Gameday! San Francisco 49ers
Edition #695
Good morning! ☕
After watching every other fanbase get to enjoy a win or commiserate a loss, it’s our turn. The Jets head to San Francisco tonight with a mammoth task on their hands. We’ve seen some great football over the weekend and now its our turn.
Obviously we all want to win this game but the one thing I don’t want to see is a serious injury. The result won’t determine the season, but as we saw last year, losing a key player can doom your entire season.
Aaron Rodgers is the obvious one, but he’s not the only one. Losing Garrett would be a huge knock, as would losing Tyron Smith. Anyway, I’m not speaking that into existence.
Here is the final injury report ahead of tonight. Losing Zaire Barnes and Wes Schweitzer isn’t ideal for depth purposes, but they’re both backups so things could be a lot worse. Outside of those two, the Jets are fully healthy heading into week one. Obviously Reddick is not on this list, but he’s the main guy that will be missing.
For San Francisco it’s a similar story with Gross-Matos and Winters, and Hufanga wasn’t expected to make it back in time considering he only started practicing recently after a long lay-off with injury. Reports indicate that Aiyuk will be on a pitch count, jut as Mike Williams is for the Jets…but I’ll believe that when I see it.
Reports over the weekend indicated that Haason Reddick is ready to stick to his holdout no matter what. At this point I want Joe Douglas just to stand firm and if Reddick wants to sit out the entire season he’ll sacrifice his entire salary and will be back in this situation next year. Only difference is he’ll be another year older on the wrong side of 30. No team will pay him what he wants to be paid after he’s had a year off and is another year older. This holdout is helping absolutely nobody. The only way I want to see JD change his mind is if there’s a chance we can flip Reddick to get either another standout edge rusher, or a A+ wide receiver. A couple of McDonald sacks tonight would go a long way for the Jets.
Unfortunately Wes Schweitzer is heading to IR with his injury. That’s not ideal for the Jets considering he was likely the primary backup at all three interior spots. As mentioned this pre-season, Xavier Newman-Johnson has looked very solid and you imagine he’ll take over that primary backup role. Saleh wouldn’t confirm that XNJ would be the backup at centre, but you imagine he will.
Jeff Ulbrich had a great quote on the defensive line over the weekend - "They are our boogey men and they are our super power, and we're going to lean on them like we always do." A lot of people are highlighting the absence of Reddick, but can you miss something that’s never been there? Jermaine Johnson isn’t concerned - "You can ask the teams we joint-practiced against and then y'all will see on Monday. I think we all feel pretty good."
Last year Nathaniel Hackett went up into the booth once Aaron Rodgers went down, but this year he’ll be calling plays from the sideline so he can talk to Rodgers between plays. Let’s all be clear, Hackett may call the original play but Rodgers changes it to whatever he wants. You’d imagine that an OC would want to be on the sideline for younger QBs to give them clearer directions and instructions. We all know that Rodgers is the real offensive coordinator here.
The Jets and 49ers don’t face each other all that often, in fact they’ve only met 14 times with San Francisco holding a comprehensive 11-3 winning record.
The Last One
Last time out San Fran came out 31-13 winners at MetLife in 2020. If you take a quick look at the rosters that day, it’s easy to see why.
Looking at that starting offence, I’m surprised we managed to score 13 points. Although that’s just four years ago, none of those starters are still with the team this year, which shows just how far we’ve come under Joe Douglas. Although some of it was his doing, he largely inherited that.
In fact, if you look at the entire starting roster, only two players remain. One is an All Pro (Quinnen Williams) and another is a player who’s now a backup and special teams ace (Ashtyn Davis).
The Last One in San Francisco
The last time New York visited the Bay, they came out victorious. That was their first win in San Francisco since 1983 and considering we only have three wins total against the red and gold, winning two on the road is pretty notable.
What’s even more incredible is that Bryce Petty started at QB that day and the offence as a whole was pretty forgettable.
It was a Bilal Powell 19-yard TD run that won that game in overtime and that was fitting considering he went for 145 yards and 2 scores that day. Breece Hall will be looking to replicate that later on tonight.
Here are some quick hitters before the season starts.
The Jets have both the oldest player in the league (Aaron Rodgers) and the youngest player in the league (Braelon Allen).
Next Gen Stats show that Aaron Rodgers generated +353.2 passing EPA between 2018 and 2022, second in that span to only Patrick Mahomes, who accounted for +815.4.
Rodgers could become the fifth QB in NFL history (excluding rookies) to throw 25 touchdowns after a season when he didn't complete a pass. He has had at least 25 TD passes in each of the 13 seasons in which he played at least 10 games.
OPTA stats give the Jets a 59.5% chance of making the playoffs this season and project their wins to be 9.3 with the team having a 7.8% chance to lift the Lombardi Trophy in New Orleans. They may not sound incredible, but as far as OPTA goes, that’s pretty decent.
As good as they are, San Francisco blows those out of the water. They have a 87.7% chance of making the playoffs (higher than even the Chiefs), they have a 32.1% chance of reaching the Super Bowl and a 22.3% chance of lifting the trophy.
Here’s the OPTA chart which shows just how good the Jets defence was last year and just how bad the offence was without Aaron Rodgers. It also shows just how good San Francisco were on both sides of the ball.
Need a more visual look at how bad that offence was…
You can lay a lot of blame all around for that showing, but the offensive line was a complete mess. Jets QBs were sacked 64 times last year, the second highest number in franchise history. The only year where we allowed more sacks was 1987, and that was the strike year where we used replacement level players, although you could say the same thing about our tackles last season.
Here are my predictions for week one.
Final Score: New York Jets 24-27 San Francisco 49ers
Jets TD Scorers: Mike Williams, Breece Hall, Quincy Williams (pick 6).
Best Jets Player: Breece Hall goes over 150 all-purpose yards.
Sacks: Jermaine Johnson, Javon Kinlaw, Will McDonald
Interceptions: Quincy Williams
Expect two Practice Squad promotions, in Sam Equavoen LB & Jake Hanson OG/ C, replacing Schweitzer & Barnes. With Schweitzer on IR wouldn’t mind Signing McGovern next week. I would have bet the house that HR , would have shown up on Saturday . Agree, JD needs to stand firm, even if the Jets get zero sacks tonight. JD is in his contract year as a GM, the league will be watching how Douglas handles this. Don’t understand Haason’s end game, can’t imagine a trade.
Watched some football yesterday, calming the addiction. Patriots, Dolphins, & Bills won and the Titans lost all in close games. Not a big uniform guy, but the Giants throwback uniforms were an embarrassment. Giants in for a tough season with their 40 million dollar QB. Don’t understand QB pricing, it’s just bizarre. Dak Prescott just got a four year 240 million dollar contract. Two 55 million dollar a year QB’s lost yesterday in Trevor Lawrence & Joe Burrow. While Jacobi Brissett who makes 8 million, and Sam Darnold who makes 10 million were big winners. Darnold looked good for the Vikings, speaks to Offensive minded Coaching, and a superior supporting cast. Happy for Sam, look at the WR’s he had with the Jets, resurrected his career with a year under Shanahan and the 49ers.
It’s safe to say, that millions upon millions of people pray for instant wealth when they play the lottery.
Taking into consideration that Where’s Waldo#7s holdout is probably the most ill conceived planned holdout in NFL history since Jay Berwanger’s. What is Waldo praying for.
Not only was Berwanger the first Heisman Winner but also the first number one pick in the first NFL draft. He never played a down in the NFL.
Berwanger’s brilliant plan posted below.
What could he possibly be praying for.
Where’s Waldo #7s leverage has more zeros attached to it than the extra zeros he expects from the Jets.
Evidently the only possible thing that he is praying for is for the Jets to get no sacks or pressures the next couple of weeks or Heaven forbid injuries to key players. That can be the only motive for his idiotic holdout.
If his insistence is to stand tough, then after 6 games it will be Deja Vue all over again next year except he will be a year older on the wrong side of thirty.
Saleh in his exuberance said that once this is resolved, the team will welcome him with open arms.
I can positively tell you that there will be one team member that won’t be welcoming him with open arms and that is the player who will get cut to open up the roster spot.
In 1936, Berwanger was the first player ever drafted into the National Football League in its inaugural 1936 NFL draft.[11] The Philadelphia Eagles selected him, but did not think they would be able to meet his reported salary demands of $1,000 per game.[12] They traded his negotiating rights to the Chicago Bears for tackle Art Buss.[13]Berwanger initially chose not to sign with the Bears in part to preserve his amateur status so that he could compete for a spot on the U.S. team for the 1936 Summer Olympics in the decathlon.[14]
After he missed the Olympics cut, Berwanger and Bears' owner George Halas were unable to reach an agreement on salary; Berwanger was requesting $15,000 ($329,353 in 2023) and Halas' final offer was $13,500 ($296,417 in 2023).[15]Instead, he took a job with a Chicago rubber company and also became a part-time coach at the University of Chicago.[16]Berwanger later expressed regret that he did not accept Halas' offer.