1) Will OLB Manny Lawson finally live up to his potential (i.e. will he have a strong season, finally)?
I think this one is a fair yes. Despite coming out on plenty of plays and pass rushing packages, he was 5th on the team in tackles, led the team in sacks, and added 3 forced fumbles. Was it an all world season? No. But he showed some good run stopping growth and more than any previous year, was out there making plays. If he can be a 2-3 FF, 6-7 sack OLB consistently then he is worth keeping. Especially considering how before this season he had only 5.5 career sacks and 1 INT and 1 FF. He eclipsed all of that in one season.
2) Will TE Vernon Davis finally show us pro bowl numbers and not just pro bowl potential?
Well, let’s think about this one. He tied the record for receiving TDs by a TE. He also tied perennial pro bowlers and all-pro WRs Moss and Fitzgerald for most receiving TDs in the league. He put up more yards than his last 2 seasons combined, set a new career long while not fumbling once. Oh, and he made the pro bowl and fell just shy of a 1,000 yard receiving season in the process.
3) Is our DL good enough and what will we get out of Sopoaga and Balmer most especially?
That one is another affirmative. Franklin had a career year and was a big performer for us. MEanwhile while Sopoaga was hardly a game breaker, his play did help out Lawson and Spikes to good years and Balmer was very undervalued. He was very good for us on run stopping downs. He’s still not worth his draft pick, but he showed signs of getting the role down. But our DL got another good year out of DE Smith and a good performance from DE McDonald to boot.
4) Is RB Frank Gore a real stud RB or was his 2006 season a lot more to do with great blocking, blockers and play-calling?
Despite some poor interior blocking Gore managed a good year. He had his best rushing season since 2006 despite missing 3 games to injury. His 4.9 yards per carry is good starting RB production and he had a career high 10 running TDs. He also added another 50+ catch, 400+ receiving season and he had a career high 3 receiving TDs, doubling his career total. Another positive, He had the least number of lost fumbles, only 2, he has had since being named the #` RB in 2006. I think it’s far to say that if he stays healthy and we get some blocking, Gore is a 2,000 yards of offense type of game.
5) Will QB Alex Smith prove to finally be a starting level QB who we can build an offense with?
Debatable. He did put up a solid 80+ QB rating while completing over 60% of his passes. He also had only 2 fumbles with 1 lost, had a great ratio of 18 TDs to 12 INTs and that featured some easily dropped TD passes and some freak INTs. Also, how about all of the batted passes at the LOS and thrown away balls. Also, half his games were in the 95+ rating category. In fact, his season rating places him above both Matt Ryan and the highly lauded Jay Cutler. Sanchez has the Jets in the playoffs with only a 63 rating. Smith finished 19th, in the lower middle of the league.
6) Was the front offices lack of real energy to fix the safety roles and to bring in better talent going to hurt the team or have they made the smart choice?
In the end, we were fine. When Lewis had trouble with head injuries early on, we had depth. Smith was a bit of a wash because of his injuries. Goldson won over Roman and even rookie Taylor even saw limited action. But keeping Roman and Lewis did at times get exploited while Goldson did some good work and improved as the year went on. I still think there is plenty of room for improvement here.
7) Is QB Shaun Hill the real thing, can he help us win the division?
Turns out he’s not the real thing. Sure, he did manage our offense well and keep turnovers down but our chronic inability to get the ball downfield and produce big plays killed us. We started the season alright, despite our many “3 and outs”, Gore was our savior and giving us enough offense to win. When Gore went down our offense went to hell and we just were not producing the big downfield passes. He would be great for a RAC-based offense with short passing schemes.
Will Singletary’s intense practices, high demands and constantly demanding attitude wear the club thin?
This did not seem to come true. In fact, I don’t see where there is any evidence that his intensity and demands ever wore us thin. Instead I’d have to say that we saw growth in many players as a result of his demands.
9) Can OLB Parys Haralson match last years break out numbers or improve upon them?
Obviously, he didn’t. With only 5 sacks he wasn’t as big as the year before but there were 2 big differences this season. One is that like Lawson, even Haralson got pulled on some downs in favor of LB Brooks. But another factor is that he couldn’t surprise anyone this season. Teams had RBs to help keep him off the QB and they protected harder against him. That in turn helped out Lawson and also helped some of our nicely timed safety blitzes work out. But so far, in 2 seasons Haralson has shown a solid pass rushing ability.
10) Can we win this division and/or make the playoffs?
Did we? Nope. Can we? Without a doubt. We should have gone 6-0 in our division this year, not 5-1 and even then we took it to MIN and IND, 2 teams that are playoff favorites and Is see us eclipsing more middle ground teams next season. We’re back in a similar situation at 2006. In 2006, we finished 7-9 and all we needed was a few defensive pieces and to grow Turner’s offense a bit. But what happened? We lost Turner and put in Hostler who couldn’t run an offense nor keep a QB upright and our offense sunk to one of the worst in the past decade.
