The crazy thing about football as opposed to baseball is the urgency of EVERY game. In baseball, you can go on a 6 game losing streak, and still come out of it fine. In baseball, there’s always tomorrow. In football, you drop 2 games in a row, and 3 teams can pass you up on the way to the playoffs. Parity being what it is in the NFL these days, there is NO room for error. If you look at last year’s games, there were maybe 3 plays that kept the team from being 9-7 instead of 6-10. Look at Sunday’s Eagles win. There were missed FGs all over the place, fumbles, and drive-killing penalties. But the game hinged on the pursuit of Justin Smith to strip the ball from Jeremy Maclin, and Dashon Goldson having the wherewithall to simply fall on the football and not try to do too much and be the highlight hero (hello Nate Clements).
So, here we sit, atop the NFC West with a 2 game lead 4 weeks into the season. I sure as hell didn’t think we’ll have a lead like this at this point in the season. I knew the other teams were weak, but I figured it would take the 49ers time to get acclimated to the new systems and schemes they are all learning. I guess we should all be thanking the scheduling Gods, because the Rams, on paper at least, the best team in the west, has a brutal schedule, and looks like they’ll end up 0-7, with Green Bay, Dallas, and NO as their next 3 games. Seattle and AZ certainly aren’t doing very well, and all my thoughts on getting Kevin Kolb (talk about Checkdown Charlie. AZ fans are blasting his signing now) were unfounded and silly.
TB is one of those fair to middling teams that, when on can be scary, but watching that game last night, they spent 3 quarters shooting themselves in the feeet repeatedly. They must have had around 10 holding penalties. Freeney was unstaoppable, but Curtis Painter kept Indy from doing much offensively. But, as the thread says, this is a big test for your 49ers. And one where the head coach has to REALLY stress the importance of staying focussed. They are coming home after their best road trip in probably 15 years. They are getting press (albeit it’s more of the ‘how the fuck did the Iggles give it away?’), but Harbaugh is already getting praise from the talking heads around the media-sphere. The threat is very real that these guys come in with swelled heads, and thoughtsw of prime-time glory. This is where your coach HAS to beat on these guys to remond them that it’s all about hunger. All about not reveling in the recent past. It’s about pushing forward and not believing the hype. Matt Maiocco interviewed Harbaugh after returning from Philly, and it gives me a good feeling regarding just this fact. The gist of the interview is:
Is part of your task this week to sort of gauge the pulse of the team and make sure they don’t get too high after this win?
Harbaugh: “Yeah, that’s one. It comes back to – you’re getting better or you’re getting worse, you never remain the same. We’ll keep that blue-collar mentality.”
His experience as a head coach at Stanford defintely gives him an edge that the previous head coaches didn’t have. Even more so, when you consider that keeping college football players from going to the moon after big wins (say beating USC in LA), is tougher than doing that with professional football players. Still and all, these guys, as a team, are winning games that they had previously lost. The difference is the coaches back then would praise the team for close losses (GB, Minn, Atl, NO, Colts, Titans, ring a bell in the last couple years?), and then come up short down the road becasue they would rest on their laurels and fall flat. I can’t count how many times the Niners had (to steal a phrase from Skeebs) GPS games. Statement games. Ones that would show the team’s mettle. Invariably they’d fall flat, lick their wounds, and have to rebuild themselves from scratch. The problem came from the coaches building up the team needlessly and not putting in the work. Nolan would regularly give the team Monday off if the team won the previous Sunday. While that may sound good from a player standpoint, it doesn’t drive hiome the point that you need to keep working to get better, not take time off. There plenty of time to rest in the offseason.
Here’s the entire interview with Harbaugh. It is an excellent study in motivation techniques, self-deprecation, and the ‘us-vs-them’ mentality that Bill Walsh always drove into his players.
Harbaugh understands what to do to keep these guys moving forward and not looking back. Well, the proof will be in the pudding this weekend, but he seems to have a much better grip on this than his predecessors.
Forty Niners Forever 
Fuck, why do these threads end up so goddamn long? I start typing and I can’t stop.
One last thought on Alex: every QB does some things well (except JaMarcus) and some not so well. Saint Joe was not capable of going Mad Bomber a la Daryl Lamonica.
A bad coach, like Singleneuron, keeps hammering that square peg into the round hole until something breaks.
A good coach sees both the ability and the limitations, and sets a player up to succeed, rather than fail.
Alex finally has a good coach. However far we go this year, he should fall on his knees every night and thank the football Gods that he has been delivered from stupidity, and the bug eyes of Mike Singletary.
The maniacal bug eyes along with that big ol’ cross always made him look more like a vampire hunter than a football coach (he still looks like a football player, though)
Yeah, it has been the bane of Smith’s existence so far here in SF.
Here;s to hoping he stays up in the 90th percentile. 97.7 is nothing to shake a stick at.
Moved this from the last thread.
Team wins, team losses, sure. I get it. There ARE times that shit happens by the QB that tips the scales. Like, say, throwing 2 pick 6′s in a row. Funny thing for Promo was that still shouldn’t have been enough to lose the game for Dallas. They still had a comfy lead after those fuckups. He had to fuck up more later to seal the deal. Football is just such a conglomeration of turning points, opportunities, and chances that ANY one play can determin the outcome of a season. Take SB XXIII. The play before the catch by John Taylor, Montana threw a pass right at a Cincy DB (Crowder?), and he dropped it. RIGHT to him. On the goal line. Game over if he holds on. He makes that catch? History is rewritten. Walsh loses and Sam Wyche wins the big game from his mentor. How does the rest of the career paths for all involved change? It’s nuts to think about.
The thing with Smith, being on the losing end of SO many close games, was the fact that any mistake by him gets magnified to the extreme in the loss. I fall prey to this at times. It’s hard not to when the outcome is a loss. You look back and say, shit, that pick 6 for a TD was the killer. Or the Eagles fans saying that Maclin’s fumble was the killer. Or the missed FGs. Or the Ronnie Brown lateral. Or Vick getting tackled 3 yard short of the 1st down. Or 50 other plays that directly affected the outcome. I’m good and goddamn sure that there are people in Philly bemoaning the fact that Vick somehow lost that game for them. Despite his nearly putting up 500 yard of offfense BY HIMSELF.
Big game this weekend, Niner Nation would be an unhappy tribe if Smith “reverts to form”. This is probably the closest he’s ever come to changing some minds. I don’t think he even needs a particuarly big game – just a win.
Twinfan, I think many of us ‘Faithful fans’ wanted nothing more than for Alex to get a pair. Perhaps that was Nolans’ MO when he threw him under the injury bus and divided the Locker Room? I soured on Alex for not fighting back but, he didn’t give up either. He’s a standup guy and deserves to have a guy like Harbaugh to get him over the hump.
Alex lacked confidence and never seemed to grasp the timing aspect of the game.
I don’t worry about him ‘reverting’ to anything, I hope to see Harbaugh continue to spoon feed him the Offense he expects him to master.
Once Alex can perform with a quick trigger and timing like he did in Qtr 3 in Philly, he will give Aaron a run for the money. Our Defense and Team in general, is very well balanced.
We need the Trigger Man to make it go. Having Crabtree on the same page with Alex would be a monumental improvement also.
A win will do it. Even a loss won’t hurt him right now too much so long as there are no pick sixes or other big negative plays involved.
If we split the next two, that’s 4-2 at the Bye. Way better than it could have been. Beat the Brownies, go 4-1 in the division, and that’s 9-7 without anything more. By any reasonable measure that’s pretty good for Year One of Harbaugh cleaning up Singleneuron’s mess. Almost certainly wins the division too – but then 7-9 probably would win this division.
The problem with expectations is that when they suddenly blossom, the bar jumps up to a higher level. All of a sudden, we all expect to see more.
Frankly, the way TB played at home yesterday was pretty atrocious. They had a shitload of penalties and couldn’t put away an injury-decimated Indy team til late.
For once I’d love to see a laugher. We’ve had enough nail-biters to start the year. Get on top, and keep the pressure on. Freeman and Blount are good, but I don;t see too much of a problem. I didn’t before the Eagle game. The thing about Smith? One percieved knock on him is his game to game consistency. But I’m pretty sure that this is the first time in his career he’s had meaningful coaching. I’m sure he’ll be fine.
90.4, 99.1. 85.6, 112.1…I doubt he’s ever had 4 consecutive games with those kind of ratings. Although going back to last year’s Philly game he’s had just one game under 85.6, San Diego last year. So that’s 10 of 11 games 85 or better. 15 TD 4 INT. He’s been a lot better than the perception. OK, that ends today’s promo..
Yep Smith is finally getting a chance to show us what he’s got. Amen, fall on your knees and thank God for the good fortune of getting HC Harbaugh and his team of coaches this year. Have we ever paid our dues waiting for this??
Tukafu on the IR with a wrist injury. Missed that during the game.
Colin Jones (S) was promoted from the PS, and John Williams (WR from USD) was signed to the PS.
The Gore/Hunter tandem is extremely exciting going forward. Funny- before yesterday all the talk was how other teams were geared to stop the run and let Alex try to beat them in the air- the third quarter Sunday turned it around- and the big run( Gore for 23) to start the wining drive came out of the shotgun with Philly looking pass after they had gone short to Crabtree on first down out of the gun. That was classic WCO. Eagles had no clue what Roman would call the rest of the way.
The Gore/Westbrokk tamdem should have been used last year. The joke was Westbrook couldn’t figure out the 49er offense in 8 weeks. The opponents took one quarter to figure it out.
What annoys the shit out of me is thousands of people (including me) has been advocating this very thing for nigh since they got Smith. Spread formations with 3-4 WRs, and run in the gaps.
Gore got his 1st big 40 yard run in the 1st half. I want to see what that formation was. I don’t remember too many 3 WR sets in the 1st half.
Hunter is just the runner we needed to get. He can run inside or out, catch the ball and is very explosive. Keeping Gore fresh into the 4th was a thing of beauty, let our Ol pound em for 3 quarters and then let Gore have em, a thing of beauty i tell you.
It all goes back to having coaches that recognize what thypes of players they have on their team and how to put them in the position to be successful.
It isn’t that hard, but both Nolan and Singlebraincell tried to make Smith Dan Marino. The only time they opened things up was when they were down by 21. Millions of fans were screaming to open shit up to START a game like this. They did it ONCE. The Jacksonvill game in 2009. They won like 23-3. It waqs a breeze. It was the last time they ran the offense with a lot of 3 WR sets.
Like I said: you can do the pound the square peg into the round hole thing, and continue to fail, while not being here to fool anyone. Or you can, you know, actually do some of that coaching shit.
Not too hard to tell which approach actually works.
I love that Harbaugh dropped his “you getting better or you’re getting worse, you never stay the same” line in that interview. That is still plastered all the way across the west side of their practice field behind the end zone at Stanford. It’s also tacked up on my wall at work. Love that dude……..
I love that Harbaugh dropped his “you’re getting better or you’re getting worse, you never stay the same” line in that interview. That is still plastered all the way across the west side of their practice field behind the end zone at Stanford. It’s also tacked up on my wall at work. Love that dude……..
Smith talked about Harbaugh, one of the more interesting statements was that Jim didn’t give them “crazy”, unrealistic goals.I think he as refering in part to halftime Sunday, but also to the season as a whole. When they had their awful start last year, players didn’t need to hear that they were still going to the postseason.You hear unrealistic shit, you tune it out. 16 one game seasons Harbaugh said .
Sing kept insisting that Frank couldn’t run out of a shotgun formation- I’ll use 2009 because he missed so much of last season. He averaged 4.7 on 48 carries out of the gun, In the Raye-Gun “I” formation he averaged 3.1 on 74 carries.
Yeah, Singletary was either building the guys up as the greatest team or shotgunning them down in the locker room and to the press. Nolan was the same way. It was all mercurial and reactionary. Some guys would get benched for the slightest infractions (Alex) and others (Chilo) would get 5 miles of rope. The roster was littered with ‘his guys.’ It’s like they all saw Gruden acting like a maniac and thought, OK that’s how you do it. Great for small bursts of time, but to go through a season that way eventually stops working. Gruden, whatever one thinks of him as a coach, at least had a plan. He knew how to put together a team.
With Sing, the message was different every week. No consistency. No level headedness. Just a lot of sound and fury and paranoia spewed out to everyone within earshot.
I wonder if Harbaugh spends any time practicing those post-game speeches. THat one Chuck posted, it seemed to just roll right out of him but with perfect timing and balance. There were too many one-liners in there, though. Either way, he obviously can capture the attention of the team and it’s not bullshit, he’s actually got it. That’s why I said it’s so exciting to watch the re-birth of this team. It’s not like 1981, there will never be something like that for us again. But you can see it in the players eyes, they are getting wide eyed and excited that they are part of something. Unsure of what to call it, for now, they’re content to take it week by week, just like their coach………
Coaching college kids must have given him an arsenal to work with. Plus, his dad was a coach, his brother, and he’s been around the game his whole life. Sure, there are others who have grown up in the same kind of environment (Nolan), but can’t do shit with it, but he seems to have actively sought advice from all the people he worked with. From his QB coach days in Oakland, to USD, and Stanford. Up to and including Walsh. You look at a guy like Singletary, and he obviously had his own ideas on how to do things. You also saw that he was very inflexible and stubborn. Look at the quotes attributed to each of them. “We’re not here to fool anybody.” or “You’re getting better or you’re getting worse, you never remain the same.” One is full of bluster and bravado, but in the end signifies nothing compared to one that is applicable to many different things, and is a little deeper than a puddle.
I don’t know. I didn’t think it would take hold this fast, but I’ve always thought this team was worse than the sum of its parts for the past four seasons. Nolan had a decent team in 2007. Certainly good enough to win the west. Smith’s injury was a tough break, but Nolan didn’t do antything to stem the tide of crap that permeated the 8 game losing streak. By then, Nolan had trashed Smith, and let the offense stagnate to a pile of shit under Dilfer. Tollner came is to gain some semblance of a cogent offensive plan, but by then it was too late. Sing? Read the quote. To be effective, you have to run sophisticaed plays that are a little more that Gore up the middle.
In the end, I hate to get my hopes up (even though they now are) because these last few years have been a grind on me. Which is why I reluctantly even thought they could win 8 this year. But it’s not hard to see glaring differences in four short weeks.
Shit, with my wife out of town, I get a lot more posting done.
I should be at the Happy Ending massage parlor. . .
No it’s not exactly like 1981 again but we are getting to witness some kind of a rebirth here that’s true. We can’t know for sure if this is going to lead to a return to the promised land of playoffs and championships but it sure feels like it. We saw it before so it’s easy to imagine something like that happening again. How could we not? Team is coming out of a similar football dark age as the early BW teams were, that’s the same. Harbaugh like Bill Walsh has lots of offensive football/coaching experience, not some clueless defensive coaching rookie repeating same old useless crap. Harbaugh like Bill has a workable plan that we are now seeing evidence of actually succeeding, imagine that! Both have high ‘football IQs’.
What I like that seems to be different is Bill had to deal with a difficult owner (as it turned out) who contributed to his early retirement and Harbaugh’s relationship to Jed York seems much more harmonious. It seems so anyway and hopefully it’s true. Hate to see Jim leave after a measly 10 years. Optimism, what a concept!