SteelCityRavenFan

I agree that the staff is screwed, but I wouldn't say Harbaugh is completely safe. A good coach like Harbaugh can be forgiven for a mediocre season. But right now we don't look mediocre, we look awful, really awful. When I look at the schedule ahead its hard to imagine us getting more than a handful of wins this year. And the fact of the matter is that most of the time when a team finishes a season with 4 or less wins it almost has to fire its head coach in order to keep its dignity. This is especially true in a year that was supposed to be a competitive one. I love Harbaugh, he's done a lot for this team, but if we can't finish with anything above a .250 record this year we're gonna need a really good reason for keeping him around because common sense tells you that teams like ours don't have catastrophes like that unless its coming from the top down.

I think that the people calling for Pees' head right now need to understand that given the state of our roster its hard to imagine that getting rid of Pees will turn things around. It seems obvious to me that a large part of our defensive woes are due to injuries to key players. That combined with the fact that we lost guys like Ngata and McPhee during the offseason due to our salary cap issues(and perhaps overzealousness of the front office) has left us stretched thin. Game plans and defensive systems are important, but at the end of the day much of the NFL is about the man-on-man matchups that happen on the field and whether your guys can outplay the other guys. It doesn't matter what defensive philosophy or play calling you have, when you are missing key players and the other team's players are simply more talented than the ones you have on the field winning is going to be very hard. I fully agree that the bend but don't break philosophy of Dean Pees has some weak spots and has put us at odds with our traditional tough D. Although in some ways I believe that given the fact that the rules now heavily favor offenses the ultra-stingy defenses we saw in the AFC North of yesteryear may be a thing of the past. But the fact of the matter is that the question of whether to continue with Pees' philosophy is probably one best left to the offseason. I don't see how changing DCs and adopting a new system in the middle of a season makes sense. If we're going to revamp our defense and the way it works that's a decision that needs to be made with a lot of serious thought about what direction we want to go in as a team. If we move too hastily to simply save this season or make a statement we could get someone who doesn't fit and set us back for future seasons. It looks to me that our biggest problem isn't so much as bad play calling as the fact that our guys (and especially our secondary) are simply getting beat by the other teams. That to me is a roster problem, not a system problem. Unfortunately this takes time to repair itself. If we want to be competitive for years to come it is probably best to ride this out and leave the question of a new DC for the offseason when we have more time and when more talented coaches will be available for hire.