49er Golden Nuggets and Flakes: Recapping the Eagles Game

 49er Golden Nuggets and Flakes is a football analysis article recapping 49er games. Nuggets are signs of progress or good play within the team while flakes are problems that the team needs to work on in order to be more successful.

Golden Nugget: Play calling in the first three quarters. Coming into the Eagles game, the 49ers were struggling with protecting their quarterback. They were second in the NFL in sacks allowed with 22 sacks in the first five games. Martz decided to change it up this week by setting up tight end screens and wide receiver screens to make Eagles blitzes off balance. Combining the screens with a solid running attack, the 49ers had held the time of possession advantage and the lead at the end of three quarters.

Golden Flake: Play calling in the fourth quarter. Up 26-17 with possession of the ball, the 49ers play calling reverted back to Martz’s tendencies of passing the ball. The Eagles, who had been struggling against the run for the past few games, expected the 49ers to wear down their defense with star running back Frank Gore.  Gore already had a 100 yards on the ground with an average of 5 yards per carry. Instead Mike Martz did not call a single running play the entire fourth quarter even though the 49ers were up by two scores. The Eagles realized this, so they sat in nickel defense and never blitzed. The 49ers stubbornly refused to run despite this formation and suffered two interceptions from O’Sullivan who had a strong game up until that point.

Golden Nugget: Ray Macdonald showed up to play today and proved why he earned the starting job in his second year. Providing inside pressure, Macdonald made several big plays including a tipped pass and blocked field goal at the end of the second half. The blocked field goal was converted into a touchdown and gave momentum back to the 49ers. While Macdonald shows great speed and awareness, he needs to work on his strength so that he can push off his blockers and apply consistent pressure on the quarterback. More importantly, he needs to be a player that the opposing offense accounts for when designing a play. This game took him one step closer to being that type of player.

Golden Flake: Parag Marathe and Challenging calls on the field.  Nolan and Marathe, who is the replay official for the 49ers, made several mistakes on challenging calls that had a severe impact on the game. On the Eagles second drive of the game, McNabb threw a pass to Hank Baskett on a crucial third down in 49er territory. The call was ruled a catch but when viewing the replay, it was clear that Baskett had juggled the ball while coming down with it. Instead of challenging the call which would have forced the Eagles to kick a field goal, Nolan decided to save his challenge. As a result, the Eagles continued their drive and finished it off with a touchdown. In the second quarter, Nolan used up his saved challenge for a catch that was caught clearly inbounds. However, the biggest mistake occurred in the second half when Nolan challenged an Eagles field goal. According to the NFL rulebook, field goals cannot be challenged unless the football hits the crossbar in mid-air. This was clearly not the case on the Eagles field goal attempt and the officials ruled in favor of the Eagles. Nolan lost his only challenge and one timeout on a play that couldn’t be legally challenged. Marathe who should be aware of specifically these rules made a mistake or did not notify Nolan of this fact.

Golden Flake: Our porous run defense. Once again, the organization is faced to accept the fact that a 3-4 defense cannot work against the run without an effective nose tackle. While Nolan has committed to changing our defense to a 3-4 defense, he has ignored the fact that without an effective nose tackle to take up space at the line of scrimmage teams will run all over the 49ers. Despite the solid play between Patrick Willis and Takeo Spikes, they cannot stop running backs because the opposing offensive line is able to pass the defensive line and block the linebackers. In a solid 3-4 defense, each person on the defensive line should be able to take on two offensive linemen thus allowing our linebackers to tackle the running backs with nobody blocking them. However, it seems that none of our defensive lineman can consistently hold up two or more offensive lineman. The fact that Corey Buckhalter, a career backup, had 5.2 yards per carry and 93 yards despite Andy Reid’s pass happy play calling should cause concern within the organization. My advice: Draft a blue chip nose tackle prospect next year such as Adam “Mount” Cody and actually run a true 3-4 defense.

Biggest Golden Nugget of the Day: Vernon Davis was finally given the opportunity to play today, and he took advantage of it. Martz made it a point to get the ball to Davis who had 6 catches for 75 yards in the game. Martz used Davis in screens which took advantage of the Eagles’ blitzes and let Davis convert some huge third downs. Hopefully this is an elevator game for Davis who will continue to figure prominently in the passing game from this point on in the season.

Biggest Golden Flake of the Day: Defensive Play Calling. Last year, the defense kept the offense in the game with hard hits and innovative coverage schemes. This year, the defense seems reluctant to blitz, and as a result, the opposing quarterback sits back and waits for the holes in our coverage schemes to develop. We have no pass rusher, and as a result, our defense has taken a “bend don’t break” mentality. When a defense does not have a consistent pass rusher, they normally find creative ways to get their playmakers near the opposing quarterback to provide pressure. One can only look at the Giants and how they have managed to apply consistent pressure to the quarterback despite losing both of their star defensive ends this year. Instead of creating new blitzes to confuse the opposing linemen, we have either sat back in nickel and dime formations or sent a corner blitz. It has become so predictable that Philadelphia, without Brian Westbrook for the defense to account for, was able to gain 381 yards of offense even without the time of possession advantage for three quarters. If the 49ers want to be more successful at defense, they need to start designing some creative and unpredictable defenses.