Legit concerns after two preseason games.

[Genus49]

Any concerns about preseason are overblown outside of the backup QB...a position you hope you never have to see on the field unless you're blowing teams out(in which case you're running a lot more than normal)

We have most of our defensive starters out. So now you're putting up young and inexperienced players playing as a unit...something they haven't grasped how to do as of yet.

Most of the guys we're counting on to having solid contributions to the team have played well individually - Tank, Dial, Ward and Johnson and Acker have flashed good things. Wilhoite and Borland have had their moments and whomever wins the job will look MUCH better next to Willis.

A depleted DL which is young = poor showing usually. That affects the secondary and the whole defense.

I'm sure once the starters are out there and these young kids are just depth or spot players we'll see a totally different team out there. Let's not forget how bad our defense looked in 2012 preseason vs Manning and the Broncos. Things went ok during the season.

Just have to stay healthy the rest of the way and once the regular season rolls around it will all be good to go.

 

[deep9er]

Yes, most of the team's success will come down to Kap, across the field but particularly in the red zone. I'm somewhat encouraged by him doing a better job of going through reads in the preseason, but we haven't seen him throwing in the red zone to date this year. It's interesting you say can he only throw to the corners, though. Frankly, I think throwing to the corners is by far his biggest weakness in the red zone. He's better throwing on a rope, not touch passes to the back corner.

"throwing on a rope" in the RZ??? RZ isn't only 20 yards ou.t, it might be 10 or 5 or something else short.

mentioned corners cause it doesn't seem like he throws it within the middle RZ.

 

[deep9er]

Part of the issues in the RZ are from uninspired play calling.

It seems the RB is going to be a bigger part of our passing attack so that will help but I honestly think we could cure a lot of our RZ woes if we run Kap more when we're there.

If you scare defenses with the threat of running it in that will force them to be a little more antsy every time Kap approaches the LOS which will loosen them off of guys in the RZ and make for easier completions.

The amount of viable weapons should help as well as instead of just basically having VD and Boldin most of the season with Crabtree coming in later on now it looks like it'll be VD, Boldin, Stevie, Crabtree, Vance, and maybe Lloyd, Hyde, and Ellington. So we have a lot more guys to put pressure on defenses in general.

the problem with this is....Gabbert isn't playing well in games.

 

[deep9er]

Any concerns about preseason are overblown outside of the backup QB...a position you hope you never have to see on the field unless you're blowing teams out(in which case you're running a lot more than normal)

We have most of our defensive starters out. So now you're putting up young and inexperienced players playing as a unit...something they haven't grasped how to do as of yet.

Most of the guys we're counting on to having solid contributions to the team have played well individually - Tank, Dial, Ward and Johnson and Acker have flashed good things. Wilhoite and Borland have had their moments and whomever wins the job will look MUCH better next to Willis.

A depleted DL which is young = poor showing usually. That affects the secondary and the whole defense.

I'm sure once the starters are out there and these young kids are just depth or spot players we'll see a totally different team out there. Let's not forget how bad our defense looked in 2012 preseason vs Manning and the Broncos. Things went ok during the season.

Just have to stay healthy the rest of the way and once the regular season rolls around it will all be good to go.

thing is, we're supposedly have good depth on D? if so, it isn't showing up so far.

 

[jarrod49]

thing is, we're supposedly have good depth on D? if so, it isn't showing up so far.

we have great depth on defense!!! depth is measured by the talent that we have, we have talented bench players, the reason it isn't showing in preseason is because we have ALL of the bench players in there at one time, most of our starters haven't played a down, and we are playing vanilla defense with one or two wrinkles here and there.

 

[Genus49]

we have great depth on defense!!! depth is measured by the talent that we have, we have talented bench players, the reason it isn't showing in preseason is because we have ALL of the bench players in there at one time, most of our starters haven't played a down, and we are playing vanilla defense with one or two wrinkles here and there.

Exactly. Depth is meant to be used here and there. Someone goes down another guy or guys have to step up and play well enough to keep the unit playing strong as a whole.

Right now our depth is mostly young players and when they all play together there are a lot of mental mistakes because they don't have the vets around them playing within the scheme.

Lots of young guys, with a lot of them being tired and you get a lot of guys playing solo. We've had a lot of good individual performances but overall the defense has been poor.

 

[deep9er]

we have great depth on defense!!! depth is measured by the talent that we have, we have talented bench players, the reason it isn't showing in preseason is because we have ALL of the bench players in there at one time, most of our starters haven't played a down, and we are playing vanilla defense with one or two wrinkles here and there.

if you have great depth, then you should be able to play decent D, even without starters. great depth means quality and quantity. if we can only play two or three at a time, that isn't great depth?

there is a little merit in vanilla D, but if they run right at you, our line shouldn't be getting blown back? We should be able to apply more pressure when its called?

 

[purguy12]

Seattle looks good guys. Defense looks like it didn't miss a beat after losing 3-4 starters/role players.

 

[Jikkle]

Seattle looks good guys. Defense looks like it didn't miss a beat after losing 3-4 starters/role players.

That's to be expected as they still have their key guys on defense.

I don't see them being as good as last season just on the fact that it's extremely difficult to maintain that level of defense year to year. There is a reason why it's the 85 Bears and not the 85-87 Bears or the 00 Ravens and not the 00 to 02 Ravens.

 

[GoreRush]

That's to be expected as they still have their key guys on defense.

I don't see them being as good as last season just on the fact that it's extremely difficult to maintain that level of defense year to year. There is a reason why it's the 85 Bears and not the 85-87 Bears or the 00 Ravens and not the 00 to 02 Ravens.

I could see the Seahawks taking a small step back on defense, but their offense looks to be better IMO.

 

[Yoshi]

Any concerns about preseason are overblown outside of the backup QB...a position you hope you never have to see on the field unless you're blowing teams out(in which case you're running a lot more than normal)

We have most of our defensive starters out. So now you're putting up young and inexperienced players playing as a unit...something they haven't grasped how to do as of yet.

Most of the guys we're counting on to having solid contributions to the team have played well individually - Tank, Dial, Ward and Johnson and Acker have flashed good things. Wilhoite and Borland have had their moments and whomever wins the job will look MUCH better next to Willis.

A depleted DL which is young = poor showing usually. That affects the secondary and the whole defense.

I'm sure once the starters are out there and these young kids are just depth or spot players we'll see a totally different team out there. Let's not forget how bad our defense looked in 2012 preseason vs Manning and the Broncos. Things went ok during the season.

Just have to stay healthy the rest of the way and once the regular season rolls around it will all be good to go.

Yes those LBs will look better with Willis, but on passing downs we will look tasty to opposing offenses with legit TEs because other than bowman we have NO LB who can cover on passing downs, esp Borland who just looks terrible in coverage.