Niners Post-Mortem 2022
Same, bruh. Same
When every commentator and talking head starts parroting back the phrase “you have to give the Eagles credit,” you know that if one thing is certain, you do NOT have to give the Eagles credit. They showed up and did NOT lose the only two healthy quarterbacks on their roster. They showed up and did NOT get absolutely hosed by a trash officiating crew all game. But they DID gloat and talk shit all day—as if beating a team without a quarterback was somehow an impressive achievement—and then, as Trent Williams boiled over and summoned all challengers, they promptly decided they were NOT really about that action and backed away. V impressive. Much tough.
Welcome to an extra salty edition of Niners Nonsense, as this was possibly the most frustrating Niners game of my life. There’s not going to be much in-depth analysis of the atrocity of last weekend because it really comes down to this: you can’t win without a quarterback. Not figuratively. Literally. When you no longer have an operational quarterback on the roster, you’re not going to win.
Luck (or lack thereof). This was basically the definition of a game where “nothing goes your way,” and it just happened to occur against a team that is probably one of the luckiest that we’ve seen in quite some time. Luck is not a truly quantifiable stat, but I’m backing that claim by checking in on a stat that—in a sport as violent as football—is largely attributed to good (or bad) fortune: injuries.
Every single member of the Eagles’ 53-man roster was healthy enough to play on Sunday. Not a single player held an injury designation. And of their original two-deep, only Derek Barnett—who went down in September and is a part of the team’s deepest position—wasn’t healthy enough for this game. In a conference championship weekend that was hugely affected by the Niners running out of quarterbacks, injuries to Mahomes, Kelce, and a handful of the Chiefs receivers, and a Bengals offensive line that just recently had to shuffle in three new starters, the Eagles being 100% healthy was an outrageous product of good fortune.
Speaking of luck, let’s update the list of quarterbacks that the Eagles have beaten this year: Jared Goff (before he was good), Kirk Cousins, Trevor Lawrence (before he was good), Carson Wentz (long after he was good), Kyler Murray, Cooper Rush, Kenny Pickett, Davis Mills, the ghost of Matt Ryan, an injured Aaron Rodgers who didn’t finish the game, Ryan Tannehill, Justin Fields, Daniel Jones (3x), and N/A. Their losses were to Andy Dalton, Taylor Heinecke, and Dak Prescott. This team is about to go to the Super Bowl after beating a sixth-seeded Giants team that finished the season 2-5-1 and a team with no quarterbacks.
If that’s not luck, I don’t know what is.
They are who we thought they were… One of the most frustrating elements about this game was the fact that it appeared that our coaching staff came in with a superior game plan, but the quarterback injuries prevented us from ever taking advantage.
It’s impossible to say what our offense would have looked like when our quarterback went down six plays into our first drive, but it’s worth noting that we’d already picked up two relatively easy first downs and had made it to midfield prior to Brock Purdy’s injury. Even when Josh Johnson was thrown in (and he looked terrible), our offense was still springing dudes open—particularly in the second level across the middle of the field. But Johnson—as we probably should have expected given he’s a fourth-string journeyman who we picked up off the street two months ago—just couldn’t get them the ball.
Despite a complete inability to throw the ball after the first series, there were seams on the ground. Christian McCaffrey picked up 84 yards rushing on 15 carries for a healthy 5.6 average—numbers that you can only assume would have improved if the Eagles weren’t allowed to send all 11 men at the running game for an entire half of football. Again, it wasn’t a big enough sample size to see what the Niners had planned on offense, but the early returns were quite promising before our season dissolved behind a torn UCL.
On defense DeMeco Ryans and his staff had a strong enough game plan to win this contest—effectively reverse-engineering what the Eagles do on offense and punishing them for their simplicity. But as the game went on and the defense’s execution wavered with exhaustion, sloppy penalties, and just plain shitty penalties, the Eagles were able to take advantage in a quantity-over-quality approach.
The Eagles may have scored on the first drive but nearly half of their yardage on that drive was due to the 29-yard fourth-down catch that wasn’t actually a catch. That non-completion would wind up Jalen Hurts’ only deep ball of the game. With a game plan that involved us hemming Hurts into the pocket, making him beat us with his arm, and keying the limited route combinations that the Eagles run, we successfully eliminated that entire facet of their offense. Hurts finished 15-of-25 for 121 yards on a 4.8 yards per attempt average—his worst passing performance of the season. Take out that deep ball that wasn’t a deep ball and he threw for 92(!) yards. While I have enough faith in Hurts’ approach to the game and work ethic to believe he very well may develop into the passer that his 2022 statistics would indicate he already is, we basically pantsed this passing attack and showed massive flaws in its competency level and long-term structure. Are there any teams left in the bracket that are talented enough on defense to watch this film and take advantage? TBD. But a massive Hurts extension is coming soon, which means the Eagles won’t be able to skirt by on talent alone. They’ll need to evolve their offense heading into next year or else they may risk hitting a Goff-Rams wall.
As a runner, Hurts did find some room on the ground… once we were already down three touchdowns. Even that success—in a desperate attempt to make it sound like Hurts had more to do with this win than he did—was overstated by the announcers. He finished with 39 yards on 11 carries. Not exactly world-beating numbers.
The most successful element of the Eagles’ offense was clearly their running game as a whole, but even that should be taken with a massive grain of salt. The Eagles carried the ball 44 times for 148 yards on 3.4 yards per carry. They wore us down with quantity and found some nice seams on the backside cutbacks, but they were greatly aided not only by our lack of a quarterback to keep our offense on the field but by how each of their offensive drives was extended—sometimes multiple times—by trash penalties.
…and we let em off the hook. The officiating crew dominated us on defense. Yes, we had some dumb fouls. But it’s worth noting that—of the Eagles’ five scoring drives—four included first downs due to penalty and the only one that didn’t was the drive that had the fourth down “completion” that clearly wasn’t a catch. Massive assist from the zebras in this one, and while the final score was well out of reach, the way each bad call went against us in pivotal moments of the game was comical.
On the day, the Eagles gained 6 first downs through the air (5, if you don’t include the non-catch) and 7 first downs via penalty. Three of those penalties—the Jimmie Ward three-yard “pass interference” on third-and-7, the roughing the kicker that should have been—by definition—running into the kicker because it was contact on his kicking leg, not his plant leg, and the Dre Greenlaw unnecessary roughness when he was trying to punch out the ball before the whistle was blown—gave the Eagles a new set of downs after they had already been stopped on either third or fourth down. Even if we gift the Eagles a long field goal conversion regardless of Greenlaw’s penalties, those flags led directly to 14 points.
In a game where we didn’t need any more obstacles, the refs repeated an absolutely pathetic trend that continued all the way to the final whistle of the afternoon game—reacting to crowd noise from a home fanbase because you’re too scared to do your job correctly. I wouldn’t work in crane lifts if I was afraid of heights. Maybe find another vocation if you don’t have the guts to go against the drunken dude screaming from row eleven. That’s not actually Randall Cunningham yelling in your ear, that’s Big Ted from the warehouse who’s no longer allowed within a hundred feet of schools or Wawas.
They should teach this in training: If a play is over and you haven’t thrown a flag, but—after hearing noise from the crowd—you think you should, treat it like your dick and keep it in your pants. Cause no one wants to see that shit.
Boston called, they want their “incorrigible people as a personality” back
Am I gonna have to root for the fucking Chiefs? Nick Sirianni has done a great job with this football team, but that dude is skyrocketing up the NFL’s “punchable face” power rankings. Raise your hand if you don’t know a convicted felon who looks just like him. An uncle who’s not allowed to Thanksgiving anymore? Did they pick him out of the local drunk tank or did an AI create him from aggregate off of every henchman in a Scorsese knock-off whose one line is calling someone a “broad” or a racial slur?
Word of advice: if anyone ever describes a man as someone who “embodies their city” and that city is Philadelphia, make sure not to let that man date your sister, watch your dog, or operate any kind of heavy machinery without supervision. If Sirianni doesn’t have “frat bro with a psychosexual affinity for hazing who blacks out and breaks down crying twice a week” energy, I don’t know who does.
But of course, since he coaches for a team whose city’s own nickname is a play on how everyone in that city is a raging asshole, get ready for two weeks of puff pieces about how being a dick is somehow synonymous with charm. I’m sure Sirianni isn’t as bad as the cartoon character he seems to be, but I’ve said it once and I’ll say it a thousand times: there is no positive correlation between being a dick and having success. If you’re great at something, it’s not cause you’re a dick. You just like being a dick.
Cheesesteaks are cool tho.
Until next time. This wasn’t a game where we ran out of steam. Or where our quarterback shelled up. Or where—like last year—we ran out of bodies and couldn’t overcome a talent deficit. It was just terrible, terrible luck on all fronts. And it’s only made worse by the fact that I absolutely thought we would have won that game and—for the second year in a row—felt we would have had a good matchup in the Super Bowl. Last year we were the hottest team by the end of the season, but not the best. This year, there was a legitimate claim that we were both. This was another lost opportunity for a Super Bowl title, and championship windows are notorious for being smaller than anyone expects. That’s why this game stings the way it does.
On the bright side, we’ve been to three of the past four NFC championships, the core of our team is strong (and mostly young), and our two-deep at quarterback is about to cost 1/4 to 1/5th of the price of upcoming contracts for Jalen Hurts, Lamar Jackson, etc. The impending departure of DeMeco Ryans will hurt, and there’s lots of roster maneuvering and shuffling to be had, but we’re not going anywhere.
I’m well aware that patience is harder to preach in the game of football than in any other sport. The short careers, the single elimination playoffs, the way games, seasons, and sometimes franchises seem to hinge on one bad bounce, bad play, or bad call—everything about the sport hammers home the importance of the now. But the lessons of the past help shape the future. They make up the foundation upon which great teams are built. After every setback, this team and this locker room have come back hungrier and stronger. Here’s hoping this disappointment—like the many before it—fuels this team for greater things to come and that—when our luck finally matches our ability—we’ll be prepared to seize the moment.
I, for one, believe that will be the case.
Go Niners 👍🏈