put Bell out there?
16:56You should have had that journeyman no one cares about on the field instead.
17:01More reliable than the guy you ended up cutting later in the year.
17:03You don't know that.
17:04You don't know that.
17:05I know that they cut him, and I know that they didn't really ever play him,
17:08except for the one time when you needed him, and he dropped the ball.
17:11You couldn't play him.
17:12I mean, you could have signed someone else off the street.
17:14Yeah, you could have kept Dante Pettis, who's out there actually making plays
17:16for other teams.
17:17Because we loved it when he was here.
17:18Why, he's better than Ronnie Bell.
17:20That's not what we said back then.
17:22Everybody hated Dante Pettis.