So, what are we to take from the 49ers loss to the Cowboys? Are they the team that broke Tony Romo's ribs or the one that just sacked him once while getting eviscerated to the tune of 427 passing yards? Are they the offense that had Dallas totally flummoxed on third down, converting 8-of-10 first half opportunities despite being without their top two receivers; or the one that got sacked six times and shutout in third down conversions in the second half and overtime?
Most of all, are they the outfit that got out-gained 472 yards to 206 by a Dallas team that was missing Dez Bryant, Terence Newman and Orlando Scandrick and who had Romo, and his top three skill players all get banged up during the game; or the ones who were one play away from winning the game on two separate occasions? Indeed all the 49ers needed was a stop on 4th-and-5 or for for Cowboys kicker Dan Bailey, who hooked a 21-yard attempt in the first quarter, to do so again with a 48-yarder at the gun. Instead, the S.O.B hit one so down the middle that it would've been good in the Arena League.
Bill Parcells was fond of saying "You are what your record says you are," but with all due respect to that miserable bastard, there are games where a loss is a win and and games where a win is a loss. Then there are those wins that count double and losses that crush whole seasons. So with that, here are the winners and losers to take away from the 27-24 overtime loss:
Winners:
StubHub: First and foremost. They must have made a killing with their service charges and hidden fees and whatnot, accommodating all those Cowboys fans. Good lord, I was half expecting to see 10-gallon hats and bolo ties in the press box.
Jim Harbaugh: For one half darn near every play he dialed up was working. They were picking up all of Dallas blitzes, and Smith was finding guys open on out routes and hitches and converting third downs. The game plan showed, definitively, that they were indeed "saving" some things for the Cowboys that they didn't use the week before against Seattle. As we go, I would expect the offense to open up more and more and for Harbaugh to find answers to how people are playing his guys.
Alex Smith: Was he as good as his stats suggest? Well, no. But he made a number of fine throws, including perfect touchdown strikes to Kyle Williams and Delanie Walker and even his improvised rollout bomb to Frank Gore looked to be on the money before Bradie James took an interference penalty to break it up. Also, he gets credit for having to make do without his starting receivers and for not fumbling on all those shots he took in the second half.
Kyle Williams: Yeah, the kid has just one pass thrown his way, but he made a great catch in the corner of the end zone and will likely see more playing time with Braylon Edwards out and Michael Crabtree limping around. I've said it before, he probably runs the best slant route on the team, and with his quickness and run-after-catch ability, Williams is the one guy who can burn blitzes by taking a short hot route a long way. We'll have to see if it comes into play.
Bruce Miller: The first two games couldn't have gone much better for him. The guy in front of him on the depth chart, Moran Norris, has been a tire fire thus far, and now he's injured. Miller will crack the lineup this Sunday.
Ray McDonald: Not a great game, but another sack and one other hit on Romo. Two games in, he's looked every bit the $4 million defensive end. Kudos.
NaVorro Bowman: Not only has he held up well against the run, but he was better in coverage than just about any 49er on Sunday. He broke up two passes and I can't remember any that he gave up. Would've liked to seen him blitz more though.
Carlos Rogers: He was beaten two or three times, but he got his hand (or his head) on quite a few as well. Everyone will remember the overtime play to Jesse Holley, but for three-and-a-half quarters Rogers played outstanding football.
Losers:
49ers fans: You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Yes, your stadium is an eyesore. Yes, the parking situation is an abomination. Yes, there was potential for crowd violence a la the preseason mess with Oakland. Still, your team isn't that bad and it's downright embarrassing that it turned into a Cowboys home game. The crowd was -- and this is conservative -- at least 55 percent in favor of Dallas. Perhaps it was a gigantic middle finger to ownership, who had gotten the message out in advance of the game that they wanted the stands to be "a sea of red." Maybe it was a way of telling the Yorks "We'll buy your gear and show up to your games when you get a legitimate stadium and some good players."
Or maybe everyone in California is broke and a buck is a buck.
Jim Harbaugh: Save for one nice play-call late in the third quarter where Smith found Walker matched up one-on-one by outside linebacker Anthony Spencer and took advantage, Harbaugh and Greg Roman couldn't draw up anything to bail the offense. Three times Smith rolled out or executed play-fakes where there was an unblocked rusher waiting to meet him, and any plan that calls for DeMarcus Ware to not be accounted for seems pretty stupid to me.
Too often the plays they were trying were too cute, the kind of calls designed to take advantage of over-aggressive, inexperienced front sevens. Dallas was aggressive, but they've got a lot of veterans there who know how to read tells and diagnose plays. I think a couple times the 49ers assumed that when the Cowboys had six or seven snarling guys at the line that at least two or three would drop back in coverage and the line would be able to zone up whoever rushed. Instead, Dallas just sent everyone and that left people who weren't blocked. If the Cowboys guessed correctly on who the hot route was, Smith didn't have time to look for a second option and he was toast.
Of course Harbaugh's biggest blunder was taking the field goal with 11:12 to go to push the score to 24-14 instead of accepting a 1st-and-ten at Dallas' 22-yard-line, but we covered that extensively on Monday.
Alex Smith: How much blame does he deserve for not adjusting the line to pick up some of those blitzes in the second half or for not audibling out of bad plays? It's hard to say because we don't know the extent of his responsibilities. Maybe he did change the protections and guys simply missed their assignments. What we can blame Smith for are two throws that came back-to-back in the third quarter. On the interception he thought Davis was running a button hook. Davis, however, correctly adjusted his route to an out when he saw how much room he had to the sideline. Even if he ran the hook that Smith wanted, Dallas' Alan Ball undercut it and still would've picked it off. Smith's real sin, however, was the play before, when he rolled left and badly overshot a wide open Walker, who would've gained enough yards for a first down.
Also, I think he should've lobbied Harbaugh more, not just to keep the ball
after that penalty on Akers' field goal, but even before that, when Harbaugh elected to kick on 4th-and-1 from the 37. A good quarterback fights these decisions, but it's simply not in Smith's nature to be confrontational or argumentative.
Kendall Hunter: Welcome to life in the NFL, kid. You happened to get drafted by a team where the running back has more influence in the organization than the quarterback does. Don't worry, you'll get a chance to play when Gore gets his inevitable injury in a couple weeks.
Vernon Davis: He was asked to block a bunch against Dallas on pass plays (didn't work) and doubled when he did go on routes. These things will happen without Crabtree and Edwards. Davis is already grumpy with Harbaugh, but the 49ers do have a few games coming up against teams who can't cover tight ends well.
Jonathan Goodwin: Beaten soundly by Jay Ratliff two or three times, leading to sacks on Smith, including one in overtime that torpedoed the 49ers last chance of winning the game. He also had a terrible shotgun snap that Smith did well to turn into a positive play.
Mike Iupati: Whiffed on blocks in the run game and pass game. Continues to be confused by stunts and twists. Worst of all, I don't sense any fire from him at all.
Joe Staley: Beaten for one sack by Ware but a lot of the pressure Dallas had came from the gap between him and Iupati.
Chilo Rachal: Still getting subbed out for Adam Snyder a couple series per game. That should tell you something.
Anthony Davis: The 49ers best lineman on Sunday. Which is like being their handsomest beat reporter.
Moran Norris: Somewhere in the NFL there must be a worse starting fullback, but I can't think of one of the top off my head.
Ahmad Brooks: What a ticky-tack neutral zone call that was, giving Dallas new life and turning what should've been at the worst a 14-0 halftime lead into 14-7. Still, Ahmad, dude, you're looking right at the ball. It's 3rd-and-forever. Get a full foot behind it, just to be safe.
Tarell Brown: Beaten regularly by the likes of Holley and Kevin Ogletree. Shawntae Spencer will claim the starting job any day now.
Tramaine Brock: Nice interception and all, but putting him in the slot against Miles Austin was painful to watch. He's gonna be the odd man out of the lineup.
Donte Whitner: Witten chewed him up all afternoon. Just a hopeless match-up. Bit on a play-fake in overtime (as did Rogers), which was silly because Dallas hasn't been able to run the ball since last October.
Madieu Williams: P-U.
Reggie Smith: How stiff are those hips? I thought the 49ers traded Taylor Mays away.
Does that seem unfair, to have far more losers than winners? Well, I repeat, the yardage was 472 to 206. Should we throw the 49ers a parade? The offensive line is a sieve and the defense looks very vulnerable when people stretch them out and forget about running. I was disappointed in Vic Fangio for not calling more blitzes and trying to confuse Romo a bit. Instead the Niners got dinked-and-dunked to death in fine Greg Manusky fashion. We'll see if he gets any trickier against a rookie QB this Sunday in Cincinnati's Andy Dalton. It won't do to have him be less confused out there than Smith.
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Injury notes:
Harbaugh, in a rare lapse of his usual thousand-yard stare and dismissive non-answer routine, actually revealed that Braylon Edwards "will be out a bit" and that the receiver "underwent a procedure" on his knee. Look for Edwards to be out until the seventh game, home vs. his former club, the Browns. The Niners have their bye before that and the sixth game is on the turf at Detroit, so I think it'll be a stretch to see him play in that one, though a losing streak may change the prognosis. That's what makes this Cincinnati game so important. They simply have to win it, because the schedule gets pretty hairy the three weeks after that.
Harbaugh also said that Michael Crabtree will "most likely" play on Sunday. We saw Crabtree running routes at what looked to be full speed in individual drills, but at his locker he didn't look like someone champing at the bit to go get 'em. "It's only been three days," he said. "How much different could (his foot injury) be in three days?"
Crabtree was just "limited" in practice on Wednesday, per the official report, so we'll see.
My feeling: Crabtree really wanted to play against his hometown Cowboys and was disappointed about not getting the chance. He's probably not nearly as stoked about facing the Bengals. He'll play, but...
Alex Smith apparently sustained a concussion during Sunday's game. Nice enough for them to mention it on Wednesday, on an injury report that was sent in at 4:38 p.m... Smith seemed lucid enough during his press conference and was a full participant in practice, so it must have been a minor one.
Shawntae Spencer told CSN Bay Area's Mindi Bach that he's been practicing in full for two weeks and he's completely healed from his hamstring injury. However, he said that coaches want to see how he fits into the scheme on the practice field before throwing him out there in games. He added that he understands the scheme, but has to convince them of that. The way Brown and Brock have played, I think Spencer will get his chance, and soon.
Dashon Goldson also looked spry during individual drills, and I think he's the starter this week unless he has some kind of set back. The team desperately needs him back because both Madieu Williams and Reggie Smith were liabilities on Sunday. The team missed Goldson a lot more than they missed Spencer or Crabtree or even Edwards.
Moran Norris' injury was revealed to be a fibula problem, and despite him telling Maiocco that he's "fine" the team already declared him out for Sunday. Good lord.
Are you ready for Bruce Miller?
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49ers Statistical Rankings, presented without comment.
49ers Offensive Rankings:
Rushing: 79.5 YPG (26th); Yards Per Carry: 2.8 (29th);
Rushing Touchdowns: 2 (T-6th);
Passing: 128.0 YPG (29th); Completion Percentage (T-4th);
Yards Per Attempt: 6.9 (T-21st);
Passing Touchdowns: 2 (T-23rd); Interceptions: 1 (T-5th);
Sacks: 6 (T-22nd);
QB Rating: 95.2 (11th); 3rd Down Percentage: 32.1 (23rd);
Yards Per Game: 207.5 (31st); Scoring: 28.5 (9th)
49ers Defensive Rankings:
Rushing: 54.5 YPG (1st); Yards Per Carry: 2.5 (1st);
Rushing Touchdowns: 0 (T-1st)
Passing: 291.0 YPG (25th); Completion Percentage: 58.8 (12th);
Yards Per Attempt: 7.9 (20th);
Passing Touchdowns: 5 (30th); Interceptions: 3 (T-4th);
Sacks: 6 (T-6th);
Fumbles Forced: 4 (T-2nd); Fumbles Recovered: 2 (T-7th);
3rd Down Percentage: 37.9 (15th); Yards Per Game: 345.5 (T-17th); Scoring: 22.0 (T-12th)
49ers Special Teams Rankings:
Kickoff Return: 43.8 Avg (1st); Kickoff Return Allowed: 23.3 Avg (15th);
Punt Return: 15.2 Avg (5th); Punt Return Allowed: 9.3 Avg (T-17th);
Field Goal Percentage: 100.0 (T-1st); Net Punt Average: 51.4 Yards (2nd)
Giveaway/Takeaway:
Giveaways: 1 (T-2nd); Takeaways: 5 (T-4th); Plus/Minus: +4 (T-3rd)
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