49ers saved us from the embarrassment of becoming
a meme. Because everybody on football night, in America,
picked the 49ers to win, no one was willing to take
the Chargers bullet to ensure that the upset wouldn't happen.
And look the 49ers local sluggish coming out of there
by. It wasn't pretty, but they ultimately got it done. They
got the five and four and eight miles.
If they, I said this last night, if they can keep their
core players healthy, they are the most dangerous. Dangerous
team in the NFC, notwithstanding anything we
said about the Vikings and the Eagles, they're a team that can
go on the road in January and win
games,
all due respect to the
shortcomings of Jimmy, G. The team is good enough to even
overcome the most Jimmy, G of Jimmy, G moments.
All right, I mean, you've got to have your guys helping,
you've got to get your contributors to actually
contribute while
ran. Are you kind of bad first half? He dropped a touchdown,
you know.
And one of those other things that you need from the 49ers,
is him to be that guy that he can be relied upon. And so he
was that fat guy in the second half and he was able to convert
some key. Third Downs, that was huge.
You don't necessarily get the most contributions from
Christian McCaffrey but you look at that offense and when
they have Elijah Mitchell, Christian McCaffrey and Deebo
Samuel running at you like that. It's really really hard
to stop now.
Chargers got to give him some credit for making those
Stops in the red zone as they did. And I think that's one of
those big things that the 49ers are going to have to fix. How
do we make sure that once we get down there? We punch that
thing in and you know, of course of bread, a naive
doesn't drop the ball, then that's one of those things. But
at the same time, I
had a sense. The entire time of that game
that the 49ers were going to win it, and it felt like man,
why aren't they doing a little bit better here? You really get
down into that zone and it's like, yeah, you really should
be winning here. But look at all the movement. Look
at all the That they've got, you know, there's so much that
this 49ers offense can do when you've got a mind like, Kyle
Shanahan you anticipate
that they're going to be able to get that thing done
offensively. So I agree with you that they are a very
dangerous team as long as they get healthy and they stay
healthy as funny. They did a thing last night for social
media,
where they asked us what our favorite touchdown celebration is
and I said, my favorite is when the big linemen gets the ball
to spike it and he's really going to like Pop it 50 feet in
the air and it just dribbles away. And there was last night.
The classic lineman. I am going to crush this
and it's just kind of
here. It is. Here it is. Yes, this is my chance. My chance.
I'm gonna,
that's kind of the night for the Chargers. They fall, 25 and
4, no points scored at all. In the second half. The defense
really, really stepped up for the 49ers. 52 yards. No points
for the Chargers.
Elijah Mitchell and his return helped help justify the trade
of Jeff Wilson jr. Had 89 yards
and we're going to see the charges again. We're going to
see him again.
I had a story. It's funny, I'll put stories in draft. I'll put
the headline in that I intend to get to and sometimes I do
and sometimes I don't and I had a story about, we're going to
see. We're going to learn a lot about Justin Harper. The next
two weeks because we got
two games Standalone Primetime,
Sunday night. Let's see where he is,
let's see where he's going. I don't know. Is that rib stew?
Oh, bother me. I don't know, but he's not, you know, going
into the season. It's Mahomes Allen
with Justin Herbert,
just like a half, click below, and then you figure out
the rest of them, right? With be right. And
it's Alan and Mahomes are here but I don't know where
Herbert's kind of in the
scrum. Yeah, he's in the scrum and is it
and see, here's the thing. It can't be him. It's got to be
the coaching that that's going to be the Chargers position. So
if they're willing to pay Sean Payton, they can
they That's a topic for another day, but I was talking to
somebody about this last week
because because the idea is Dean Spanos won't pay Sean
Payton. Well,
I mean,
a great coach is worth every penny. I said this a few years
ago if I have to choose between paying Jared Goff 33 million
and paying Bill Belichick, 23 million,
it's Belichick 100 out of 100 times.
I mean, if it's 33 million
for Belichick or golf, I'm paying the 33 million for Bella
check. It's amazing. Coaches, don't make more and it's
amazing
more teams last year. You know, the Dolphins got in trouble for
trying to hire Sean Payton, how more team should have been
trying to hire Sean Payton last year.
Well, you have a proven
Audited head coach, who can come in
you pair them up with a great young quarterback and you can
have a team that's consistent Contender year. In and year
out, you're in the conversation for postseason
and deep into the postseason
and of the Saints, only won one Super Bowl. But once they got
past, the aftermath of the bounty
nonsense because everybody was doing exactly what the saints
were doing. It was a cultural issue. It wasn't a Saints issue
and the Saints got singled out for it. Once that subsided,
they were a
perennial
Playoff Contender. They just kept, they just kept having
their hearts ripped out in new and innovative ways, every
postseason.
Yeah, yeah, thank you to kill Ruby Coleman. So I here's one
thing I want to say about the Chargers and they I was
listening to the broadcast last night and they mentioned this
that
bread and Staley and talked about, oh why aren't people
talking about us? You know, we're five and three and we've
had all these injuries that's like whoa! Whoa Whoa man.
We've seen this team play.
No, what do you mean?
Something that Jason Kelsey is talked about on the podcast, he
has with Travis Kelce. And of course, I listen to it because
they're Cleveland kids and I'm a Cleveland kid but he said
you control the narrative,
right? So if you're the Chargers
and you keep going to games and you lose like that,
right? You know, you you play the Jaguars at home and you
have a terrible loss, you should have lost to the Browns
because you had a terrible coaching decision and you
Coulda lost to the Broncos on that god-awful Monday night.
At gate. It's not like we haven't seen this team play,
and I know that they're playing with that Keenan, Allen. And
I understand
that they're playing without Mike Williams and that really
is. It issue when you're talking about a young
quarterback and does he have his weapons? And it's this and
it's that, but we're watching the Chargers play and they're
not playing well enough.
You know, you're watching the Chargers play and they're
trying to substitute when the the 49ers offense is getting
down toward the goal line, and they're not substituting,
you can't put in your goal line.
Package there, it's day, one stuff. If the offense doesn't
substitute, you can't substitute those like, well,
why aren't they talking about us? Well, because you're not
winning games in critical situations,
or making the plays in critical situations, or making
the critical coaching decisions that really Elevate you to play
winning football. So at stuff that's stuff that. Yeah it kind
of great smell. Why aren't they talking about it? Yeah, win
games. Yeah, going win
games and we'll talk about you more positive. Yeah. Win games
in impressive fashion. Don't Don't don't win games, despite
all of your best or worst efforts to sabotage your own
interest. You've got to be a more
impressive overall operation and
look to use the very timely reference that I always
employed with the Chargers. Roseanne Roseannadanna, it's
always something with them. It's always resilience
and it's going to be a new coach if they don't.
If they don't watch it here for the balance, there's still five
and four.
I know it's supposed to pray and I know we're supposed to
break, but look the show ends at nine. Lock either way. So we
do whatever we want, frankly, I know that
and I shouldn't be saying that while I'm actually here,
that's probably a
more prudent comment for, when I'm five hundred miles away miles
but the Dre, Greenland ejection. I just want to
comment on this because there was a pool report last night,
Walter Walter Anderson, earned his pay check yesterday. They
were like, there were multiple pool reports from World
Anderson,
but this play at the time, like, when I saw this, okay,
like what's the foul here
and
If it was a running back, would have, would there even have
been a conversation about a foul, much less an ejection.
That's what made it even more amazing, Anderson explained
that this was a flagrant violation of the rule against
lowering, the helmet and initiating contact. And that
would be fine if they threw that flag every time. Someone
does that,
that happens all game long. And one thing I learned back in
August, apparently they find a lot of guys for this that we
don't know about because they only tell us the Finds when you
at such a stupid, we have to ask. Did you find that? Did you
find Jalen Ramsey for taking his helmet
off? No, we didn't. Okay.
Did you find like so we don't even like we're going to study
film and look at every instance where it looks like somebody
may have lowered their helmet to initiate contact and it
wasn't flag. Did you find him for that? Apparently they do.
So I think what made it so jarring, was
you never or at least, rarely
have that flag? Even thrown
to have someone ejected for it. When you look at it and say,
what, Could Dre Greenlaw have done differently in that moment
when a six foot five inch quarterback decides he's not
going to slide he's going to fall forward like a running
back. Does
what is Dre Greenlaw supposed to do? They're
right it's little to me it looks like a football play you know
he said that I saw the Paw report. It said well
the quarterback was down at what point was the quarterback down
before he initiates contact. Yeah, I mean the nose down with
the knees down there as he is split that split
a nanosecond.
Why are is down? Yeah you when you've already committed see
that's the problem with these rules and what happens is and
for more you can buy play makers which Gets
behind the scenes as to what really happened with this
lowering the helmet rule, this wasn't a football rule, this
was a PR / safety /, legal rule that was crafted by the to
Jeff's Jeff Miller, who's in charge of PR and safety, which
is
probably not the best
ice time. Say it's kind of dawned on me before. Or
you're in charge of helped to safety
and PR.
May want to have two separate silos there in any organization
and you got the chief lawyer, they came together and they
crafted this rollback in 2018, rammed it through. Without any
of the football people having any say, created chaos in
the preseason that year
and it and so it's just kind of there
and it just randomly gets seized upon in a moment like
last night. That's why I have a problem with it. It's not
practical, it, ignores the realities of football and it's
this.
It's this catch-all
flag. We can throw whenever there's an outcome that just
looks to
to football too dangerous. Sure,
to shut, we got to do something. What are we going to
do here? Well let's just say it was. Lowering his helmet there.
Tell me, tell me a break
and since I'm not 500 miles away,
I probably listen, we got
more the Jeff Saturday coaching debut. We'll talk about that
when PFT life continues, right after this,
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