Sgt Schultz

This. Rhule was nothing but words. He preached about how The Process would lead the team to great things, even though that same process had never been tested at the NFL level. When it didn't work, "it will if we just keep doing it." That wears out pretty quickly at the pro level. At the college level, the players are inexperienced enough to buy it long enough for their college careers to end before they figure it out. Wilks talks about tangible things that need to be done, all of which have been time tested in the NFL for decades. These are things that the veterans aren't going to say they have never, ever seen or heard of at the NFL level. He also does not promise great things "if you just drink the Kool-Aid." One of those paths leads to credibility, the other leads to lack thereof. Then there is the whole discussion of progress you can't see. In the NFL, almost all progress can be seen somewhere. It may be going from being curb-stomped to being competitive in losses, but it is there. You can't cite unseen progress when the results are going in the opposite direction. Under Wilks, the team has shown more results (progress) in seven games than they showed in 2+ seasons under The Process. Part of that is probably that he treats them like professionals, not mere disciples.

Based on what I saw yesterday, the Niners are at the top of that tree, but to be mentioned by somebody who is not a comedian trying to get the entire audience to explode in laughter is a plus. Let's face it: if you are going to be a consistent threat in the playoffs you need to be able to lock down an opposing offense from time to time. I'm not professing we are a playoff team or even a threat yet, but it is nice to see the defense coming together and holding up its end of the bargain in that conversation.

There always has to be a line of succession for coordinators. Anybody as either an OC or DC that hits home runs is going to be interviewed and probably get offers, unless they are the north end of a southbound horse like Josh McDaniels. And even he was in the mix. Good teams do exactly that. They are usually doing it to groom their next HC when the current one retires or moves on, but teams with upper-echelon coaching staffs can never pat themselves on the back and think "job done." It may be done today, but come January or when they are making their tee times for the offseason......

I'm picturing John Madden scribbling on the screen, with four or five bams and pows added in. Or Curley belting out "woo woo woo woo, woo."

All we need is an OC who can draw up plays like the Dolphins just scored on! I suspect we will find such a coach in the Happy Valley Rest Home and Asylum.

But not exactly. The four fat guys could suffer four coronaries in the process and none of them make it to the top. NFL rules require the team in the NFCS that sucks the least to go to the playoffs. Even if they have a coronary, too.

Yes, he should be back. I'd like to see what an OC that believes in designing his offense to the strengths on his roster, rather than some boilerplate formula, would do with Shenault......and others.

Wilks will be hard to let go if they win the division. I'll say this up front: he was not somebody I would have considered when The Process was canned. But, he got thrown into this mess, and I would give him or any interim HC a pass for their first week. He's led the same team that The Process was getting 1-4 out of to 4-2 since the Rams game. And he did this after we traded the guy who was most of our offense. We can talk about the quality of the opponents in that stretch, but the man has no control over who stands on the opposite sidelines. You play who the league booked. Are there better HC candidates out there? I think so. Can Tepper find them? What worries me about that question is what has happened every time Tepper tries to swing for the fences. Limiting it to just HC hires, he is 0 for 1 but it was a disaster. I'm not saying they should or should not give Wilks the job, just that he has made a strong case for himself. His OC, who he didn't hire, not so much.

Had the Aints not stepped on their wangs last week against the Bucs, everybody would be 5-8. That seems about right. At least we seem to be trending up.

I thought he was wearing 0, too, when I first saw it. The middle of the 8 was just not visible the way his jersey had folded under the back of his shoulder pads.

They did out here, too. To say he looks like a shell of himself is an understatement.

Wow. Whodathunkit? The Bucs - Niners game is such a blowout, Fox is about to switch us to the Panthers game.

Purdy may get figured out, but right now Brady looks like he has been figured out. He is seeing ghosts in San Francisco.

He would have had a win, anyway, if our brilliant coaching staff had continued to play offense rather than settling for a FG to go up by a point with over a minute left. That points us back to coaching, which cycles back to your last sentence. Our players are starting to learn how to win games, but that coaching staff was never going to learn that same lesson. I don't know if Rhule or McAdoo made that call (most likely Rhule since it is usually a HC's job), but neither exactly distinguished themselves here.

I'm happy for any QB that escapes our QB purgatory and goes on to some level of success, no matter how long it lasts or how high it reaches.

That gets us to the discussion of there being three types of coaches/philosphies. There are those like The Process who have no idea what they are doing, strategically (game planning) or tactically (play calling and adjustments). There is no path to success for these knuckleheads. Then there are those who have their philosophy/system and they expect their players to fit into it. We don't know if they can or can't adapt, but we know they don't. This is probably the majority of NFL coaches, and maybe the vast majority. There are varying degrees of this, too. Some are the defensive "shove it down their throats" guys (Rivera, Fox, most likely Wilks), some are the offensive geniuses who are so overcome with what they want to do that they will abandon something else that is working in favor of their preferred plan (and often lose games they were in control of in the process), and then there are college coaches (Kelly is a classic example), that simply have no idea how to do anything else or altered the roster to the point that they can't. Finally, there are the guys who balance what they want to do against the talent they have and adjust accordingly. That usually means putting what they want on the back burner in favor of what they think their talent can excel at or handle, and what their opponent will have trouble with. Hoodie falls into this group, as the Pats have won using about every conceivable offensive and defensive game plan over the years, and changed them as their roster changed. McDermott and McVay are on this list (McVay probably adapted them to a loss in the Super Bowl vs. the Pats, which happens). Sirianni looks like he may be in this group. McAdoo is firmly entrenched in the second category. The game plans and plays that were called with Mayfield here, right out of the chute, were directly contrary to what Mayfield had shown over four years he could do well. I don't think he falls into the totally incompetent class, just inflexible. I'm not saying Mayfield is the some hybrid of Elway and Marino, but he also was not as bad as our brilliant coaching made him look. He's probably a mid-tier starter at best, and most likely bottom-third starter to good backup. We made him look like a bottom-tier third string QB.

The Rams' coaches apparently did a thing called watching film on him and designing plays to match what he does well. I guess the analytics said that was not a wise use of our coaches' time.

The Process will be calling a press conference tomorrow to take credit for Mayfield's finish.

But in fairness, how was McAdoo supposed to know to do that? There is hardly any film of that.....only about 4 years worth.

Geez, these two teams look like it is preseason.

That was a pretty weak call, especially in that situation. But then again, this is the NFL. The main difference between it and the WWE is the players don't wear tights.

Rhule would make Mahomes look like Marcus Mariota. Andy Reid could make PJ Walker look like Jacoby Brissett.

I did find that odd when it wasn't announced about 30-seconds after The Process was hired. Snow is going to be 67 in a couple of weeks. While there are a decent number of coaches older than that, very few started over at that age. Most were fixtures somewhere when that age came around. I can't blame him if he is calling it a career. Who knows? After The Process' "Don't Blame Me For My Failures" book tour last week, maybe Snow can't warm up to the idea of carrying him anymore, either. Snow may have even had to be the one to tell him he sounded effing crazy.

Apparently they don't. Nebraska may have just booked the dummy without booking the ventriloquist.