MasterAwesome

This year should be all about evaluating Bryce, and to a lesser degree Canales. We need to know sooner rather than later if they're the right guys for this team. The best way to evaluate them is to get competent pieces for the o-line/receiving corps to allow for them to run their offense unimpeded and remove any room for excuses and doubt. I'm fully on board even if they want to do all of this at the expense of the defense because in all likelihood we are not going to be competitive regardless, and we absolutely NEED to make a decision on Bryce at the end of this season if we are in a position to draft a QB high in the 1st round next year.

Were you hoping we all forgot how much you defended the decision not to trade Burns for 2 1sts and a 2nd at the time? And attacking people who were criticizing the non-trade? Or are you considering yourself one of these Fitterer apologists we’re supposed to dunk on?

I do find it interesting that a lot of those people hand-waving the excuses for Sam Darnold or Bryce Young are still to this day riding hard for Fields and making those exact same excuses about no talent, bad coaching, bad scheme, etc. Despite Fields being 10-28 as a starter going into his FOURTH season. I guess as long as you check the boxes for physical traits, then the book hasn't been written until you've been given 12 seasons and at least 7 different coaching staffs.

Imagine how poisoned your mind has to be to suggest that there's a leaguewide coordinated conspiracy by multiple scouts/coaches/executives across multiple NFL teams to try and deceive the Panthers' FO into moving forward with Bryce Young...because they're just so threatened by the league-worst 2-15 Carolina Panthers with no first round pick that they actually come together to orchestrate devious schemes to keep us in check. I guess we're like the Boogey Man. All this is much more plausible than the alternative that there are people outside the fanbase who simply think we were so bad that it was hard to properly evaluate Bryce. Not even saying anything particularly positive about Bryce, so their scheme is pretty half-assed I guess. And these are the people spamming "cope cope cope" mind you, who ironically are the ones who are coping so hard to explain away any opinion that doesn't align with their own. A plot twist absolutely nobody could've seen coming.

The reason you're confused is because you're treating this like some kind of bombshell revelation when it was literally just a throwaway comment on a podcast. Listen to the clip in the OP...the dude was mid-sentence and then all of a sudden switches train of thought cause he just remembered this funny little sidenote about the whole situation.

Not to mention Bryce Young is still our starting QB going into next season who we went all in on. So the organization has a million percent more incentive to try and sell us on Bryce being the answer and remaining patient and steadfast that he's our guy, rather than to deliberately plant these little seeds of dissent and uncertainty within our organization in order to.....save face for the owner's wife who I guarantee 99% of fans have never heard of (lol). That's truly one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. If we just cut Bryce and then this immediately leaks? Maybe I'd give a little more credence to this silly conspiracy.

You literally spammed multiple "fug you nicole"s in the thread during Stroud's Wildcard game.

Holding, 10 yard penalty. Replay 1st down.

That probably describes every NFL owner, to be fair. I doubt there are a lot of billionaires out there already bringing experience running an NFL team (or even a major sports franchise) so it's unfortunately just kinda one of those things you have to learn on the job. It's just frustrating for a fan on the sidelines to watch mistake after mistake and hope your owner figures it out sooner rather than later.

I think the Garoppolo-led 49ers moving up to draft Trey Lance at 3rd overall was their attempt at striving to be great and not being complacent with the status quo. And that was an absolute disaster lol. But they got pretty lucky with Purdy...although it almost feels like they reverted back to the comfort of a Garoppolo-type QB in Purdy, so I'm not sure what to take away from all this lol. I still wholeheartedly agree about taking a chance on greatness and not being complacent, but the 49ers almost seem like an ass-backwards horror story about the flip side of that. On a bit of a tangent: I would've thought the awful trade-up to get Lance would set them back quite a bit, but their team is so damn strong that they still made it to three straight NFC Championship games (+ the Super Bowl this year) every year since drafting Lance, despite him not contributing in the slightest. But even though they were a top team in spite of the failed Lance trade, you gotta wonder if they wouldn't have won at least one Super Bowl in the last three seasons if they had used all those draft assets elsewhere.

I can't imagine anyone thought I was directly quoting you; there's a quote feature for that. In this case, the quotation marks served to distinguish and confine where the inner dialogue of my takeaway begins and ends. But also, I don't feel like it was an unfair framing of the argument you were making? What part of my faux-quote misrepresents your position? Just the "this game perfectly exemplifies" part? Because at the time, it certainly sounded like you were using this game to prove your point. This whole thread was about this Super Bowl, and you even referenced the 49ers' two fumbles. Like I've said, I agree with your broad point about an elite QB vs. game manager QB, I just think some of the specific claims you're making to substantiate that point don't really make sense and don't jive with the Super Bowl I just watched. Also yeah KC's offense was "weak" (relative to previous years and certainly compared to the 49ers), but why is that the only relevant part of a supporting cast? Their defense and coaching staff are elite - both Top 2 in the league (better than San Francisco). Holding a high-powered offense like SF to 19 points in regulation takes a lot of pressure off Mahomes and his offense. In this hypothetical where Tyreek Hill is out there in the Super Bowl, are we gonna subtract 1st team All-Pro CB Trent McDuffie who significantly contributed to that elite #2 ranked defense? Cause they acquired him with the picks from the Tyreek Hill trade.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree that the stat difference equates to "a whole different level": Win percentage is an odd stat to include because it's not an individual stat. So the only stat I'd personally chalk up to being pretty significant is the Int %. Everything else you posted is in reference to how clutch he is, which is what I already gave him props for in the playoffs.

Yeah that's where I was pulling my data, hence the snippet I included directly from that site. So the 49ers were 1st in Offense DVOA and 4th in Defense DVOA, which would suggest their offense was overperforming at a higher rate than the defense.

Are you talking about Total DVOA? Cause unless I'm looking at the wrong site...then if you wanna go by DVOA, the 49ers were 1st in Offense DVOA and 4th in Defense DVOA. So that would suggest their offense was overperforming more, relative to their defense on the year...no? I don't even particularly care about that stat, but you keep bringing it up so I looked into it.

So what about the Ravens game then? They put up 17 points in 11 drives. Not only that, but they scored 14 points on the first two drives and then put up 3 points in the last 9. So that doesn't really seem to jive with your last point. You kinda seem to be making murky unsubstantiated claims. Like what's your evidence that Playoff Mahomes is on a whole different level? To me, he's consistently elite in the regular season and in the playoffs. It's not like a Joe Flacco situation during his Super Bowl run with the Ravens. If anything stands out in the playoffs, it's Mahomes' Clutch factor. And "clutchness" doesn't typically mean you just dominate the entire game, but rather your ability to come through when it matters the most, i.e. what happened in the Super Bowl in OT.

Why? I'm just saying that holding Mahomes to 19 points in regulation is not exactly the monumental feat it used to be. That was basically their season average

That offense led by Mahomes and Andy Reid was pretty middle-of-the-road this year. They were 15th in points scored on the season, at 21.8 PPG. So the 49ers, with all their talent, allowed less than a FG below the Chiefs' average. I get that Mahomes is the GOAT and all, but this year the Chiefs thrived on the back of their #2 ranked defense. So saying a team held Mahomes to 19 points sounds much more impressive on paper than it is in reality. They scored 19 or less points in just about half of their games in the regular season (8 out of 17).

Nah I agree with both of those characterizations, although I'd probably clarify that Purdy is a very good game manager since there's generally an inherent negative stigma associated with game managers and I feel like Purdy deserves at least a little asterisk amongst that class of QBs. My disagreement is more with the conclusion you're drawing from this Super Bowl. After watching that game, my takeaway wouldn't be "see, this game perfectly exemplifies why a game manager QB like Purdy could never win against an elite HoF QB like Mahomes unless everything falls perfectly in place for him". I'm saying you could easily make the case that Mahomes caught more breaks and that he was better supported by his team (strictly in this one game) and yet his team barely won in overtime. That doesn't really mesh with your conclusion. I just think this was simply a damn close game between two strong teams that could've easily gone either way. I still think an elite QB obviously gives you the best chance at success, broadly speaking, but I don't think this Super Bowl was a slam dunk showcase of that. Yes the talent gap between Mahomes and Purdy is huge, but I would argue this particular win came down more to the clutch/experience factor than simply a product of sheer talent. This was Mahomes' 4th Super Bowl to Purdy's 1st, and I don't think the significance and impact of that can be understated. Just like if Purdy and the 49ers pulled off the win in OT, I also wouldn't argue "see, this game proves that the recipe for success is to get a game manager QB and then focus on building a strong supporting cast around him".

I really don't think it was that bad if you objectively evaluate all of the details at the time. As someone else pointed out, it was reported that Butker struggled in camp to separate himself from Gano. I think it makes sense why we were reluctant to just hand him the starting job right off the bat. We signed him to our Practice Squad (didn't just outright cut him like some people claim) and the Chiefs only claimed him because their starting kicker got injured. It's not like everyone in the league were drooling at the uber talented Harrison Butker and immediately pounced as soon as we foolishly stashed him on the Practice Squad. So I don't even know how much credit I'm willing to give to the Chiefs' talent evaluation when they ostensibly would've kept rolling with Cairo Santos all season long if he hadn't gotten injured. Seems much more likely that they just happened to luck into a really good kicker with Butker. Where I do think we screwed up with Butker, was not giving him enough opportunities in the actual preseason. We alternated Gano and Butker all preseason instead of just giving Butker all the kicks in order to give him the opportunity to win the starting job, as I believe we should've done since Gano was more-or-less a known commodity.

But based on everything you've outlined above, I could also accurately frame it as the HoF QB needing his team to have near perfect play to barely defeat a game managing QB. 49ers lost 2 fumbles and missed an XP, and yet they took that HoF QB to overtime. It feels like people are trying to paint this image of a JAG QB with an all-time great team around him while Mahomes carried a bunch of bums to a Super Bowl victory through his sheer greatness. Purdy does have a great team around him no doubt, but the Chiefs' defense was damn elite - 2nd in yards and TDs on the season, and allowing less than 14 points a game in the postseason leading up to the Super Bowl...they had just held the league MVP to 10 points in the AFC Championship. Reid + Spagnuolo is virtually indisputably the best offensive/defensive coaching duo. 49ers for sure have the much better offensive skill players. But all things considered (offense, defense, coaching) - I don't think the gap between the 49ers and Chiefs outside of QB is all that significant, and yet it was a damn close game. I'm sorry, but if you give me two relatively evenly matched teams and you tell me one has a JAG at QB and the other has a HoF QB in his prime, I'm not expecting an OT nail-biter. It ain't adding up.

(kidding)

Yeah that was crazy to me. I think one of the commentators said the 49ers chose to receive in order to give their defense a rest because they were gassed on that last drive to end the half; I'm not sure if they were speculating or what. So I guess I could at least understand the reasoning if that was the case, but man it still seems like you're giving up way too much of a potential advantage by deferring. All that rest and they still gave up the TD anyways.

He was 5 for 7 from 50+ last year. I'm pretty sure those were in regular season games, but maybe I'm misremembering and we were actually a playoff team and those were all from the postseason.

A. Purdy = JAG, Mahomes = future GOAT if not already considered so B. QB is by far the most important position in the NFL and you can't win without an elite one C. The Super Bowl was a damn close game that was ultimately decided in OT I just don't see how you can propose Premise A and Premise B, while acknowledging that C ultimately happened. If there's that enormous of a chasm between Purdy and Mahomes, then that game should've been a blowout. Unless you want to argue that outside of QB, the 49ers were overwhelmingly more stacked than the Chiefs. Not just better, but like night and day better. I would give the 49ers the edge, but I don't think it's that significant. I'd give the Chiefs the edge on coaching + defense (they were the #2 defense in yards and TDs on the year), and I'd give the 49ers a significant edge on offensive talent outside of QB. I think what's more likely is that Purdy is better than people give him credit for. He's obviously nowhere near Mahomes, but I think he's probably more "good" than he is "JAG". And this is coming from someone who has never said a single positive thing about Purdy on these boards or otherwise.

I mean, Kicker might genuinely be one of our 2 or 3 strongest positions over the last few seasons as sad as that is. We've lucked into some pretty good ones with Gonzalez/Pineiro. I dunno how much a marginal upgrade at Kicker would've moved the needle for us.