Sure, that's not really a surprise to anyone. We all know the entire offense has been bad for years now, but seriously- JJ Stokes was better than any single WR we've seen on gameday since 2003. JJ. Stokes. The same JJ stokes that we all make fun of all the time for "r00fleez being teh su><0rz!!". I know Battle's been around a long time and has been a nice consistent target, but if he's anything more than a number 3 WR on your team, your team has very bad numbers 1 and 2 WRs. When you really step back and look at how bad the WRs have been, it's inexcusable.
Not to say that there's not hope- Josh Morgan sure looked damn good in his debut, and we've got Johnson and Bruce to look to for some much-needed improvement. But ModMatt made an excellent point when he said the offensive players that the 49ers release don't get acquired by any other teams- how is that possible? How can you have such high draft picks year after year and yet have such a terrible offense? I do not get it. And I don't see it getting any better, which leads me to:
One man's suggestion for making a truly terrible offense not so terrible:
- Stop lying to us that this is a "3 way QB competition", pick a quarterback, and make him your starter; the last thing in the world a crappy offensive team needs is uncertainty at quarterback. Nolan must think he's being cute with this ridiculous charade he's been playing since the Raider game, but he is just making himself look even more clueless. What the hell is he doing making offensive personnel decisions anyways? Letting him do anything with the offense is like someone letting Brian Sabean run a baseball team....oh wait...
- Expanding on the theme, the starter needs to be Alex Smith. Even if he takes a couple weeks to learn the offense, what's worse: 2 weeks of a talented QB that doesn't quite know the offense well, or an entire season of a mostly untalented QB who knows the system a little better? That kind of thinking has "complete disaster" written all over it. You have to give Alex Smith this one year, because if he rides the pine, you have no idea what you're giving up when you have to cut him at the end of the season, and as Maiocco says: he may come back to haunt you. If he plays and is terrible, you at least know that you're not losing anything special when you let him go. One other advantage to this strategy: if Smith fails, the 49ers fail. If the 49ers fail, Nolan fails. If Nolan fails, he's fired, and us fans rejoice. But that's why we havn't seen this happen, right? It's because Nolan is too busy worrying about saving his job, not about what's best for the franchise. Which brings me to:
- Expanding on an earlier comment: tell Nolan to stay the hell out of any offensive decisions. Those are Mike Martz' decisions to make. If he really wants to save his job, then Nolan needs to realize that the offense is completely off limits for him. As I look back on his time in San Francisco, the only thing that I can really point to as a plus on offense is Frank Gore.... that's about it. The WRs haven't gotten significantly better, the O-line is still pretty bad, and we all see how he's now handling the QBs, not to mention how he totally effed things up with Alex last season. That's why this year is so important, and why he needs to leave the offense alone. He wants to save his job, but if he keeps interfering with the offense, he'll do just the opposite. It's true that we don't know the exact way those offensive decisions are being made, but that's the problem: we should. There's no reason to not let Martz talk to the media and explain what he sees in the QBs and what he wants to do. Didn't you know he's teh GENIUS??!?!?
And yes, I'm a hopeless homer on Alex Smith, but the dude got totally screwed last season. He deserves one more "real" shot before he's written off as so many people seem so eager to do already.
