Quote:
Originally Posted by A8bil
Some of these stats are a bit skewed and don't tell the story. If you track the sacks as they happened throughout the season, they came in bunches, with 22 coming over a 6 game stretch where Staley and/or McGlinchey were out, and the one game when Staley came back and got torched by Clowney. The only other aberation was the second rams game, where they sacked him 6 times. Not sure why, but I suspect it was because Garland was subbing for an injured Richburg and couldn't handle the Rams interior line. Re the fumbles, I think JG has largely cleaned that up. He had 7 though the first 9 games this season, and he has had only 3 in the last 9 games, with only 1 fumble lost. Keep in mind that this is JG's first full season. He had only, what...10 games experience going into this season?
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Circumstances aside, the pass protection for Garrapolo against our pass rush will be a bigger problem for them than it will be for Mahomes against the 49ers pass rush just based on the differences in the QBs. Garrapolo doesn’t seem like a statue but he isn’t slippery or really a threat to escape the pocket and run or make a big off script play very often. Mahomes maneuvers and escapes the pocket to either run or make a pass play better than anyone. For comparison, in 2017 in the same offense, Alex Smith, who is still quite mobile, was sacked 39 times at about 6.65% rate.
For me it just comes down to a great passing game being a much more effective way of scoring than a great running game. Against the Chiefs strength which is passing, you can do everything right on defense and have the perfect play but if you don’t actually sack him he will run it for yards or torch the secondary. The same isn’t true for the 49ers passing or running. If the run play is ruined by good defense that’s pretty much it and if the pass play is covered Garrapolo isn’t extending the play and stressing the defense in nearly the ways that Mahomes will.