Oh yes, yes I do.
Welcome to the new football year! After 4 years I figured I should slap a new coat of paint on the site's layout. I am a moron when it comes to this stuff. And it feels like Blogger's technology is about 200 years behind currently accepted blogging standards. However, due to said moron-ness, I don't know how to move to another site. Oh well.
As for the title of the post- after an initial period of skepticism, color me officially excited for the Randy Moss (1 year) era. He showed after his exile in Oakland that his talent is capable of long periods of hibernation until he finds a situation he likes, at which point it awakens and devours all who approach it. Something like that anyways.
The 49ers haven't had a group of receivers that looked this good in the preseason since, what, 2001? Even then the team had Owens... and a whole lot of nothing else. Since that time it's been a slog through PJ Flecks, Darrell Jacksons, and Isaac Bruces. Remember when we were watching Brett Swain play meaningful snaps in playoff games? Even during the preseason last year our hopes rested on Braylon Edwards, a guy with NFL production that could hardly be called noteworthy (now excuse me while I go delete the excited posts hailing Edwards as the next Jerry Rice).
The front office took one look at that playoff roster and said "yeah, we are never ever letting BRETT SWAIN take another snap in an NFC Championship game unless we're winning by 45". The result is Moss, Manningham, and AJ Jenkins. 2 of those 3 are proven, NFL-quality starting receivers. Moss, if he's still got anything left, is the kind of player that completely transforms what an offense can do. When's the last time we said that about a 49ers wide receiver? They haven't had a 1000 yard receiver in 8 years. Last year was about ending the playoff drought, this year my crusade is to get the team a 1000 yard receiver. In this day and age of offensive football, it seems impossible that a team has gone that long without one.
In fact, this was the part where I was going to list off the teams who have had a WR with a 1000 yard season since 2003, and then point and laugh at the 49ers in comparison, so I did some research. Guess what? Only ONE NFL team has not had at least 1 1000 yard season from a WR since 2003. Guess who! That stunned me. The goddamn BUFFALO BILLS have had FIVE! Even the Raiders!! I think in a few years, with the context of history, people are going to look back on the 2003-2010 49ers as some kind of bizarro dynasty. The team that spent 20 years setting the standard for the way NFL teams should be organized followed it up by showing us the exact wrong way to do things for nearly a decade.
As an aside, do you know what the team's point differential was during the Mike Nolan era? -507! In 3 1/2 years!!! That inspired me to do more research. Since the 1970 merger, only the 49ers, Raiders, and Oilers/Titans have had 4 straight seasons with a point differential of -100 or worse. It's unbelievable how bad this team was.
All this is a long way of saying that I love the people running this team right now. They know how weak the WRs were last year, and how weak they've been for the last 10. They had a clear goal to get better at that position, and boy did they ever. It looks like they might have the offense to match their considerable defensive talent.
This is the best time of year! Glad to be back and hopefully you guys check in every once in awhile. It's fun going into a season with expectations that are high for legitimate reasons.
