I’d love to see that early on. Get those bigs to start thinking a whole bunch instead of just playing. Reid has been a master at this for so long.

First 3rd & 2 of the game. Ford on the field. I’m running an RPO right at his ass to hold the backside LB. Put it all on Ford and the frontside LB to make the stop. If the backside LB attacks, throw the RPO.

(This assuming we get some form of zone coverage.)

To me it will all depend on Nick Bosa. He’s been the key to that pass rush bc he forces teams to choose between doubling him or Armstead/Buckner.

It depends on which side he’s on, but I feel 100% comfortable with Schwartz facing him 1v1 at all times. Bosa isn’t going to beat Schwartz with pure talent. It ain’t happening.

I also feel comfortable leaving Wiz 1v1. Everybody keeps talking about Ford being the key to unlock the 49er pass rusher, but for us that guy is Wiz. Ever since he took over at LG the OL has taken it to a higher level.

Wiz being 1v1 allows Reiter and LDT to shut down the other IOL and whoever is going against Fish can get chipped to death.

I want to see these guys angry. I want to see Kelce or Bell hitting the **** out of Bosa just because. I want Bosa taking a hit or being pancaked every single passing play.

Ford is a luxury item for them. Bosa is the key.

Mostly I'm just asking if we should throw the "here's how much better the 49ers DL is with Ford on the field..." stuff out the window and instead replace it with "Here's how much better the 49ers DL is when they get to simply pin their ears back and attack the quarterback..."

Knowing full well that EVERYONE'S DL gets better when they just get to pin their ears back.

So...uh...don't let 'em do that. Continue to be the most efficient team in football on 1st downs and keep that defensive line from being able to get going.

I'd expect so. Saleh's no dummy. He's got to know he can't match up in man.

Yeah 100%. This would be a perfect game to execute in the way that they did against Chicago. Not that their game was perfect there, but they just did a really good job staying ahead of the chains.

Problem against the Chiefs is that if they want to do that, then that chute route to Damien Williams is open as ****.

You just can't cover everyone. You can't.

Tyreek Hill's short area quickness is such a destructive presence on man coverage, especially in short yardage situations.

When all you need is 4-5 yards, Hill's stop/start ability makes him damn near impossible to deal with. You can't get hands on him and you're not gonna cut with him.

You really can't run man against this team in short yardage because Hill's a man coverage buster in those spots. Those drag routes and hooks or outs that he runs out of smash concepts are just unstoppable. And you can't bracket him on those because there's not enough time for the guy coming from over the top to crash down on him.

So all you can do is zone up and hope a backer can flash out and get a hand on the ball.

I’m guessing they won’t throw their best guys at Schwartz. They’ll go after Fisher. I’m hoping all the KC guys play lights out.

You can if you get there with 4.

Then the 'blitzer' simply tracks Williams on his route, presuming that he's probably going to put a chip in on the RDE to help out Fisher.

Williams is a more explosive guy than he's given credit for but he's not Kamara out there. He's not an elite route-runner that's gonna shake a guy in coverage. If you send 4, you can deal with him well enough (provided that your LBer gets through the rubs over the middle, which didn't happen on that wheel route TD against Houston).

Matchup wise, Fisher would be able to handle Ford much better than Bosa I think. I expect Bosa to be over Fish early and often.

I dunno -- we relied on a whole bunch of 3rd down conversions, and there's a lot of luck there. When this offense is really going, we don't face too many third downs outside the red zone.

Yep. Hopefully Fisher can prove the doubters wrong.

Go ahead and do that Saleh. We’ll motion a TE over him every time, look him in the eyes and he’ll know he’s getting chipped. Every single time.

Saleh can try rushing him in the A gap to avoid that, sure. But good luck with that.

You’ll leave yourself vulnerable on the edge and this will happen:

<a href="https://imgflip.com/gif/3nhm1d"><img src="https://i.imgflip.com/3nhm1d.gif" title="made at imgflip.com"/></a>

We definitely need a couple of those from Mahomes Sunday, no doubt

What's interesting about that .gif is how fast Mahomes actually is. He may have clocked Payton Manning slow in the 40, but he's running away from LBs and DLs there.