Rave - Early on in the game QB Smith tucked the ball and scrambled…to his left. He got the first down. Now for all of those complaining about his tendency to always go right and limit his options, there you go, he can go left as well. apparently Alex Smith is not related to Derek Zoolander.

Rumble - If there is one thing this team needs to learn it is how to execute screen passes. A staple of having 4 or 5 receivers on the field is that high percentage pass for big yardage. Sure, we have the smoke/push route  where Smith fires it right at the WR on a one-step drop. But he is often doing that as an audible to the run. With 8 in the box, if the WR can beat his CB, he would have space and only the deepest S to beat. The problem is it works horribly in bump coverage and I can’t recall Smith ever pump faking the smoke route and then lobbing an easy deeper pass downfield. That aside, any side featuring an edge rushing LB or S or DB, we should have a numbers advantage for a big bubble screen. That short pass that can rumble for 10+ yards or at least give us high percentage completion and act like a short run is a need for a more open offense to supplement it’s lack of a clock controlling ground game.

Rumination - Given how shaky Rachal has been at simply stopping the DTs in front of him, are you not happy that we didn’t move him to RT? He would make Adam Snyder look like a young Tony Boselliin comparison.

Rumble - That first half offense was utterly, completely atrocious. I didn’t think it was possible. But 17 weeks into the season against probably the saddest defenses in the league and most inept offenses and our first half was a joke. First off, we let the league’s 3rd worst pass rush get 3 sacks on us, in two cases from simple overloads and another a delay blitz from an ILB not even good at blitzing. But I had my head shaking when despite some big booming kicks and a brilliant coffin punt by Lee and our defense holding STL without much yardage…we were losing the field position battle! how? Our plays were all losing yardage or grabbing penalties and it was one of the most pathetic acts I have ever seen.

Rumination - Happy trails to WR Isaac Bruce, who in all good sense, should retire any day now. I remember his earlier days in the league where I recall him seemingly always missing games due to a bad hamstring, either a pull or tear but then he had that huge 2nd season. It’s actually a bit amazing he is 2nd all time in yardage provided how he only had 8 1,000 yard seasons.  In 4 seasons he failed to reach 600 yards and 4 others he was a rather typical 700-950 in yardage. It’s no doubt his numbers will make him a hall of famer, but looking at it, he had only 4 seasons of his 16 that really stuck out as excellent, ones with 10+ TDs, a very high catch and/or yardage total. At the very least, he was always a respectable competitor.

Rave - Label DE Justin Smith mr. consistent. There are three things I have learned about Justin Smith since he became a 49er. One is that the guy doesn’t know the meaning of fatigue or defeat. If I pit him against a brick wall…the brick wall would surrender before him. He doesn’t slow down or take plays off and he keeps coming. Second is that he plays excellent mind games. He may not trash talk but he will mess with the cadence and legally flinch and he will notice when the OL thinks he’s ‘done’ only to steam roll them over the next play. Lastly, he is mr. consistency. You know you’re going to get an energetic, untiring, all-out effort each game and it even shows in his stats. He ended the game with 3.5 sacks, putting him at 6 for the year.  Aside from a dismal ‘07-’08 CIN team that had no pass rushers, he averages almost 7 per season with a small amount of deviation. His worst years have been 5, 6 and 6.5 sacks. His best? 7.5, 8 and 8.5 and he has hit 7 sacks once. The bulk of his years this kid produces 7 sacks, plus/minus 1.5.

Rave - It was also nice to once again see our OLBs out there in force, with Lawson and Haralson adding in 1.5 sacks between them with multiple hurries by Haralson not making the stat sheet. Haralson may not have hit last years numbers, but he still was a consistent pressure producer this year while Lawson finally stepped up his game a bit. Plus we saw the emergence of Brooks, after about a year and half of tinkering from DE to ILB to OLB and trying to find a good spot for him and there’s the up and coming Briggs to boot. I think it may be time to realize that we’re both good at drafting LBs and spotting talent and probably even better at developing it. Keep this in mind. If our LB corp can produce 1.5-2 sacks per contest on average, that’s 24-32 sacks per season. 3 OLBs getting 6 a piece and 3 for the 2 ILBs and that’s…24 sacks. Anything from other LBs is all bonus. If we add 1.5-2 from the DL and DBs combined…we’re back in the low 40s again.

Rave - Happy trails to the certainly retiring Jeff Ulbrich. Part of the 2000 Walsh draft class I like to call “1981 Lite” that rebuilt our gutted defense and within a year threw us back into the playoffs.a MLB from Hawaii with a very stout lower body, he would have been a great Ted in his earlier, speedier days. But as he got closer to 30 his wheels went fast, he lost his starting LB role and was a true football player, starting on special teams to get on the field for his team. One of the better moves Nolan made was to extend Jeff’s deal and as a result we had a well priced veteran LB who over the years since then had been invaluable as a backup ILB and ST player on the ever changing roster.

Rumination - When was the last time a team managed to lose 2 special teams specialists (2 punters, 2 kickers, or 2 long snappers) in only 2 weeks? First we lose Nedney and have to start an undrafted kid and then after only 1 game tweaks his groin so heavily we had to bring in yet another kicker. Now, I’m sure teams have managed to lose 2 specialists and/or start even 3 or more in a season, but, wow. That first kid is going to be a long term cautionary tale for his agent to use. The first thing I think of when an undrafted rookie comes in and suffers what is usually a conditioning/stretching injury like a groin pull it only seems more likely he just wasn’t keeping in shape while waiting for the phone to ring. I mean if Crabtree came in and then missed 3 games with a pulled calf muscle, that’s what everyone would say. He probably gave up in November any hope of getting a shot this year and when he got a call for week 16 he wasn’t ready.

Rumble - It’s about time that we now begin to worry because STL was able to stuff Gore far too many times in the running game with their DL. It seems only eve n more likely they will be adding a very good impact DT in the draft as well. We are going to need to improve our interior OL as well as fix the gaping problem at RT. No matter who the QB is, the sacks before the end of a three-step drop form interior pass rushes need to stop and we need to add a RT so that we can atleast give our QB 4-4.5 seconds against a 4-man rush without need for backfield or TE help.