So, we reverse the past few weeks’ fortunes and pull out a 40 – 26 squeaker over the 49ers.  Yes, squeaker…  it was a lot closer than the 14 point margin.  This team should feel good after the win, because they needed it.  Also, with Dallas and Washington loosing, it came at a very opportune time.  Overall, I guess I’m happy with how the Birds played, but it just still seems like things weren’t addressed during the week and problems still linger.  Also, I remember after the Washington loss, one of their DBs said that the Eagles started with a lot of misdirection that they were not prepared for and it was working well, but all of the sudden they went away from it and went down a less successful road.  Part of me thinks that one of our defensive players could say the same thing about the 49ers today.  Anyway, here’s my take.

Offense

The Good:  First and foremost, Buckhalter deserves a lot of praise for his performance this game.  I always thought he was a serviceable backup, but I guess he showed us why we keep him around; almost 200 total yards and a score.  Awesome.  Secondly, we had the re-emergence of DeSean Jackson, and about damn time; six receptions and 98 yards.  Not a bad day for him.  McNabb made some really nice throws here and there, but also had some negatives.  The O-Line in run blocking was great for the most part.  They repeatedly blew the D-Line 2 to 3 yards back from the line of scrimmage on running plays.  Excellent push (albeit against a smaller D-Line).  Hank Baskett made some really nice receptions yesterday.  He definitely has the best hands on this team.  Overall, we ran the ball a lot better yesterday.  Play calling showed improvements at times and the deep ball was back.  However, I think it may have been due to the fact that we needed to play catch-up.  We’ll have to wait and see.

The Bad:  Klecko did nothing for me at fullback.  He gets stood up too easily and pushed back.  He picked up who he should have, but really didn’t get the push you’d like to see most of the time.  McNabb had some really bad looking throws here and there.  I know LJ Smith had a TD reception, but he still runs poor routes (see Spikes int) and can’t get open consistently.  We continue to show why we lead the league in dropped passes.  I love the fact that Jackson was back, but if Brown started, I’m not convinced Jackson’s a big part of our game plan again.  This cannot happen.  I’m interested to see what happens after the bye week when Brown and Curtis will probably both be active.  I’m still weary about the play calling.  We started out well again and then hit that lull that we always hit.  If we didn’t end up down by two scores early in the 2nd half, we may have seen the same old play calling problems.  At the half, we were 2 for 7 on third down conversions.  We continue to struggle picking up 1 god damn yard on 3rd and 1.

Defense

The Good:  Juqua Parker was the man yesterday.  He made key plays all day long, put pressure on the QB, had a huge play sniffing out a screen, and picked off a hot read and took it to the house.  He should be the Defensive player of the week.  They really didn’t give up 26 points.  It was more like 16 or 19.  In the second half, we really started to get pressure on J.T. only with our down linemen.  That was nice to see.  We forced 3 turnovers, and took one back for a TD.  Overall, out D-Line took over the fourth quarter and played solid all game long.  At long last, we finally had some Chris Clemmons sightings.  He had a key fumble recovery and was disruptive in the backfield around the QB throughout the day.  Maybe after all the injury time missed, he’s finally picking up the scheme and back to 100%.  Darren Howard absolutely mauled J.T. at one point late in the game.  Fantastic.  Although the D didn’t play horridly and owned the fourth quarter, that’s all the positives I can list.  I’ve got quite a few negatives though.   

The Bad:  Gotta start with JJ.  Jimmy… what took so long to go to zone blitzes?  Seriously.  We got toasted for the better part of three quarters by running LB and S blitzes via hot reads.  We have been mixing up our blitzes all year, but didn’t really do so yesterday.  I honestly think the first zone blitz I saw was the Parker int.  You mean to tell me that the inexperienced QB misread the blitz?  Go figure.  Up until that point, our blitzes were basically touching the hot stove repeatedly.  Our run D was horrible again.  I saw some glints of hope, but overall no one got off blocks and Gore just ran over people.  We need to wrap up.  Gore, J.T., and Davis all got out of situations where they should have been wrapped up.  We still can’t cover TEs.  At all.  In the least.  Not happening.  I don’t ever remember seeing more 3 TE sets in my life in one game, and it worked.  Wanna know how useless Sheppard has been?  I didn’t even realize he wasn’t out there until it was pointed out.  Way to stay healthy Lee-Tow; I’m sure that’ll land him on IR. 

I’m going to throw this in here.  I really think we got handed this game a bit.  The 49ers got a big boost within the last 5 min of the first half.  Gore had been killing us all half, but we were lucky enough to hold them to two field goals.  They drive down, kick a long field goal and then block and return that David Akers abortion to pull within one.  I was honestly worried at half.  They came out with Gore killing us again and scored to go up six.  Gore was killing us, we couldn’t convert third downs, and we were making slow adjustments on defense.  Then a funny thing happened…  the 49ers pretty much gave up running and… put the game in J.T. O’Sullivan’s hands?!?!?  With the lead?!?!  Gore averaged over 5 yards per attempt on 19 carries.  I think he got about 4 or 5 touches in the second half.  To me, he showed no signs of slowing down against our D that was giving up chunks on the ground.  If Martz didn’t start to get cute with the play selection and just gave us a steady diet of Gore, I think they grind it out and probably win.  Like I said, I bet someone on this team feels a bit like the Redskins D did last week.  They had a working game plan that was perfect for the situation and got away from it.

Special Teams

The Good:  Sav still looks good.  Our returns are still looking good.  Akers made some field goals (albeit short ones).

The Bad:  Ummmm… the blocked field goal returned for a TD…  The guy that came up the middle was untouched.  Think that might be a problem?  Me too.  Our punt coverage is excellent; out kick coverage still sucks most of the time.  Seriously, they need to have the field goal and kick coverage units work out for a day straight.  Notice the problem areas of our special teams are only if David Akers is involved.  Awesome.

Like I said, overall I’m thrilled that we won, but I still saw too many lingering problems that go unchecked week after week and I’m still uncomfortable with them.  Hopefully after the bye week, we’ll see adjustments…  Maybe?  Possibly?  Because we all know how well Andy does with adjustments…