TheSim

I'm not arguing that the Patriots were behind it, but the "NFL provides the headsets" argument is a non-starter. It's their stadium, their facilities, their cables and they have unmonitored access to all of that stuff year round. If they wanted to patch into the opponents' system and interfere with it, they could. The NFL's statement that it was a "power issue" makes honestly no sense to me. There's no such phenomenon in electrical engineering where the stability of your power source can actually cause RF signals to cross with radio signals. And if it's a hardwiring problem... why is it that Tomlin said this "always happens" there when he's been going there for 8 years? They couldn't fix that problem in 8 years? Something's going on that isn't being explained. Again: who knows what happened. Even if it was deliberate, it could've been a stadium guy going rogue and doing it because he was mad about Deflategate (to me that's the Occam's Razor answer here). I do doubt that the Pats higher ups would be so blatantly stupid/arrogant as to cheat in such an obvious way on the NFL season opener in front of the world, in their first game since Deflategate.

It's kind of a myth that teams consistently put their top corner on the top WR. The only corner who ever did that consistently was Revis. The reason why is that when you put your best CB on their best WR, it's basically a push. Not even Chris Harris will be able to effectively shut down Steve Smith. What you do instead is you put your best CB on their number 2, and then you put your no. 2 CB on their no. 1 and provide help with a safety/slot CB/ILB depending on if you're in man or zone and what routes are being run.

I disagree kind of. That was a talented team with a few glaring holes (Huff especially). Too much turnover, Super Bowl hangover, etc. I thought on a large portion of plays we played really well on D. There were just too many single plays that blew up and gave up long scores. The other thing overlooked is how much better it will be to have Mosley in the middle than whoever we had there in that game (Ellerbe?). Lots of coverages were blown in those shallow crossers and slot throws, and a fair bit of the blame was on the ILBs. Daryl is playing much better, and Mosley is a huge upgrade there.

Secondary just have to give the front 5 time to get to Peyton. Williams, Jernigan, Davis, a fresh Canty, Suggs, Doom, Upshaw, Guy, Za'Darius are the ones who need to be at their best, because Peyton is at his worst when you can get pressure on him without blitzing. It worked in the playoff game for us and in the Super Bowl in 2013 for the Seahawks. You just need enough help in the secondary to let your front flush him out of the pocket. It's literally the only way to beat him.

It was 2 years ago that the Trawick incident happened. LET IT GO, people. And I'm not even sure what him making the team has to do with Jacoby: Trawick is a good special teams player if you pay attention instead of obsessing over one dumb mistake 2 years ago. And he's experienced depth at the safety position, where we're thin. Jacoby on the other hand was just as unreliable last year as Asa Jackson was in the preseason this year, and there was no room for him as a WR. He'd be taking up an entire roster spot just to return kicks (not that valuable anymore) and sometimes punts. That's not enough to justify a roster spot.

He's on the PS. He can't cost us a game as long as he's not in one But if they brought him back to be a KR/PR, they would've cut Jeremy Ross and kept D. Brown. Clearly they brought him back for more security at CB, with someone who knows the scheme and is comfortable with his teammates.

They already cut Konrad Reuland to make room for Charles James.

This is fantastic, thank you Ben.

Lets get it straight: we don't stretch defenses. We compress them. We win at the LOS, get blockers to the 2nd level, and force them to keep their secondary close and then Joe drops the bomb on them. Having a burner is a luxury in this scheme, not a requirement.

Plenty of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rounders on every team fail; look at the Steelers O-Line woes, or the Pats' inability to draft CBs: even the other great orgs miss on what should be slam dunks. But most teams are lucky to get a reliable starter from any round other than the first three. Ozzie/Eric regularly get starters from rounds 4 and 5, and find solid backups in later rounds. And the rest of the league pretty much cannot understand how well they do in picking up UDFAs. And while Ozzie gets huge acclaim for his drafting (which to be frank has not been as reliably spectacular as in the first 10 years or so but has still been excellent), the places where he's probably better than anybody else in the entire league is free agency, accumulating comp picks, and cap management. He regularly finds guys that other teams cut or ignored in FA, brings them here, and then we watch them explode. Justin Forsett is just the latest. Will Hill is probably going to be that guy this year. (Worth mentioning that we've signed both of them to extensions that are probably 50% off what they should be making value-wise). Kamar Aiken is another guy who will probably provide far more value to us than any of his other teams could have imagined. And that's just since last year. As far as Perriman and Williams... relax. The season hasn't even started yet. Perriman started every game of his college career. Williams has only been resting a few weeks and might need a year to catch up fully to NFL speed anyway (Pitta wasn't even that great in his first year, you might remember Ed Dickson was the big rookie TE that year). Relax. Edited to add: We're carrying over $10m in dead cap weight this season, we're ~$8m under the cap, and yet we're getting picked to go to the SB. And you want to criticize how Ozzie runs the org?

I think most people thought he looked good in the pre-season as a backup OT. The issue was there are too many options ahead of him with higher ceilings: Hurst as T, Urschel/Jensen as G. And he had a higher cap number than all of them.

Of course, this was assuming they don't pick up a KR/RB/WR off waivers/in FA

5 CBs again. Sigh. I guess taking someone like Bilukidi over Asa Jackson makes sense objectively, but good lord I can't believe we're starting another season thin at that position after last year and given that Lardarius has already missed significant time with another injury.

Myers's cut seems due to Jensen's progress and Myers's immaturity. Makes sense for PS.

Gotta figure Magee gets brought back when Urban goes on IR tomorrow, assuming he makes it through waivers.

Kamar looked great last year. He's been pretty limited in pre-season reps this year. Waller and Butler have had solid performances against better competition (1st and 2nd strings). Camp looked good in pre-season action prior to the injury and also looked good last year. Waller, Butler, and Camp have had great practices, which is where the majority of evaluation goes on. Brown probably deserves a PS spot (though it's going to be tricky given the weird injury issues going on at various positions). There's just not enough on him against legitimate competition to justify taking a roster spot away from more established guys.

He had a TD in Philly (during silly time, again when the opponent was on their 4th string defense). I'm not denying he might have talent, but given he had just as much of a shot as other UDFAs like Jeremy Butler, why wasn't he getting reps with the 1st or even 2nd teams?

The final score definitely does not show that. We rested every starter and almost every major backup while the Falcons played their first and second strings throughout nearly the entire game. Then we only "lost" because they didn't want to go to overtime and they tried a 2 pt conversion when they didn't need to. And you think the score from that game represents anything useful?

I get that we're all hyped up on Brown thanks to last night, but one game against third/fourth string backups is not enough to establish the guy as someone worthy of a roster spot. Practice squad, maybe, it depends on how he looked in practice all summer, and we didn't get to see that. I'm bummed that Tom Nelson was cut, though. He has played well throughout the pre-season (including last night, when he was the first WR to actually establish anything resembling a good night). I understand why they want to give guys like Waller and Butler a chance first, but Nelson seemed like a far more trustworthy option with better hands. Just my opinion.

Yeah I think they keep KLM over Bilukidi too. KLM can at least play DE, Bilukidi is just another DT, and we've already got lots of guys that can play that position that will be on the roster (Jernigan, Davis, Tyson). At DE we've got Canty and Guy, and Canty has health issues and age (wear, conditioning) issues.

There's a "veteran" spot on the PS now, which Vaughn would be eligible for.

Attention: There's no such thing as a "pre-season record". The games don't count, so why count them?

Similar to what Sami just said, he's always reminded me of how Ellerbe was in his first few years, albeit with a lot more attention since he was a 2nd rd pick supposedly "taking over" for #52. Like Ellerbe was with us, Brown's explosive and has good instincts when he can keep up with the game. Prior to 2012, they used Ellerbe in almost exclusively 3rd and long situations, mostly on delayed blitzes. I am curious to see if they try the same thing w/Brown this year. It took Ellerbe 4 years to get to 1st-team level. Hoping Brown can do that this year, so we'll see.

Thanks for the addt'l info on those injuries, you're of course right about those also being potential causes. I know that sometimes poor joint/ligament support (possibly from damage or bad genetics, in my case) can also cause imbalanced muscles as your body compensates by changing the way you distribute your weight, which can then manifest in muscle tears/strains. I have a lack of sufficient cartilage in my joints, which puts extra strain on my ligaments and the surrounding muscles, leading to very strong thighs but weaker calves. I get a lot of hamstring pulls and tears as a result. But everybody's different, of course, and as you said poor muscle flexibility could definitely be a part of it, especially since Camp's solution was to take up yoga, probably at the suggestion of his trainers/sports medicine doctors. My hope is that the "soft tissue" injury remark is an attempt by Harbaugh to be more vague because he's clearly getting irritated with making statements about injuries and looking bad when they turn out differently than he'd been told. He's said as much wrt to Perriman, that he was going to "get out of the injury prediction business", etc.

That's amazing that he's out there so quickly. I really hope he's got the leg and ligament strength to deal. Frequently you see guys come back, try to play at full speed, and not realize that to do so they have to over compensate on their strong side, and then they end up tearing their other knee up (see: Lardarius). Being a safety makes that even more risky. Hoping for the best for him, seems like a hard worker with some talent he can bring to the team.