Obviously there was plenty of talk surrounding the two long runs by Frank Gore. The first one – a 79-yard TD run in the first quarter – was a career long.
Here’s the video of the first run
It lasted for a quarter and the 15 minute halftime, since on the first play from scrimmage in the second half, he galloped 80 yards for a score and a new career high.
Now here’s video of the second run.
That would be two plays, two touchdowns, 159 yards and the ball game according to most of the Seahawks.
“If you take those two plays back, it’s a different story,” Kerney said. “That is what cost us the game.”
He’ll get no arguments from me or Jim Mora, who lamented his team’s inability to control the gaps.
“When you are a playing a great runner like that and you are not in the gap that you are assigned to be in, in that particular defense, against that particular player, then he’s going to make you pay and he just did that twice today,” Mora said.
Perhaps even more frustrating is that the Seahawks according to Mora, were in eight-man fronts on both of those run plays.
“Technically, you shouldn’t be able to run against that, but we got out of whack in our gap control,” Mora said. “They blocked us up. You could make the argument that if we had more of a ‘cup’ we’d be able to stop him at 15, 12 or 20 yards and not chasing him to the end zone.”
Mora was then asked if it was risky to run an 8-man front.
“There’s a chance it is,” he said. “But they shouldn’t get by, they shouldn’t. They do their job on every single play and if you do that they should be okay. If someone doesn’t and you’re facing a running back like Frank Gore, you pay a heavy price. We did today.”
My feeling is that if you have an eight-man front, the running back should not get to the secondary untouched and with a full head of steam, and basically Gore did that on both runs.
Kerney took responsibility for the second long run. If you watch the replay, you see there was a chance to make a play by him, but he said he made the wrong read initially.
“If I would have played that one better, the play may have out differently, so I am upset about that,” Kerney said.
On the first one, Aaron Curry overpursued and got caught out of position.
And on both plays, safety Jordan Babineaux was in a position to make plays, but didn’t. It doesn’t have to be a textbook tackle, just grab a body part and hang on. The first one, he should have dove for the legs and didn’t and the second one he seemed to have misjudged how fast Gore was moving and his angle was off. But of course, Gore should have been at least bumped or grabbed by the time he got to Babineaux.
A few notes on Gore’s game today.
- He joined Barry Sanders as the only player in NFL to have two touchdown runs of longer than 75 yards in game. Sanders had runs of 80 and 82 in 1997 against Tampa.
- The 207 yards on 16 carries was an average of 12.9 per carry. It was the second highest ypc (with minimum of 10 carries) in franchise history.
- It was also the highest ypc with a minimum of 15 carries in the NFL since 1970.
- It was the second time Gore broke 200 yards against the Seahawks, he rushed for 212 (third most ever allowed by the Seahawks) in 2006
My reaction to both runs were pretty similar… something like… “Oh *&(*!”
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Ryan – How can Babineaux misjudge anything on Frank Gore? He last started at Safety in 2006 and was worked over hard by Gore in both games. In those games he constantly took bad angles and was also thrown to the ground by Gore. Gore probably thought the Safety was Trufant with all of his TD saving tackles.
After that, Babineaux didn’t start again and Frank Gore was relatively quiet. The Seahawks may be better against the pass with Babineaux, but expect 150 yards rushing days to be the norm like mid to late 2006.
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Also, if you look back at Jackson’s big run last week, Babineaux also made it possible by taking a very poor angle.
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Thanks for posting these, Ryan. Depressing, but instructive.
I think the 49ers intentionally targeted Curry on a few plays today, knowing the rookie was fast and would over-pursue. Unfortunately we had some other guys playing like rookies too… Babs, Hawthorne, Herring… ugh…
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Damn, I forgot that Babs was playing in that game. I totally forgot. Eric even giggled when I reminded him of that.
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Babs is done please. Let’s use lawyer the rest of the year.
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WIth Milloy we can complain about him getting worked over by the Cardinals WRs when the time comes – just like the playoffs.
How bad was Courtney Greene that he couldn’t even make the roster or the PS with THESE safeties? That move was puzzling – anyone have any insight into what happened there?
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I am fine with a situational Safety position of Milloy in on running downs and Babs in at FS in obvious passing situations. There’s no way Babs should be in the game against a power running team on 1st and 10.
As much as Babs sucks in the running game, Milloy sucks almost as bad in the passing game. Granted, you don’t always know when a team will run/throw, but you can play the percentages and put your players in a position to be successful more often than not.
I wonder if Ruskell will dangle either of our #1 picks next year for a piece of the puzzle this year? Remember, if the Hawks have too many games like they had today there’s not going to be any way that he’ll be making any of the picks next year anyways.
There’s not too many dominating pass rushing DL, great Safety, or OL who will be on the market though through 2 weeks. At the same time, how many people saw the Seymour trade happening when it did?
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Looking back at those runs, there were too many Hawks content to be blocked. I saw Josh Wilson get manhandled too many times to count. I still can’t see how Hawthorne, or Curry didn’t make the play on the first run.
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I never understood why they were revisiting the Babs at safety after it failed before. Yes, no more please.
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For all the Brian Russell haters — He is laughing today!
Those plays are EXACTLY why he was here. Yes he had other issues, but on either of those plays if the Safety at least hits him, he never gets to full speed and someone else can come in and finish!
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Babs poor play does not make Russell’s inept tackling better, as a matter of revision.
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Once both Trufant and Wilson are healthy, I wonder if Ken Lucas could play at safety. Maybe that’s crazy, but at least we could get our best defensive backs all on the field together.
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I worry about the speed of Babineaux and Ken Lucas. On the 1st run, neither of those guys was catching up, at least not very fast. Maybe at the end Babineaux cut off Lucas. On the 2nd run, at least Jennings was noticeably closing the gap on Gore though it wasn’t enough.
Gore ran 4.66 coming out of college, and he was carrying the rock (which slows the runner down compared to a pursuing player.) He’s also a shorter back so Gore doesn’t seem like a long-strider who builds up speed late. Is Gore really sprinter fast, or is Seattle’s vaunted speed defense that slow, that they can’t catch up after 80 yards?
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Gore is slow – Trufant caught up to him quite easily in 06 after Babs blew the play.
Lucas and Babineaux are very slow. You should worry about their speed.
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TR’s first mistake was letting Hamlin walk. Kenny would have ran Gore down before he reached the 20 but of coarse he would have made the easy tackle.
Case point, running down 4.4 speedster Julius Jones.
Solution: GRANT is a FS playing SS. Move him to his natural position and start Lawyer Milloy at SS. Lucas and Wilson are speedy enough on the edge. That cover one from a year ago may even work with a speedier Grant playing center field. Giants were using it Monday night with Kenny Phillips. Caused a Romo INT late deep middle.
One more thing. Even outstanding defenses need their offense to score, Giants 33 to Cowboys 31. TR has ran the Hawks O into the ground from 1st to Worst. You TIT cult worshipers need the rapture, never to be heard from again.
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Babineaux sucks.
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This is why this team cannot afford injuries. With the starting front seven in there Gore would not have sniffed the end zone. Look who was missing, Tatopu, Mebane, and Hill. I’m sorry but Gore would not have done nearly so well but injuries are the nature of game, has there been any other team in the league who has lost more players to injuries in the last couple of years.
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It is apparent that nobody from the Hawks Defensive Staff watched the Boise St vs Fresno Game Friday Night.
Fresno St. Running Back Mathews broke runs of 60,65, and 68 Yards against a Boise St. 8 Man Box simalar to the one the Hawks used against Gore!
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Gore’s first big run:
Notice at the start of the down where TE V.Davis is lined up. Since SF’s WR J.Morgan motioned to behind LT J.Staley, V.Davis is supposed to be ‘on’ the LOS or there are onlt 6 men on the line. VD is off the LOS by more than a yard plus his helmet doesn’t break any kinda plane passing thru E.Heitmann’s belt. If you look during the play you can also see numerous holds by offensive players downfield. No call. Bill Leavy. Oh well.
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