Guts and the coordinator: Fate is a fickle bitch

Gutsy.

That's what I thought when I saw Eli huck that ball into the endzone with :06 on the clock right before halftime.

Gutsy.

Kevin Gilbride is going for it.

And that's a hell of a thing for any 60 year old to do.  

Because when I think of Kevin Gilbride, the first thing I think of (after him getting sucker punched by Buddy Ryan) is that he usually bores me to tears.  Some of the Brandon Jacobs runs for -1 up the middle this season made me want to pull my hair out.

And even on Sunday, it was pretty clear pretty early that the Packers were doing a decent job stuffing the run but they didn't have a prayer of stopping the pass.

Every time Eli dropped back he looked like he had all day to survey the field.  I've seen more pressure on the shuffleboard court of my grandpa's retirement home.

And what we all watched, strangely, Kevin Gilbride seemed to see.  

This defense can't really be this bad.  He must have thought.  It feels like we can do anything.  3rd and 10.  3rd and 20?  Who cares?

You know what?  We're rolling over these bitches.  Fuck the long field goal in the winter.  Huck that puppy up and see if Nicks can pull it in.

And that's what it looks like when guts work.   When it pays to pin your ears back and swing for the fences.

When Guts Goes Bad

And then, there's the other side of the coin...

Sometimes, one team beats another handily, like the Patriots over the Broncos.  That was a team win. In other cases, however, it's easier to point a finger.

And in the Saints loss, there was a pretty big culprit.

And his name is Saints Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams.

What do I know about Gregg Williams?  What does anyone know about Gregg Williams?

Dr. Heat.

Blitzmaster 3000.

And that's the thing Sean "Puffy" Payton craved when they brought Williams in as the defensive coordinator.  Pressure.  Heat.

And it paid off in silver dollars in 2009 when they won the Lombardi and then again in 2010 when they had the #4 defense in the league.

Until they lost the Utah Jazz or some other irrelevant team in the playoffs.

So it makes sense that, late in the game Saturday, with the lead, Dr. Heat scanned his playsheet and only seemed to find pressure.

I mean, come on!  His name isn't Dr. Coverage!  It's Dr. Heat!

At a moment in the game where Bill Belichick would have hammered in the need for situational football, Gregg Williams gave Alex Smith a gift:

Don't drop back and read the whole field.  

Just read one guy.

Vernon Davis had been beating the Saints coverage all day, and instead of forcing Alex Smith to check down and hope for a long field goal, Williams sent the heat, and gave him Vernon Davis singled up.

Remember this Alex Smith?  This was the 49er faithful calling for David Carr last year.

Don't remember that?

Yeah, neither did Gregg Williams, apparently.

Guts.  It's great when you have them.

It's even better when they work.

Comments

[Adam Rank]

If you have Hakeem Nicks and Victory Cruz, you should be blindly hucking into the end zone at least twice a game.

[Lord Castleton]

Good point.

Dirk Koetter should have that tatooed on his arm. So should Bill Callahan.