Niners should, sadly won’t rush more

By Anthony Bialy  |   Monday, March 17, 2008  |  Comments( 0 )

San Francisco 49ers
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Teams will remain inefficient at passing as long as opponents don’t fear the run, and that’s a crucial reason why the 49ers had what could have been factually called the worst throwing offense in the game last season. Specifically, San Francisco’s quarterbacks combined for an embarrassing 64.3 rating in 2007, lowest in the league.

While they certainly weren’t spectacular on their own merits, the passing game participants can blame the rushers for not gaining enough yardage per game, and the backs can in turn stick it on coaches who didn’t let them try enough times per game. It’s a miserable downhill slope, and the fact is the problem could worsen this year.

The Niners certainly underperformed when it came to total ground gains this past season, finishing 27th in the NFL with 92.3 yards per game rushing. What’s confusing is that San Francisco’s average of 4.1 yards every run was actually just a bit better than average. That left them tied with four other teams for 11th-best; with the league rate hovering eternally at around four yards per carry, it’s clear that their backs did at least a competent job when given the chance.

The trouble is that San Francisco was second-to-last in rushing attempts, with only 22.3 attempts per game. The only offense with fewer tries was Detroit, which ran 20.2 times a contest; there might be some Arena League teams that lean on their running backs more than that.

They rushed way too infrequently, and the only way the Niners’ situation could be exacerbated would be if they hired away the Lions’ coordinator to govern their own offense. Um. . . darnit. So, San Francisco faces the dreadful possibility that they may actually run less this season, as new offensive boss Mike Martz likes the ground game about as much as I like decaffeinated coffee and O’Doul’s.

It’s a shame, partially because it wasn’t as if their starter was a glorified decoy. Frank Gore had 260 attempts in 2007; while that’s a good amount of tries, enough to put him 12th overall in the NFL for the season, the problem was that barely anyone else got carries.

The player who had the second-most rushes, Michael Robinson, remarkably only had exactly one-tenth as many as Gore, finishing with an astoundingly meager 26. Further simple math indicates that Robinson’s total works out to fewer than two per game, which would be a low total for the third-stringer, much less the statistical backup. The actual third-place finisher was the now-gone Maurice Hicks, who got 21 measly chances.

That said, the Niners did exactly what they should have to improve their particular rushing situation: bring aboard a talented reserve. Free agent addition DeShaun Foster, while flawed, definitely upgrades the position’s depth. His aptitude, along with the fact that he can not only spell Gore but also give defenses a different look, mean that the Niners can and should be able to literally rush up to 100 more times this upcoming season. It’s not an exaggeration: they only tried 357 times in 2007, and a hundred more carries would still only have put them at ninth-most in the league.

However, the worry now is that, under the aerially obsessed Martz, Foster will remain as little-used as last year’s backups, who almost could have gotten away without donning shoulder pads or taping up on Sundays. It’s a woeful thought for this offensively anemic squad to fathom, but the situation could deteriorate even further.

Whoever ends up as their quarterback, the 49ers will have to hand off the ball more this year than they did last for him to have even a remote chance of success. Defenses have to fear the possibility that they’ll get burned if they don’t commit resources to stopping ground attempts. Unfortunately, based on his past, there’s a zero percent chance that this will happen as long as there is a 100 percent chance Martz is in charge of the offense. Get started now on drafts for frustrated bulletin board posts and letters to the editor about how this offense doesn’t run well because it doesn’t run.
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