My thoughts on the 49ers game:
The defense played far worse than the numbers will show. Yes, they had the picks, but, they gave up a lot of yards on the ground. Matt Forte and the Bears’ O-Line have to be salivating right now. The picks, were less about the defense and more about Tony Romo making incompetent decisions; farther re-iterating my beliefs that he is greatly over-rated. The secondary was surprisingly okay, though, only allowing the one large pass play late in the game, that coming when they had Cox and Johnson in, the back-ups, due to injury. If they can stay healthy, I think they will be okay. Missing Smith and Bowman (and Dorsey) really hurts the run defense and it showed.
The offense looked really good, minus penalties that killed some drives. With Boldin, Davis, Crabtree, and Johnson, there are a lot of options for Kap, and he was using them all through the game. Hyde looked great, and has the potential to be really good for the long haul, especially if he keeps learning from Gore. They essentially looked like the same player when they were out there, hard at times to tell them apart.
The officiating, to me, was piss-poor. Yes, the Niners had a lot of stupid penalties… but, there were at least 4 that shouldn’t have been called that all hurt the Niners: The first ‘hands to the face’ against Brooks, the two ‘Illegal contact’ penalties where one was contact within 5 yards and one wasn’t any contact, and finally the offense ‘pass interference’ on Lloyd. Regardless if those should have been called or not, the Niners have to get their butts in gear and not have stupid penalties like that. Against most other teams, it would have cost them the game.
Overall, it was good to get the win, and the offense did look really good… but, there is a ton of room for improvement. Next week could be a disaster if Forte gets the running room that Murray had today.