Are they rebuilding here?

[Anonymous]

I think this is a prefix issue.

Are they...

REbuilding? That means starting over. Generally happens with an established roster you don't like, or don't like anymore, since a coach can rebuild a team after winning a superbowl.

Okay that's RE.

What about ANTI.

So are they ANTIbuilding? No, Martz and Linehan already tried that, and it doesn't look like it works.

COUNTER?

Well I supposed COUNTERbuilding is a subtle variation on ANTIbuilding. So, Linehan took nobody in drafts (anti-building) and Martz took mostly nobody, punctuated by many just wrong guys (Incognito). So that would be COUNTERbuilding.

EX?

EXbuilding is when you're done building. You can easily spot this one--because it never happens.

MINI?

MINIbuilding is just addressing one part of the team. So for example, the Rams had Miller at ROT, then Tucker, then Jones, then Turley, then St. Clair, then Tucker's brother (the guard), then Barron, then Brandon Gorin, then Trautwein, then Smith, then Goldberg, then Dahl (the guard), now Richardson. Sorry for such a shortened list--I left a bunch of guys out.

OUT?

OUTbuilding. This is when you hire a firm from India to build it for you. Since Zygmunt left, this approach is out of favor.

OVER?

OVERbuilding is what teams like the Packers and Patriots do. That is, they take the fun out of football by developing replacements long in advance. This of course works on the field, but it leaves fans with nothing to talk about. Fortunately, teams like that never overbuild their defenses, so there's still some room for ordinary fun football conversation.

POST?

POSTbuilding is what happens after building. Given the nature of the NFL, no one knows what this looks like. It's like asking what happened before the big bang.

PRE?

PREbuilding is the condition of a team that doesn't yet know it has to change things. So like in 2000, Martz said, we're just drafting backups, hardly anyone can make this team. Then what happened of course is the defense completely tanked, at least in part because every single starter on the DL had off-season surgery. One hint for future coaches: if every single member of a key unit has off-season surgery, that's normally a red flag.

UN?

UNbuilding is another subtle variation on ANTIbuilding, but applies to free agents. This is also known as the Zygmunt Method. That is, the way to determine the value of a free agent is (1) you pay all skill position players regardless, and (2) if they are not a skill player you look how central they are to the team's success, and the more central they are, the less likely you are to keep them. This approach has not caught on with many other teams.

UNDER?

UNDERbuilding is just the normal condition of all football teams. They can waiver between drastically underbuilt and minimally underbuilt. For a good idea of what a minimally underbuilt team looks like, just look close at every superbowl winner since they started that game.

You win the internets.

For which the prize is
Cuz it's still all perception
Like Can you COUNT Bradford since you aren't in receipt of a trained individual, you are retraining him in a new system?

Like I've said before ,some people want rebuilding and starting over to mean the same thing but, the coaching staff is a HUGE part of the whole as illustrated in San Fran.

Yes you count Bradford. I mean he got retrained anyway with the same head coach and a different coordinator. "Rebuilding" refers to clearing out most of the players you inherited and getting new ones. Retraining them in a new system is a different thing. Otherwise you would have to call replacing Shurmur with Mcd "rebuilding," and of course no one did refer to it as that, for good reason...it's a different thing.

 

[Ram Quixote]

Like I've said before ,some people want rebuilding and starting over to mean the same thing but, the coaching staff is a HUGE part of the whole as illustrated in San Fran.

What happened in SF was certainly not a rebuild. That was a transplant of personality (HC and staff) on the personnel.

The same can be said for every HC change. Some work, some don't. Some work in the short-term, like Chuckie in TB; they won a SB with Dungy's personnel, then slipped back into mediocrity. Whether Harbaugh can sustain his success is still unproven.

 

[Anonymous]

Like I've said before ,some people want rebuilding and starting over to mean the same thing but, the coaching staff is a HUGE part of the whole as illustrated in San Fran.

What happened in SF was certainly not a rebuild. That was a transplant of personality (HC and staff) on the personnel.

The same can be said for every HC change. Some work, some don't. Some work in the short-term, like Chuckie in TB; they won a SB with Dungy's personnel, then slipped back into mediocrity. Whether Harbaugh can sustain his success is still unproven.

Well, first, the preferred way of arguing that is not using phrases like "some people want" (making it about personalities and implying that one's opinion is a truth) but rather, "I disagree with the idea that x, and argue instead for the idea that y."

So like DQ, I argue that a coaching change and a rebuild are distinct things. They can coincide, just like driving and listening to the radio can coincide, but you can have one thing without the other and one certainly doesn't cause the other.

So for example you can have a continuing coach who is forced to rebuild because of circumstances (the cap, age, retirements, injuries). See Fisher in 2006.

Or you can have a coach who inherits a veteran, stocked team. Harbaugh in SF has already been mentioned. He walked into a situation where he had a loaded team, including most of the major parts already in place for one of the best front 7s in the game.

My bet is that if anyone in sports or in the sports media ever referred to what Harbaugh was doing as a "rebuild" they were very few and very far between.

 

[Iron Lion]

Very little chance the 49ers keep the ship above water in my opinion.

Alex Smith showed who he was in the conference championship game... no 3rd down conversions or completions to a WR until the second 2:00 warning. The dude sucks. He had a good year—one good year which ended on that day.

Derek Anderson, Kyle Orton, Matt Cassel, Vince Young, Mark Sanchez all had one or two good years and are now either backups or at least should be. That happens, but regression back to the norm is inevitable. Smith isn't going to be a toad and then just suddenly grow wings.

I don't see the defense repeating what it did last year, either. Even if they're #1 in the league they won't be as good as they were last year. And there's no way the team will be +28 on turnovers again.

Alex Smith going up against Brady will be laughable, possibly as bad as when Tebow went up against Brady. Same thing will happen week 1, SF @ GB. The 49ers will be completely outclassed.

Although I hope I'm wrong of course, at least for that game.

 

[WestsideRamsfan]

Thank you iron lion. That's what I've been saying.