A check in of the 49ers

I went to this Thursday's 49ers-Rams game. Watching in person gives you a much better perspective than watching the tight shots on TV where you never see anything outside of the pocket.

Frank Gore obviously looked good, but Kendall Hunter hasn't got his burst back from his achilles injury yet.

Meanwhile the OL was not blowing the Rams off the line. They were able to angle to open some holes at the line, but even when the running game was clicking the OL was not pushing DLinemen five yards down field.

Quinton Patton was getting most of the time opposite Anquan Boldin, before he apparently broke his foot. I think the coaching staff is willing to move on from Kyle Williams.

Colin Kaepernick doesn't trust most of the young receivers. He is tentative and uncomfortable in the pocket. At least he isn't making the classic inexperienced QB move of staring down his WRs.

Garrett Celek was getting more time on the field in two tight end sets than our second round pick Vance McDonald. He's a better blocker, but inferior receiver. Delanie Walker is missed, which I knew would be the case.

On defense NaVorro Bowman was blitzing quite a often to make up for the missing Aldon Smith. He was pretty effective. Next to him Michael Wilhoite was pretty good, he could probably start for a team did didn't also have Patrick Willis.

Unfortunately Dan Skuta wasn't nearly as good subbing on the outside. He does not provide much passrush. To be fair he did well running down runs that went away from him or inside (although I worry a running QB would get outside of him easily).

NT sub Glenn Dorsey made some plays on the line. And Tramaine Brock held his own for the most part as the third QB with Nnamdi Asomugha down. Although neither are as good as Chris Culliver was last year (Super Bowl excepted)

The bottom line though was that while the defense held up even with the injuries the offense still needs work. There were a number of sputtering drives. Kaepernick could run a little more with the pocket breaks down. It will help when Michael Crabtree gets back, but it isn't as though we had a ton of receiving talent after Crabtree and Vernon Davis last year and were much better. I have less thoughts on the Rams, who are clearly not going anywhere this season. I am surprised a Jeff Fisher team is so bad. This was the first game I had been to where the home team was blown out - I have never been in a stadium so empty and quiet. Also listening to local radio on the drive home it is clear the locals have a massive case of homeritus. They keep talking about the team not playing up to it's talent level on offense. What talent? As a Niners fan I can tell you they have no one who worries me There isn't a player on their offense I would take to replace a starter for San Fran - save the #2 WR because Crabtree is hurt. They have some players on defense, but they let their two best players walk out the door in Steven Jackson and Danny Amendola and their #1 rookie Tavon Austin didn't impress at all.

Browns trade Trent Richardson to the Colts

I don't believe I have ever seen a team turtle so quickly into a season as Cleveland just did. Two games in they and they traded the third overall pick last year away for a first rounder next year (which won't be that high at all - more on that later). You can make the argument that was the last regime and he didn't fit their plans - but A) Richardson has run well when healthy and B) the Browns have NO ONE and I mean NO ONE else at running back on the roster. They are talking about signing someone off the street to start. Some idiots will make the argument that Richardson didn't fit new coach Rob Chudzinski's scheme, but good coaches adjust their schemes to their talent, ESPECIALLY when talent is limited. If he couldn't figure out a way to make Richardson work that doesn't speak well of him. They look absolutely directionless right now.

Two games into the season when there starting QB gets hurt they declare they are going start their 3rd stringer. Not an auspicious beginning for the Chudzinski era. This can't inspire players that he is honest with them or that he knows what he is doing. I guess having a new owner under indictment isn't a good thing after all. Who knew? Finally great move for the Colts, who address their biggest weakness on offense. The Colts now have two of the top three picks in the draft last year (the other was RGIII who would be superfluous with Luck) and definitely have the look of a playoff team - possibly even good enough to take the division from the perennially underachieving Houston Texans. It is also fun to speculate if we think the would not have made the trade if the immortal Vick Ballard had stayed healthy.

Little bit of football history

Boosters have been having some fun with the benefits of being able to name things they contribute toward at Stanford. Hence the coaching positions for the football team now have names as though they were endowed chairs. The head coach is officially the “Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football” after some real-estate mogul, the funnier names are the coordinators: the “Andrew Luck Director of Offense” and the “Willie Shaw Director of Defense” (named after the current head coach’s father who was briefly the defensive coordinator there a couple of decades ago.

It reminds me of when Al Davis started putting clauses in player’s contracts that referenced former Raider greats.

Charles Woodson had a Willie Brown clause for example. To me it was a little neat.

Speaking of underachieving former AFL teams I recently learned that Marv Levy is the only coach of the history of the Buffalo Bills who won his first game (he took over midyear). The other fifteen all lost. Another fun stat? The Bills spent Week 1 of the NFL season at home in Rich Stadium every season from 1974-1988. Didn’t seem to help – they made the playoffs just four times in that 15 year span (although they did win a postseason game in two of those seasons). Maybe angling to have their LAST game at home once winter set in might have helped them more.

ESPN - cutting out the middle man since 1979

This year there will be 35 college bowl games. That’s an impressive number when you realize that there are 120 Division I college teams and you have to be at least .500 to make a bowl game. However money drives college sports as much as it does the pros (it just goes into different hands) so despite the fact that most fans pay minimal attention to most of these lower tier bowls three more have already been added to the 2014 season (because there will finally be playoffs and two teams will play twice one could be added without increasing the number of teams). These bowls will have teams from the lower conferences (MAC, Conference USA, and the Sunbelt).

You might ask who is pushing this? ESPN. The sports network will actually OWN two of the new bowls. Talk about cutting out the middle man. In fact ESPN already owns other bowls and will own 10-11 of them next year. This is a new level in the commercialization of sports – where events are now literally being created by media provider rather than the sport's body. (The evolution of the NFL has given the NFL Network a different feel - it is an underling of the league, not an outside entity). However I don’t necessarily feel it is a change to be decried. Sports exists to entertain. Big time college programs past the point of being about athletic competition for the players long, long ago. While there may be some nobleness in my weekly pickup game, entertainment is an industry and I can no more complain about this than about Paramount making a summer blockbuster to sell (although I can complain about insipid plots). Minor point – one of the bowls will be in the Bahamas. That will be the first bowl outside of North America in the modern era (Toronto had a bowl a few ago).

The possible future of sports media?

The Chicago White Sox, or at least a division of its corporate entity, is starting a new web only sports network: CampusInsiders.com. The network has actually cuts deals with some college conferences (such as the Mountain West) to be the exclusive provider of some content – including a handful of football and basketball games, for which the conference altered their new deals with the big boys ESPN and CBS.

Primarily for now I believe the network will mainly be analysis, but as sports are becoming more and more carved up into conference, league, and even school networks it is hard to not see this as the future. If I can throw my computer screen up on my TV what difference does it make to me? I’m not a big user of my iphone for watching sports, but it is not hard to imagine the appeal of that (especially on a tablet for frequent travelers). I wouldn’t necessarily bank on this network, pioneers often go bankrupt, but eventually I see this as a functional model. This one also aims to make money from ads rather than charging members, not the preferred business model in my eyes – there is a reason newspapers are dying (although given the network's content I don’t think many folks would pay – another feature of being new, ESPN put ANYTHING on the air in their first few years). They are trying to partner with conferences to split profits, which might work. I still think the first successful online networks will probably be spinouts from networks (ESPN already had some games online) as they will have name recognition, deep pockets, and already have big games. On the other hand CampusInsiders will have the White Sox connection. It isn’t quite the same as Yes or NESN which are owned by the Yankees and Red Sox, but it does give them a very real sports connection a normal startup might not have. If the White Sox were willing to roll the dice and throw just a few games up there (or let them be simulcast) that could provide a bit of oomph. Given that you can find pretty much every sporting event for free online already anyway I would take that shot if I was them. That is the problem with baseball – we may eventually end up with each team having its own network, but I have faith in the hackers to keep it all free on the net.

Lemme tell ya what a sport is EERRR

How many times have you had or heard others debate a definition what is a “sport?” Eg. is track sport – no it is an athletic event (which is just making the semantics about a different word).  Any real sports fan has had some derivation of this conversation multiple times. Any everyone has certain heard some some numb ones - "it must involve a ball" is one of the all time worst I’ve heard.

Well I have come up with the perfect definition. I’ve done it by thinking a little outside the box and what makes people better in sports.  This definition may strike a little ridiculous, but when you delve into it you’ll find it’s remarkably functional. **A “sport” is something that if you take steroids you will have an advantage.** Thus boxing counts, but nascar and ice dancing are out. Pick any sport or non-sport and see if it doesn’t put it in the correct category. Think about it - you want a definition that reflects physical exertion.  This is a very simple way of defining that without having a string of ten rules.

Two quick football thoughts

How big have fantasy sports become? There is now a website, fantasyplayerprotect.com, where guys can purchase “insurance” for the best players on their fantasy team. If that player gets hurt the website pays you for your wrecked fantasy season. I can’t imagine this will take off (although I bet the site turns a profit), most players are in it for the fun, not the money. I’m so serious about fantasy sports I wrote a strategy guide and my first response to this was still just to laugh.

Last year just six teams of the sixteen in the AFC had winning records. That is a remarkably low number and means no team not in the playoffs was over .500.

Smooth trade

I would like to give credit to the San Francisco 49ers for being decisive and trading their first round pick last year, WR AJ Jenkins, if they felt he was a bust rather than holding on to him just because he was a first rounder. At least they got a project for him by flipping him for the Kansas City Chief’s Jonathan Baldwin.

I've seen Baldwin a fair amount, he is a big body guy - not a great deep threat (which will be TE Vernon Davis's role on the Niners most likely) but has some speed - with good body control and leaping ability. But KC parted with their 2011 first round pick after two years because he has never figured it out in the NFL and honestly even at Pitt he didn't seem to be a true #1 superstar. He comes across as a malcontent fairly often.

Belated fantasy advice

I wish I had gotten around to posting this before his 130 yard game last weekend, but I wanted to give a fantasy headsup about Packers WR Jordy Nelson.

He was hurt at the end of last year, but I knew he would be the Pack’s #1 deep threat. The corollary to that is not to reach for James Jones whose 14 TDs last year where an anomaly because Nelson was down. Jones drops too many passes to be a #1.