In my view, their success is much more dependent on fixing blocking(and in the medium term of getting a line that can hold its own). While the passing game was not crisply executed, it seemed to serve its purpose (I believe that both of the interceptions were by the safeties implying that the threat of the pass forced safeties to play the pass). In general I thought Clemson’s defensive strategy was to use line play and athleticism and did a decent job of it. I think we can only really comment on the passing game when we see a team sell out a lot more against the run.

On another note, it was interesting to watch some adjustments that Paul Johnson seems to be making. The three I found most interesting is that the tackle generally stepped hard outside of the DT rather than either looping or taking a veer release and did a pretty good job of getting to their blocks. Last year DTs often literally held blockers on veer release and/or knocked back the OT when they took a looping release.

They also seemed to shorten up the motion into the option (it seemed last year the backside of the defense was slanting with the motion and disrupting plays. Also they ran probably a half a dozen counters to the A back opposite the path of the B bak with the motion A back folding inside.

I was a little surprised to see you say, “Georgia Tech will not win many games if they have to throw it.”

That’s probably true — but how do you make Tech throw it? I’m not sure there’s any intelligent way to “force” Paul Johnson to throw the ball a lot. Simply getting a few scores ahead certainly won’t do it.

He threw two picks, took a huge sack that was all his fault, and averaged 11 per completion. His amazing ability to drive his team into a huge and then pull them out with dinky passes is awesome. Whoooooo.

The complaint is that due to Johnson’s offense he’ll never be able to get a QB that can pass. I disagree, the person he may get to run the system may not be a pocket passer I believe he can get someone who can throw well enough to win.

It worked so beautifully b/c of the fake fg pooch cluster-f that GT ran. B/c they had just seen something similar, when the snap went to the kicker, the D relaxed and assumed it was a pooch.

As for Crabtree, the two factors weighing the most heavily both involve Heyward-Bey. First, Crabtree felt he was the top wr in the draft (and probably rightly so, but that is beside the point). Crabtree got hurt, DHB ran a fast forty, the rest is history. Crabtree feels slighted that he wasn’t the first WR taken and feels he deserves similar money to DHB.

That might be an attainable compromise for the niner front office had Al Davis not completely blown the slotting out of kilter and overpaid DHB wildly. This lead to the delay in the signings of Maybin and Smith, but both eventually came to their senses and got into camp. Crabtree, however, being the same position as DHB, AND feeling that he is better, is still hung up on that deal.

Though he probably isn’t in any hurry to show up, considering the other holdout guy, Sir Andre McMoobs broke his foot a couple days after signing and reporting. Though, his ultimate hope in the holdout is the pass offense suffers and they get desperate. Of course, if they’re smart, they’ll understand that a rookie with zero time in their system wouldn’t really be the best savior.

But then again, the Niners hired Mike Nolan, so who knows?