Will the Niners be able to " Out-physical "the Cowboys ?
Can the better NFL teams " Out-physical " the Cowboys ?
- Much is already made how the Niners out-physical the Rams.
Especially with their Shanahan design run schemes, that led to Grapp play action that
makes him operate much better.
Will they be able to Out -physical the Cowboys in same sense ?
Can teams out-physical us on both sides of the ball ?
- Rod Marinelli – teams could run the ball on his D” ... ( ala Rams playoff game loss with near 300 rushing)
- Mike Nolan – we probably set and broke records vs the run with woeful run D” ever;
- Dan Quinn - there were instances where teams like, Carolina, NY Giants (2nd game) , Denver KC Chiefs,
Even Philly 2nd -3rd stringers surprisingly ran well vs most of our starters...
I think they can. the question is can they win against us. can they slow us down enough and score enough points to pull out a win.
I said it several times specially after Denver game, that our offense was a finesse offense and teams that played us physical had success. Denver did it. KC did it. AZ did it....their defenses were able to rush with 4, be physical up front and were able to generate a pass rush with front 4, drop 7 into coverage which makes is very difficult for any team to have passing success. can't count the number of times Zeke and pollard got hit in the backfield. further, they were able to stop the run, penetrate and hit Zeke and pollard in the back field to slow down the runs.
our OL is fairly weak in the middle, biadasz and Williams specifically, so DTs, those with a little power are able to easily push the OL back (as opposed to other way around), penetrate up the middle on pass rush and runs. the key for our offense is to be able to run outside and slow down the push up the middle. We have to get pollard involved, some quick screen passes in space to pollard, get the DL moving sideways and chasing. some jet sweeps, some quick tosses. we may not gain a lot of yards. but that's ok (believe it or not), as long as the DL runs a bit, chases a bit and tires out. SF has great starting DL, but not deep. so get those big DL men running, and they will slow down. that will force them to bring more for pass rush as the game goes on, which will open passing lanes in the back end. their secondary is not great, so they look to drop more into coverage, forcing them to bring more to the line, will help our passing game tremendously.
on the defensive side, we are also a bit of a finesse team. my concern is runs to the outside, which we have had trouble containing (not sure why). Denver, AZ, Philly, all had success running to the outside. we were also susceptible to power runs up the middle (but not every team can do that). as much as I like to rush Parsons, I think we need them at least early on to help stop the runs up the middle. Neal, and the CBs become key to stopping the outside runs as both Gregory and Lawrence have been vunerable to traps and get caught inside.
if we can do the above two, force them to go to the pass, then we can have some success rushing the passer and we will have success passing the ball. we are not going to win this game on the ground, but how many times we rush is more important than how much we run....against Saints we couldn't run much, but we kept at it and broke a big one. that's what we need. we can't abandon the run at the first sign of trouble as Moore has had a tendency to do. he did it against Tampa (similar defense to niners) and he did against AZ and denver...I am not saying to just run to a brick wall, but he has to get a little more creative in the run game. we need to have some zone blocking schemes going into this game as that's more effective against the powerful and physical DL. we can't just line them up and go, given there is only one martin.
this game will go into the 4th quarter. we have to win this game in the 4th quarter and that will depend how we tire them out in the first 3 quarters. I hate to say it, but it may come down to Zeurline....
