Rivera did not make all of our wildest dreams come true.
At first he delivered some steadiness. From there grew hope. But he could never build on success. A top ten defense found itself bottom ten the next year. A disciplined team found itself penalty plagued. A great win against a good team was followed by let down games. Ulitimately, Rivera's history here is best described as one step forward, two steps back.
It's hard not to fault him. I do think he was hamstrung by Snyder and Snyder's budget, but he was the coach and defacto GM. He put together the front office he wanted and the coaching staff he wanted. He let good people get away. He didn't replace them with better people. So much of what he did was colored by laziness. Even finding Jamison Crowder as a punt returner hardly felt like they were turning over every stone to find someone. More importantly, like the line, linebackers, and return game failed not because of injury but because they were never addressed.
We knew punt and kickoff returns would be a weakness going into 2023 because we were bad at it the two years previous. So, what do they do? They neither draft nor sign anyone to upgrade that role. The most exciting prospect was a UDFA prospect. It's like they thought we would be better by magic. I will say they tried to address the o-line. They signed Willie, they signed Gates, they tried Charles and Paul. So, they did try. They were just wrong. In many ways, that's preferable then their negligence of the return game and of our weakness at linebacker.
It's funny. I've heard chatter about how linebackers are less important these days, but when you turn on a 49ers game or if you watched yesteday's games, everyone kept bragging and focusing on how good their linebackers were. And amazingly, the flat wasn't always open. The running backs couldn't always gain the edge. So, I say the narrative that linebacker can be ignored is stupid.
And that's the problem. They ignored what they knew were weaknesses. They ignored what they said were weaknesses. And they weren't good enough schemers to get away with it.
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