Finding the 49ers: How Much Room Is There for Improvement in San Francisco?

(Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

I was looking at stats today, being the Monday Morning Quarterback that I am, trying to see just what our shortcomings were during the 2008 season.  As I poured through the numbers, one thing became apparent to me...The 49ers weren't very good in almost every category...at all.

An obvious statement. Anyone who followed the team, even from a "highlight-reel" perspective, would agree with this.  However to this author, when looking deeper, we see that there are a few key underlying causes.

Now if you've already been through this exercise, now would be the time to duck out the back exit.  If you haven't looked much deeper than SportsCenter or watching the games though, the following just might give you an insight into why the 49ers didn't win a lot of games last year.  This is how I got on this "mission"

I was commenting on another article on B/R, myself being disappointed in our "No. 1 Receiver" Isaac Bruce's stats of only 835 yards last year, when someone made a few good points: We are a running team and we spread the ball around a lot.

Now that got me thinking. OK...well there are a lot of "running teams" out there.  What kind of stats do they have? 

This actually was the beginning of looking at all of the stats I'm writing about here...The first of which was total yards in the season.

Overall Offense

They were 23rd in the League in 2008 with only 4,978 total yards, 22nd with an average of 21.2 PPG, totaling only 31 TD's on offense (less than two per game), and only 10 Rushing TD's.

Rushing

Our "running team" was 27th in the NFL with only 1,599 yards.  Also, 27th with only 397 attempts.  The top seven teams averaged over 500 carries (and all rushed for over 2,100 yards).  Our average of 99 yards per game was good enough for 27th overall as well.  4.0 yards per carry was good enough for 21st in the league.

10 rushing TD's tied us for 15th overall, but in reality, there were 24 teams with more rushing TD's than us, so let's look at it that way.

Passing

We were actually 13th with 3,379 yards...The bright spot perhaps.  We managed 16th in completion percentage, though 18th in passing attempts.  We did have 21 TDs which was actually good enough to tie for ninth in the NFL.

Preliminary Conclusions

Originally when I saw the scoring numbers I immediately thought, "Wow, we didn't capitalize on scoring opportunities."  After looking at the rest of the stats, I drew one larger conclusion:

We didn't have the ball enough on offense.  I say that because of how low we ranked in attempts, which consequently led to low totals in yards and scoring.  Time of possession agrees with this (could have checked that first and saved myself a lot of time).

Now most of us all know that if you don't have the ball enough, either you're turning the ball over or your defense can't stop the other team.  Or in this case, a combination of the two.

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