Limited action for Jarryd against Green Bay Packers

Not all disasters are created equal. Just ask Joe Philbin. Four weeks into the season and the Miami head coach has already been relieved of his duties. A painful three game stretch of stinging defeats culminated with a dismal performance early Monday morning against the New York Jets at Wembley Stadium in England. The game was a showcase mostly of ineptitude. Some belated red zone entries in junk time weren’t enough to salvage a campaign in South Beach fast collapsing under the weight of offseason expectancy. For that reason alone someone gets thrown under the bus. To be fair Philbin was given plenty to work with. Credible investments had been made to bolster the roster. Instead of getting a potential championship team, however, Dolphins fans got an early retirement village. Seemingly the only thing missing was the blue hair. Jarvis Landry, notwithstanding, and few others have risen above the pedestrian attitudes of a personnel top heavy with inflated egos and over-priced players. Exhibit A: Nadamukong Suh. The only lasting impression he has made is of a man recently superannuated and inconvenienced by physical contact.

The care factor for his defensive line, which includes Cameron Wake and Earl Mitchell, amounts to zero. That’s also the number of sacks it has combined for in a month of football. It’s not a pretty picture on the flipside either. Bill Lazor’s offense has been a predictable mess. Marvel Studios sequels messy. In the NFL anything overly formulaic is quickly picked apart. Quarterback Ryan Tannehill has been highly ineffective. It seems his only proven method of moving the ball forward is through a pass interference call. The Jets gifted him three in the game and it was just about the only means Tannehill’s disposal for putting up points. To date there’s only one offense that rivals it for spectacular dysfunction and that offense belongs to the San Francisco 49ers.

After a brutal road trip the Niners had some reason for optimism. They were returning home to Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. Colin Kaepernick’s record (3-0) all time against Green Bay is as good as anyone’s. Surely, things could only improve. “My daddy used to tell me,” says one of the soldiers in The Thin Red Line, “it will get a whole lot worse before it gets better.” Jim Tomsula may have hoped last week’s crushing loss to Arizona was rock bottom. The view from there is superior to ground zero.

49ers coach Jim Tomsula watches on as his side is beaten by the Green Bay Packers. (Photo by Getty Images)

The head coach has taken to pacing the sidelines a discharge of bile infrequently spurting from his face. Clint Hurdle at the Pittsburgh Pirates doesn’t spit this much. Then there’s the permanent lather of sweat. The slick back hair matches the sheen of his slimming black zip-up track top. In The Sopranos he’d be a bookie. If not for Philbin’s firing and the Bill O’Brien press conference meltdown (we’ll get to that) the clock might have started ticking on the tenure of Tomsula. Because he wears his heart on his sleeve the pressure, no matter how intense, is always showing. Insofar as he’s captivating to watch one can’t help wonder if he is the right man for the job. He was jawing with his coaches; not afraid to get in the face of underperforming linesman. Unlike Philbin he wasn’t going to die wondering. The approach was old school; more Bill Parcels than Belichick. One statistic however, had he seen it prior to the game, might have concerned him. Kaepernick had thrown 4 interceptions in his last 19 tries. His opposing number Aaron Rodgers, the best quarterback in the world, had thrown 4 interceptions from his last 492 pass attempts. Those numbers, of course, were formed from a small sample size. Vin Scully once said statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost for support, not illumination. Levi’s Stadium was bathed in sunlight and it wasn’t just the field that was about to be exposed.

Even so the 49ers showed glimpses of class in spite of the erratic execution. They frustrated Rodgers often by making his main target Randall Cobb high risk in tight coverage. Faced with 3rd and inches while stymied by what he saw downfield Rodgers short hopped a throw to Ty Montgomery early in the 2nd quarter which resulted in a Green Bay punt. Jarryd Hayne, the intended recipient, having seen limited action, called for a fair catch waving his right arm skyward like he’d seen an old friend on a balcony. Team mate T.J. McCrae attempted a block an opponent too close to the drop zone. He ricocheted straight into Hayne before the football had arrived. By the time Hayne returned to his feet the live ball had been secured by a diving Dontae Johnson. It was one way to keep possession.

Soon after on a swing route, Quenton Patton, a receiver hardly asked to do much this season, accepted a deft ten finger flick from his quarterback and swept around the edge in an exhilarating arc that traced 40 yards down the sideline finally assisted by a big block from Anquan Boldin. They were still playing for each other. Suddenly the stadium roared to life. San Fran would settle for a field goal.

Again they came. Kaepernick went it alone and managed 17 yards but Vance McDonald on a holding penalty erased the gain, his second major act of sabotage of the game. Earlier he’d failed to catch a custard pie wide open down the seam and Kaepernick, as if betrayed, took that as a cue to dismiss the routes actioned by his wideouts. The dismissal was later reciprocated.

With 2.40 remaining in the second quarter Kaepernick dropped a near perfect snap from center Marcus Martin but as he was set upon by the pass rush he scurried up the field stooped over like someone in a storm chasing his hat. It was a timely gain of seven yards. Again the crowd erupted. It was unattractive but was it going to be effective?

Despite going into the half down 7-3 the 49ers defense was holding up its end of the bargain. Ahmad Brooks had sacked Rodgers. Mason Crosby, Green Bay’s kicker, had narrowly missed a 44 yard field goal. Were these the signs that an upset was brewing? The 49ers had prevented Green Bay from establishing its profitable offensive patterns. Ugliness was trumping beauty. Now if only offensive co-ordinator Geep Chryst could generate some yardage at the very least to make use of the starved home crowd.

After the break everything changed. Rodgers, as he does, got into a groove. In contrast Kaepnernick resembled a one legged man in an arse-kicking contest. He got flushed out of the pocket. Having discarded one too many receivers one too many times they stopped working for him. Soon his O-Line followed suit. One sack turned into three. By the time Green Bay fans found their voice Kaepernick had found his face in the turf. As the cheesehead collective recital of Go Pack Go echoed down from the bleachers Kaepernick had been reduced to meat. When Green Bay All Pro line backer Clay Matthews waltzed unscathed through a middle lane and hastily dumped Kaepernick on his backside the resultant celebration, whereby he saw fit to kiss his own bicep, drove the first nail into the metaphorical coffin coaches usually get buried in. By now the O-Line had called it a day.

‘If it keeps raining the levee’s goin’ to break’ goes the old ballad. So often it happens when the rash decisions of front office such as appointments and contract extensions don’t hold up to immediate scrutiny, ownership, as was the case in Miami, is all too quick to intervene. “I have to put everyone in a position to be successful,” Tomsula said later at the postgame press conference. “That’s my job.” For how much longer it remains to be seen.

SACKED ... 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. (Photo by Getty Images)

THE WEEKLY TOP 10

10. “They threw rocks at Jesus, & Jesus was an excellent guy who did a lot of awesome stuff.” This here is a tweet from Bears tight end Martellus Bennett in regard to his much maligned quarterback Jay Cutler. The jury is still out on the excellent guy part of that equation. The verdict for the second part was arrived at in Denver.

9. “Terrible! Terrible coaching. It starts with me. I’ve gotta do a better job. I’ve gotta figure out what I can do better to be a better head coach of this team… Again it starts with me. A bad job of head coachin’ today.  I’m just disappointed in me as a head coach. That’s what I’m disappointed in. [Why?] Because I don’t think I did a good job today. I think I have to do a better job of being the head coach of this team. It starts with me. To go out and perform like that, that’s on the head coach. So I’m gonna try and do a better job.” Bill O’Brien current head coach of the Houston Texans attempting to take the heat for the lacklustre cattle that represent his job on the park.

8. “Hey man when you lose you open to criticism. I’m not gonna try and justify anything we did. I take responsibility for it.” That was Mike Tomlin head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers accepting the blame knowing he has one more Superbowl ring than Bill O’Brien.

7. In the 1975 classic Night Moves private investigator Gene Hackman is watching a football game in his den when his unfaithful wife enters. “Who’s winning?” she asks.  “Nobody,” he responds. “One side is just losing slower than the other.” You won’t find a better review of the Seahawks and Lions.

6. “I think he’s making some rookie mistakes. We’d like for him to be a vet and we’ve seen signs that he can be a great player but with that though we’re not there yet and there will be growing pains. He’s a rookie who’s just played his fourth NFL game.” Buccaneers head coach Lovie Smith after his first year quarterback Jameis Winston brought his tally of thrown interceptions to 7 on the year.

5. “I told em as ugly as it might have seemed, we gave up six penalties and gave up a lot of yards but at the end of the day we had opportunities to win that game in the 4th quarter but we didn’t make enough plays… We’ve got to beat the Tennessee Titans first and start salvaging our season. We got to look critically at what we’re doing, at all aspects which is what we did, we adjusted some things strength and conditioning wise, we adjusted some meetings, we adjusted some practice times, we adjusted some things schematically. Obviously it didn’t give us the result of what we’re looking for.” The famous last words of a coach not long before he was relieved of his duties.

4. “If we had one sack or zero sacks if we had three or three or one I still wouldn’t care.” The infamous words of one of the players of the recently fired head coach.

3. “It has to be a demoralising completion on 3rd down for this defense.” Fox commentator Joe Buck offers a reminder to any 49ers fan not already demoralised.

2. “It is what people think they see in another person that makes his reality,” wrote Don DeLillo in Cosmopolis. Unless that 90 yard game winning drive and clutch play to Pierre Garcon was an aberration someone, somewhere, other than Washington coach Jay Gruden believes in Kirk Cousins.

1. “I give credit to both teams. A lot of big plays on both sides of the ball. You know just not enough of them.” Jaguars head coach Gus Bradley drinking that half full glass dry.