Bill Musgrave

Mora did an admirable job rebuilding the Niners D after their salary cap meltdown a few years ago, but the thing I don't like about him is he doesn't blitz very much at all. Maybe he would with our front 7 as compared to San Francisco's, but I just don't think he's as aggressive as JDR was, and this is one aggressive defense.

 

I know you'll disagree, but for the most part what I'd heard was that Seifert was hands on with Haskell, in tandem with Musgrave - and that when Musgrave came on Seifert was less hands on, but still critical. Musgrave couldn't handle it - Seifert wanted what he had in 99, long passes rather than short, play action - and quit. After that Seifert didn't interact offensively, hence the lack of headset.

 

We had an agressive front four. Sometimes we'd do some basic blitzing, or zone blitzing, but outside of the intense amount of DB blitzing we did in preseason we didn't do anything radical in the regular season. It looked great because of the front, and the amount of stunts and crosses, but I found nothing radical. That we did blitz was nice, though.

 

Seefart, Muscrat, Borduck... all suck. they still don't get it.

 

>> That we did blitz was nice, though

was it just me or did anyone else think that our bitzes weren't very effective. it didn't seem that any of our lbs or dbs were especially effective blitzing. fields and morgan were okay but the rest pretty much sucked. seemed like most all our pressure came from our front four and more specifically from peppers. teams and QBs especially seemed to be very concerned about peppers which opened things for the other guys.

one big thing that del rio brought was a contagious animated fire and i think the guys loved it and him. hard shoes to fill, i don't care how smart the next guy is.

 

Fields was good because he has great burst. I think Witherspoon was good in that range as well, as far as getting the speed down from a stop. Morgan has looked good blitzing some, but he's more of an asset roaming. But other than Fields, we don't have anyone who can impact and get off a block.
but none of the blitzes were terribly well schemed. You basically had a LB come straight from where he was and just get after the QB. No disguise, no looping or faking, no stacking.

And agree that Peppers should get attention. Not that it should always open something up for whoever, but if you blitz two and drop one you should have an open blitzer.

>>one big thing that del rio brought was a contagious animated fire and i think the guys loved it and him. hard shoes to fill, i don't care how smart the next guy is.

Certainly. That's where Fox should come in, hopefully. It's still his team, and it's still his job to be the fiery guy we hired. Hope he is.

 

Didn't we also have some aggressive corner play as well? Seems like we ran a lot of bump-and-run. When I mentioned aggressiveness, I was talking about more of a theme that seemed to run throughout the defense this year, contrasted to John Marshall's 'bend don't break' soft coverage philosophy in the past.

Andre Carter was supposed to be the next Charles Haley in San Fran, and he hasn't really done squat. 3 out of their 4 starting DL's are pretty decent, but they're just not getting enough pressure on the QB. Granted their secondary was banged up bad for much of the season, but still. I just don't want to see him take our Magnificent 7 and turn them into choir boys.

 

The biggest knock I have on Mora is the attitude of the SF defense. They played a bend but dont break that let the offense win. We are not that way. If he comes on I wonder if he will adjust?

If Seifert wanted long passes and Musgrave did not and they left why did we not have long passes in 2001? We threw to the fullback more than any team I can remember. I am sure there is a lot we don't know about the whole time Musgrave was here.

 

Originally posted by hasbeen99


>>Didn't we also have some aggressive corner play as well? Seems like we ran a lot of bump-and-run.

Cover two, so the corners can play press technique or line up five yards off. When you see a corner dropping late that suggests cover three or that the guy's in man and he's just being a pussy.

>>When I mentioned aggressiveness, I was talking about more of a theme that seemed to run throughout the defense this year,

Certainly.

>>Andre Carter was supposed to be the next Charles Haley in San Fran, and he hasn't really done squat.

Yep. 12 sacks and those were about all the plays he made. Not really much of anything else, few pressures, disappears.