Week 11 - Buccaneers vs. 49ers

Jingle Bells, Batman smells, the Niners laid an egg...

Yup, the 49ers were shutout at home for the first time in 33 years. Thirty-three years! That's a big zero, zilch, no points, none whatsoever in a 21-0 loss. They never made it into Tampa Bay's red zone. Just once did they get close enough to even consider going for a long field goal. They chose not to.

Going into half-time, I wasn't worried - the Niners were still just down a touchdown, and I told myself that they simply needed to make some half-time adjustments to what Tampa Bay was doing. But yesterday, the team was overwhelmingly overmatched... nothing was working. I couldn't even tell if there were any adjustments made; all I knew was the results were the same. Awful and ineffective.

I'm not an X's and O's guy, and as has been written time and again by the sports media, neither is head coach Mike Singletary. Whether defense or offense, most head coaches have experience as a 'guru' of one or the other; for example, Bill Walsh was an expert when it came to the offensive side of the ball, and George Seifert came from the defensive side. Maybe it's time for 49er ownership to realize that not having an X's and O's guy as head coach is too much of a disadvantage to overcome. As patient as I've tried to be, I can no longer listen to Coach Singletary say that they have to 'look at the film.' Because looking at the (game) film hasn't been doing much good lately, has it? Isn't he able to derive any useful information from watching the games 'live' as they happen from the sideline?

For awhile now, people have been questioning the talent the team has as far as the players go. I still think there are some very good players on the 49ers. They just have yet to be utilized to their full potential. I remain convinced that Michael Crabtree is a star in the making - he simply hasn't been put in the best situations to utilize all that talent. And I don't know what happened to the Troy Smith that we all got so excited about, but I think it had more to do with lackluster game-planning rather than his ability. Maybe he needs more experience looking over defensive sets. But I think the team owes him at least some of the same amount of time to adjust as it has given to Alex Smith. But all in all, it's looking like they're back to Square One and have to undergo yet another 'rebuilding process.'