- 15 minutes ago
Marc Grandi offers up his grades for the 49ers' Week 3 win over the Cardinals and Willard and Dibs weigh in.
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00:00Well, for the third straight week, we have Grandy's grades off of a win
00:04as the Niners are 3-0, this time a 36-30 win over Arizona.
00:07On Sunday, we start, as we always do, guys, with the quarterback position.
00:13Another great Brock Purdy game.
00:15He had more incompletions by a large margin this week than he did the previous week,
00:19but still 297 passing yards, four touchdowns, did not turn the ball over.
00:25One of those touchdowns that he threw for could have been a rushing touchdown
00:29if it wasn't for a George Kittle phantom hold.
00:31He still ran for 34 yards himself on the ground.
00:36That was the big play.
00:37That wasn't the touchdown, but it still was a big game.
00:40Big game, excuse me.
00:41He was great once again.
00:43He gets an A, and this is becoming commonplace at this point.
00:46I don't know what else to give him.
00:47A quarterback whose rating is over 130 in the game when you have four touchdowns
00:51and no turnovers, I don't care if you pass it in, run it in, whatever it is.
00:56Okay, completion percentage, slight blemish there.
00:59But whatever, Purdy is in total control, continues to make great decisions out there.
01:06And I want to highlight a different stat that you didn't highlight there
01:09just because I want to expand on it.
01:11It is much more of a quarterback stat than we give it credit for.
01:15Every week that goes by that Brock Purdy does not get sacked,
01:19that is yet another feather in his cap, not just the offensive line.
01:25He has not been sacked this year.
01:27Not only is that showing he's got a great performance,
01:31I would argue that really helps keep him healthy.
01:35Don't get touched.
01:36Stay healthy.
01:37So, yes, an A from me, dog.
01:40Yeah, the completion percentage is the only reason why I would bump it down to an A-
01:44because, honestly, in my purview, in my look at it, you've got to have some standards.
01:50It's a fantastic game, four touchdowns and the like, but 15 of 27, that's 15 complete.
01:5612 incomplete, that, for me, is not worthy of a straight-up A.
02:00So, you get an A- and you work on your game.
02:03We give A-pluses, so for us, an A is not a perfect game.
02:07I know for you, an A is a perfect game.
02:09Right, and I understand why you guys give A-pluses,
02:13because you need that extra special little attaboy in your life.
02:17You give B-pluses, right?
02:18Yeah, because a B-plus is not quite an A-.
02:21An A-plus is make-believe.
02:22It's like a purple dinosaur.
02:24Okay, whatever.
02:24A-minus.
02:25Deal with it.
02:26Anyway.
02:27To be rating, 133 A-minus.
02:29Pretty good.
02:29Got it.
02:29Up next is skill position.
02:31Not even top 15 of his career.
02:33Got it.
02:34Got it.
02:34It's great on a curve.
02:35Be better.
02:36Got it.
02:37You guys done?
02:38Probably not.
02:39Okay, we'll see.
02:40Coming up next, it is skill positions, wide receivers, running backs, and tight ends.
02:45This was an interesting crew towards the end of the game once Mike Evans went out.
02:51He was good when he was in, though.
02:53The touchdown pass from Brock to Mike Evans, the way that he delayed putting his hands up
02:57so the DB had no clue the ball was headed his way.
03:01That was phenomenal.
03:02A veteran move there by Mike Evans.
03:05Debo Samuel on the hook and ladder, reaching over 20 miles per hour down the sideline.
03:11He looks, I mean, as quick as he ever has.
03:14George Kittle, if he didn't announce himself fully week two, he did this time six catches
03:19for 82 yards and two touchdowns.
03:22He was great in this one.
03:24How about Jordan Watkins getting involved with a couple of catches?
03:27As well.
03:28And on the run game, they averaged six yards per carry on the ground.
03:32McCaffrey, 75 rushing yards, had the big touchdown where he dove over the offensive line.
03:37I thought the biggest run of the game, though, was the second 10, 12-yard run just before
03:42the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter from about midfield.
03:45That didn't quite seal the game for the Niners, but it led to the ceiling touchdown.
03:50Not a lot to be upset about here, either.
03:52I gave skill positions an A.
03:54I gave him a B+.
03:55I thought that they were very good.
03:57By and large, there were some big plays, and I think the Debo Samuel hook and lateral was
04:03a byproduct of a great play call and also a great block by Farrell.
04:06And Debo gets full credit for being able to boogie around the corner and get all the way
04:10down into the house.
04:12And George Kittle was a couple of big catches.
04:13I'm glad you pointed out Jordan Watkins as well.
04:16If you take away the Brock Purdy mega scramble, they only average five yards a carry, like
04:22for the general rushes.
04:24So if you take out, I mean, yeah, only, quite frankly.
04:27And a lot of that was, you know, on a couple of big bulk runs.
04:30They were good, but I have a higher standard for this offense.
04:33It's a B+.
04:34Okay.
04:34So I guess I just listened to you speak for about a minute.
04:38It was about 38 seconds.
04:39I did not hear one thing that was a demerit, yet somehow he didn't get an A.
04:44If I were the parent of the skill position people, I would show up to school the next
04:50day when those grades came home and asked the teacher, what for?
04:55What's the demerit?
04:57Kalon Black, minus one on the ground, on one of his carries.
05:01Average 4.3 yards a carry.
05:02Right.
05:02I mean, you can grill me all you want on my grades, or you can give your grade.
05:06Yeah, A.
05:07Great.
05:07Nobody screwed up.
05:09Nobody dropped the ball.
05:10Everybody's averages are through the roof.
05:12Everybody got involved.
05:14George Kittle, two touchdowns.
05:16Deebo, hook and ladder.
05:17Mike Evans, absolutely brilliant.
05:20McCaffrey involved in both the pass and the run game.
05:23Jordan Watkins gets a chance.
05:25Ball's out.
05:26You mentioned Luke Farrell's block.
05:27Beautiful.
05:28He gets credit for that.
05:30McCaffrey, five yards a carry.
05:32I don't know who messed up.
05:34That's an A.
05:35You get a test, you don't mess up, you get an A.
05:39Go ahead, Mark.
05:39Kittle with a hold had to negate a touchdown for his quarterback.
05:43I guess we don't talk about that.
05:45Terrible call, but go ahead.
05:46Penalty.
05:46Flag.
05:47Keep defending the refs.
05:48We're going to do this for every group, huh, aren't we?
05:50Up next.
05:51Put me down for an A for everything, and then you guys can just do it.
05:54I mean, you've got to screw up to not get an A.
05:56We're about to get to the defense.
05:58That's coming up.
05:58There will be some demerits for sure.
06:01The offensive line is up next.
06:03It's the third straight week.
06:05Brock Purdy was not sacked, and I know you'll hear that's a quarterback stat, and it definitely
06:10is.
06:10Brock Purdy has a lot to do with that, but he also was only touched three times in this
06:15game.
06:15And as we talked about, the Niners averaged six yards per carry on the ground, and again,
06:20even if you take out what Brock Purdy did on the ground, that's still five per carry
06:23for Christian McCaffrey, 4.3 for Kalon Black, even Debo Samuel got a couple of big chunks
06:30on the ground as well.
06:32I think out of this entire team, the thing that I've been most surprised by this season
06:36so far has been the offensive line.
06:38I was not high on them coming in, and I think I've given them three straight A's.
06:42Another A again here this week.
06:43All right, this is where I will actually knock it down to a B+, though I share being impressed
06:49by what they're doing and keeping Brock Purdy clean.
06:52For me, the only reason we didn't talk too much about penalties in this game is because
06:56the other team committed even more.
06:58And so the fact that, for instance, I always get a little bit like eyebrows up when the first
07:05play of the game, there's a penalty.
07:08So they went backwards on the very first play of the game.
07:12I also do think these incompletions that clearly knocked dibs off of Brock Purdy's performance,
07:20some of those were because he was dealing with more pressure in this game than he had
07:25in the past.
07:25Look, they did great, but a couple more penalties that I would have liked to see and some pressures
07:32that came at Brock Purdy that were not there in the first two games.
07:37So very, very good performance, but a few mistakes in there.
07:41So B-plus for me.
07:42A-plus-plus-plus.
07:44Oh, it's sarcasm hour.
07:46It's a B-plus.
07:47And you talk about the opening snap, which is a false start, and that's not going to be great.
07:52And they were able to go on and shake that off and score.
07:55Also a hold on Connor Colby in their second possession in the third quarter, and that
08:00ultimately led to a punt.
08:02Usually when you see a team get pegged for holding and you go from third and eight to
08:06third and 18, that usually lends itself to a punt.
08:09So a couple small mistakes.
08:11I liked what you said, Mark, about the amount of pressure, and Brock only got hit, I think,
08:15three times QB hits.
08:17But there was a lot of pressure on Brock Purdy, so I bumped him down to a B-plus.
08:21All right, over to the defense.
08:23They gave up 30 points in this game.
08:25We'll start with the front seven.
08:26This is a hard one to grade for me because the front seven so injured.
08:31This is, of course, down linemen and linebackers.
08:33Fred Warner, as always, flying around this game.
08:36Drake Greenlaw left with an injury.
08:38There were some other injury issues as well for the defense.
08:41But the front seven already so injured coming into this game that I take into account a little
08:46bit just the group of players that are playing in this game.
08:49With that said, it was really hard for this group to get off the field in this game.
08:55The time of possession, 38 minutes and 44 seconds for the Cardinals.
09:00I know that's not all on the front seven.
09:01A lot of that has to do with the secondary as well.
09:04The numbers for the Cardinals on the ground, not great.
09:07Three and a half yards per carry.
09:09Jeremiah Love, though, you could tell he was wearing down the Niner defense a little bit.
09:13Averaged over four yards per carry, did he?
09:16It wasn't an amazing day.
09:18It wasn't as bad as, I think, the 30 points make it out.
09:21They did get to Jacoby Brissett a couple of times.
09:23He also dropped back, what, like 50-plus times in this game.
09:27So he had lots of opportunities to get after him.
09:30It wasn't terrible, but by no means was it great.
09:32I gave him a C+.
09:33A B for me, and I thought that, you know, as much as what you pointed out about the
09:38yards per carry, you're right.
09:39It looked like Love had his way like other running backs have, especially on early downs.
09:44They averaged five yards a carry on first down.
09:46The Niners were able to manage a couple of sacks, and I would have been in Seville, but
09:52it's the front seven.
09:53I just can't stop thinking about Fred Warner on so many plays and Dre Greenlaw coming up
09:59and making big hits, and they are part of that front seven.
10:02So for me, the Fred Warner part of it moves it up to a B.
10:05Yeah, I'm with Dibs on a B.
10:07First of all, Fred Warner is in the conversation for best player in football.
10:11He is just so unbelievable, and so he's going to drag this thing up.
10:15And then, whether this is fair or not, I'm going to add into the conversation.
10:19Keep in mind here, we are talking about, let's see, Khalid Kareem.
10:25We are talking about Sebastian Valdez.
10:27Valdez.
10:28We are talking about Okoronkwo.
10:31We are talking about Kevin Gibbons, and we are talking about Naquan Jones.
10:37These are people who were not 49ers two weeks ago, and nobody has heard of them.
10:42And so their performance has to be graded through a little bit of a different perspective,
10:48in my opinion.
10:49And they held up well enough.
10:52Yeah, it wasn't great, and the Cardinals are moving the ball, but what can we expect?
10:57And then, with the quirk of the time of possession, that group was suffering from exhaustion in the second half.
11:05It is not to make excuses for them, but it is to look at them through the lens that I
11:10think is fair.
11:11So that's a B for me.
11:12Up next is the secondary, your corners and your safeties.
11:16Jacoby Brissett threw for 280 yards and a couple of the touchdowns.
11:20Niners did not pick him off on those 52 pass attempts.
11:24He dropped back more than that, but he got off 52 pass attempts.
11:28I mean, this is a good group of skill position players, even if we just assume that Marvin Harrison Jr.
11:34is going to be nothing as long as he's an Arizona Cardinal.
11:38Michael Wilson out of Stanford is a really good player, and Trey McBride is a hell of a tight end.
11:44And Kendrick Bourne, Niner fan, saw what he was capable of doing just last year when he was in a
11:49Niner uniform.
11:50So by no means is this a bad group of skill position players and pass catchers.
11:57I was, though, a little concerned by the lack of physicality, maybe, at times.
12:02And Trey McBride does that to everybody.
12:03He put up the stout through the dirt in this game.
12:06Diomedo Lenore had a pass interference penalty go against him in this one.
12:11Like, he gave up 30 points.
12:13I kind of feel like, by default, it can't be a B for me.
12:15Secondary gets a C-.
12:16Okay, I actually went B- because I think we got to loop into the fact that both cornerbacks left
12:22with at least concussion protocol checks.
12:26I know they came back into the game.
12:28I thought this was easily the best day of the year so far for Malik Mustafa.
12:35So, to me, the safeties were able to do some things.
12:38But, for me, this is also a trickle-down.
12:41No different than what we've talked about in the past with the Niners.
12:44When the front seven is struggling to put pressure on the quarterback, that is too much to ask for the
12:51secondary to chase guys around all afternoon long and, you know, keep them at bay.
12:56So, again, this is all connected for me.
13:00But I'm with you.
13:01Not a perfect game by any stretch.
13:03And you had receivers who put up some big numbers.
13:06And so that's what leads me to what I gave them, which is a B-.
13:10I have it just as a solid B.
13:11And I was thinking B-, but the more you look at all of the pass plays on which they connected,
13:17there aren't that many explosives.
13:19There's some 19s to Harrison Jr., Kendrick Bourne with a 15.
13:23And McBride, I'm glad you pointed that out about Upton Stout and the stiff arm.
13:28And he's a tough cover for anybody.
13:30And, honestly, between Michael Wilson, who had a great game, and McBride, that's a tough assignment.
13:35And you were down your top pass rusher and you lost your corners for a while.
13:39I thought, by and large, they were solid back there.
13:42They didn't make the one big mistake that was game-changing.
13:46So, I gave them a B.
13:47And then up next, it is special teams.
13:50Rams, this might be the worst grade for any group that we give so far this season.
13:55You muffed a punt.
13:57Saran Neal, kind of unfortunate.
13:58But you can't put yourself in that situation.
14:02And then the kicker, Eddie Pinheiro, missed a couple of extra points.
14:05That kind of kept the game hanging there a little bit in the second half.
14:09I know he made the extra point to make it a nine-point game, a two-possession game,
14:13with less than two minutes to go at that point.
14:15The game's over, but it was scary, partially because of those missed extra points
14:19and the extra possession you gave Arizona with that muffed punt.
14:22Yes, he made a 57-yard field goal with the close of the first half, which was big.
14:26Gave you the opportunity to double up in the second half, which you did.
14:30So, there was some good, but I can't look past the muffed punt and the missed extra points.
14:34Maybe this is over the top of me, but after what we've seen the last couple of years,
14:38I'm sick and tired of special teams this year.
14:40I gave him an F.
14:41An F?
14:42Oh!
14:42Wow, yeah.
14:43That's aggressive.
14:44Whoa!
14:45Poof!
14:46You want to come down his road?
14:48Well, I mean...
14:48Not my turn.
14:49Okay, well, I mean, you can.
14:51You're welcome to.
14:52And maybe I will.
14:53Let's see what happens when it's my turn.
14:55F is aggressive.
14:56I had it as a D+, and you mentioned the missed PAT is unacceptable,
15:00and I'm sorry that the ball happened to graze you, Sirhan Neal.
15:04That can't happen.
15:05And you look at the punt situation.
15:08They had a 35-yard punt right before the end of the first half.
15:12That was net.
15:12And Arizona had a punt, goes 64 yards, and you only got an 8-yard return.
15:17So I do think that your punt game is an area of weakness.
15:21The missed PATs, absolutely.
15:23I gave it a D+.
15:24Okay.
15:25I'm in that neighborhood.
15:26C-.
15:27C-minus.
15:28You guys are moving the goalposts on these people right here.
15:32C-minus?
15:32C-minus, dude.
15:33You start with a C, and then you...
15:35No.
15:36I do my grades, and you do yours, and yours is wrong.
15:40Like, you don't...
15:41This was not an F performance.
15:43Two missed extra points, those are major demerits.
15:47And obviously, I'm not someone who just thinks Sirhan Neal had bad luck.
15:53Like, you are coached.
15:54You cannot be there.
15:56You cannot be that guy.
15:57You cannot be there in that spot without eyes on the ball.
16:02So those are major mistakes.
16:04But to me, an F is like, we're missing game-winning field goals.
16:09We're having punts blocked.
16:11We're watching the return team for the other team dance as we try to chase them down the field.
16:17Those things did not happen.
16:19These were not game-ending or game-breaking mistakes.
16:23And so, for me, yeah, C-minus.
16:26And actually, take it from a teacher, you start with an A.
16:30If you do all your work, you get an A.
16:33And it is when you start screwing up that you move downward from there.
16:37You don't start in the middle of the board.
16:39You start with an A, and you go down from there.
16:42C-minus.
16:43Your grades are your grades.
16:44My grades are my grades.
16:46I start in the middle, and then if they do good, I move them up.
16:48If they do bad, I move them down.
16:50Last but not least, it is the coaching staff.
16:53Look, I know this was a close game.
16:55And as we know, if you picked the Niners minus the points, they did not cover.
17:00Fade, fade, fade, by the way.
17:02So, maybe you don't look at this as a great overall performance by the 49ers
17:07because the Cardinals did cover the point spread in this game.
17:11But you consider who the Niners had on the defensive line,
17:15the moving pieces that you had to get ready for this game in the first place,
17:19and the way that the offense kind of responded every single time in the second half,
17:23I still largely think this was a good display by the Niners
17:26and the coaching staff in general.
17:27Shanahan continues to be in his bag as a play caller.
17:32And, you know, defensively, Raheem Morris is working with the skeleton crew
17:35on the D-line.
17:36So, I have a little bit of leeway for him there.
17:39Overall, a good performance by the staff.
17:41I give him an A-minus.
17:42Not too much to be upset about.
17:44A-minus is where I landed as well, and I'll tell you why at the very end.
17:47But, again, I'm going to keep giving a little bit of a nod here and there
17:51for this is a football game where, at one time or another,
17:55Diamant O'Leonore, Renardo Green, Dre Greenlaw, Trent Williams, Mike Evans,
18:00these people all left the field.
18:01And they are supposed to keep everything intact.
18:05I look at where a game starts from a game plan standpoint.
18:08Cardinals came out, got the ball, got stuffed, gave it to the Niners,
18:12hook and ladder, 80 yards, 7-0, boom, boom.
18:17Kyle Shanahan's game plan is in effect.
18:20And so, sure, it didn't look as pretty as maybe we wanted it to.
18:25I'm not big so much on those style points.
18:27I thought it was a good game plan, well executed,
18:30and a nod for major players leaving the field.
18:33But the reason it's not an A.
18:35I'm with you, and you can go ahead and say it for me.
18:37It's because one of your star players at a press conference after the game
18:42said, I didn't go down because they didn't tell me to.
18:46And he's right.
18:47That is their job to tell him if you get a first down, you fall down.
18:53Now, Dibs won a fantasy game because of it.
18:55Kaboom.
18:56So good on you.
18:57Yep.
18:57And I'm happy for you.
18:59But that is a slight little knock.
19:03Like, you got to tell him to get down when you get the ball.
19:07Yep.
19:08And I'm with you, and I had the A-, and that was going to be the lone thing
19:12that I was going to highlight as far as, like, a coaching point.
19:15But the hook and lateral was such a phenomenal play.
19:18And I think that we all are of the mindset that Shanahan doesn't really like
19:23the trickeration and those types of things.
19:25But apparently George Kittle said that that's been installed for two years,
19:29and they were just waiting for the right time to use it and stuff.
19:32And just the play call of it, the execution of it was so perfect.
19:36You can tell that this is a team that they don't have to rep it a ton,
19:39but they go through it, and it's in the game plan.
19:41And when you call it, they knew exactly where to be on that.
19:44And Farrell gets out, and he knows he can't block too soon
19:47because then it's illegal contact.
19:49But as soon as that first throw is made, now he's out there blocking.
19:53And it's like, why are you blocking over there?
19:55Oh, I see.
19:56Because here comes Debo around the corner.
19:58Beautiful play call, beautiful execution,
20:00but I'm with you on the Kittle part of it at the end.
20:02It is an A-.
20:03All right, and that's Grandy's grades for week three.
20:06We'll see if they can do it again in week number four.
20:09We're talking about more good grades against the Broncos.