BillyCarpenter1

The 49'ers completed 22 or 25 passes last night. This is totally unacceptable but there are reasons why the secondary has looked poor during the preseason.

Before I address the secondary let's look at the defense in general. One of the biggest areas of concern heading into this season was run defense.To me, the defense has played more to stop the run and hasn't concentrated on putting pressure on the QB.

Looking at all the preseason games the defense has not blitzed much and the linemen have just stayed in their run lanes to shut the run down, which they have done a fine job of.

Now, by having the defense play the run so much, they are allowing the QB time to wait for the receiver to come open. Give any NFL QB enough time and they will look like Joe Montana.

Also you have to factor in the fact that there are seven new starters on defense(most of em' in the secondary) and you would expect the secondary to be the weakest unit on the team.

Let's recap what we have here. We have a defense playing the run, allowing the QB an extraordinary amout of time to sit in the pocket and 7 new starters on defense in their 3rd preseason game together.

While there are no excuses for the poor play of the secondary last night, there are reasons why they have looked bad so far.

I guess it's possible they could continue to allow 22 of 25 passes to be completed but it's more likely they will continue to improve.

I know everyone get's tired of hearing about we're playing a vanilla defense but that's what we have done in all 3 preseaon games.

I do have big concerns about our cornerbacks but I also feel that they have been put in some bad situations during preseason.

Am I making excuses?