Eight Bench Warmers
#1) QB Nate Davis. Slight chance we could go with Hill as the emergency QB given his back. Emergency QB.
#2) K Joe Nedney. He is out and will not be playing for us again this season. Injury Inactive.
#3) CB Nate Clements. Many weeks later…still listed as Out. At least 2 weeks ago when we knew we would miss the playoffs, we should have foreseen this and simply IR’ed him. Injury Inactive.
#4) OT Joe Staley. I think that he sits. Why? Because he had some minor setbacks last week during the game and over all, he is still questionable. Better to sit him than to possibly hurt him in a less than do or die game. If this were for a berth, let him play. Either that or we have to sit Wragge in order to play Wallace.
#5)LB Diyral Briggs. It’s even more clear now that the team have him off the PS for security. This cool cat has added on some nice functional muscle and is building himself up to push for a pass rushing role next August.
#6) ILB Matt Wilhelm. He’s only really a special teamer and I think the team would like to see McKillop in the event of an injury.
#7) S Curtis Taylor. He really has not even played S when he has been active. If anyone gets more looks, hopefully it will be Smith.
#8) DE Ricky Jean Francois. Has had minimal impact and we have played many a decent games with only 5 DL anyhow. 6 is nicer, 5 is just fine.
The Active Forty-Five
QB: Hill, Smith
RB: Gore, Robinson, Coffee
FB: Norris, Miller
TE: Davis, Walker
WR: Crabtree, Morgan, Jones, Hill, Battle, Bruce
OT: Snyder, Sims, Patrick
OG: Baas, Rachal, Wragge
OC: Heitmann, Wallace
DL: Franklin, Sopoaga, McDonald, Smith, Evans
LB: Lawson, Willis, Haralson, Brooks, McKillop, Spikes
CB: Bly, Brown, Spencer, K.Smith, Hudson
S: Lewis, Roman, Goldson, R.Smith
K: Schmitt
P: Lee
LS: Jennings
Five Matchups For The Armchair QB
1) ILB Patrick Willis against RB Stephen Jackson. Too classic to not throw out there first and foremost. An up and coming, dominant LB tackling machine against a divisional rival RB who is amongst the best in the game. Seeing these two go head to head is worth a small amount of entertainment in and of itself.
2) WR Michael Crabtree against STL’s safeties. For reasons that are obvious (injury, talent, etc), STL is not a great team for defending the big pass. In fact, they’re the 6th worst club in passes over 20 yards and 40 yards and 9th in passing yards allowed. Teams go deep and big and force some big scores and get RB Jackson out of the game. I’d like to see Crabtree finally hook up on the very big pass. Especially since you know STL defenders will be looking at Bruce and/or Davis all game long. That deceptive ‘2nd gear’ would be nice to see.
3) Our Array Of Notables against STL’s defense. I haven’t the slightest clue what STL hopes to get out of this contest. But the 49ers have so many thing that it will be interesting to see which ones get through. WR Bruce is probably playing his last game ever so sending him out with a TD catch at his former home staidum would be nice. Heck, that’s so notable STL fans may even cheer him on when he’s on the field. We have TE Davis pushing for a big game not only for a TD record for TEs but also to set a higher yardage benchmark. We know RB Gore wants some more touches but the staff wants to see how players like RB Coffee, OC Wallace, and TE Walker look in more snaps than usual. Oh, and by the way, we also probably want to pass a lot to see what QB Smith is really capable of and to see if he can put together another 100+ rated game. The alst time we had a game remotely like this, the Bears doubled up on WR Rice so much that WR Owens ripped them apart himself. Hence why I think too much focus on Davis and Crabtree will make a bigger impact.
4) Our Pass Rush Stats versus STL QB’s. We had a pretty fun time last contest on QB Kyle Boller. They’ve cut Incognito, Stetterstrom is Out and their rookie top OT is Doubtful with a concussion. Even happier hunting grounds. A lot of fans are in arms talking about how getting 4+ sacks on these bad teams is artificially inflating our sack numbers. But that’s what all defenses do: pile them up while they can. The top sack defense will have had several big games against bad offenses. That we’re getting these games late in the year is just scheduling luck. Had we had them 5-6 games ago and moved two of our tougher middle season games to the end where we got less sacks, fans would say we got snubbed at the end.
5) Our OTs versus DE Little and Long. I’m a bit surprised Little has even had 6.5 sacks this late in his career. He was always an upper-end first step kind of guy but was note elite like Kearse or Freeney and he is not as overpowering athletically. That is to say, sometimes he just get plowed. That he still has a step or two left after years in his role is amazing. But 2nd year Long is now looking at a whopping 5 sacks on the season. I’d like to believe we can keep both of these guys off the sack stat sheet for this contest.
The Stats That Matter
16th - STL’s running game rank.
27th - STL’s passing game rank. Thus attack hard and deep and take their ground game off the table and their 27th ranked passing game can’t beat you from behind. Teams have been doing it all year long.
29th - STL’s defensive ranking. Looks like a prime chance to bump up our offensive ranking and our defensive ranking in one game. A great game for both units can bump us a solid 3-4 places up.
169 - The total number number of points scored offensively by the STL Rams this season. That’s around 12 points per contest. So, if we can score 2 TDs, we should win.
How We Could Win This Game
Show up to play and be lucid on the field for at least one half of football. We started out terribly against DET. We were throwing the ball further sideways than downfield, we did not use the ground game at all, and converted nothing over from a slew of turnovers. The only bonus was the defense was very solid. But we woke up, came out in the second half for 2 good TDs and then grinded the clock down, controlling the pace and momentum of the game.STL has so much trouble keeping the big passing plays down and producing any points themselves that as long as we don’t commit 5+ turnovers and dig ourselves a deep and early grave, we can win with one good half of football.
How We Could Lose This Game
Monumental collapse. Turnovers mixed with giving STL easy points and momentum control. DET was a bad team, but they do have upside. After all Johnson is a rare talent at WR, but STL is worse. DET can at least score points.
My Prediction
If we play so experimentally with smoke/push/screen passes to WRs to start then this will end up being a 20-9 squeeker. Since we probably will experiment at RB and OC and not optimize our WR corps the entire game, we likely won’t be a big scoring team. Especially when even our recently signed K is also now injured. I’d put us at a tame 21-13.
