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I've been asked a couple times recently how I became a 49er fan. Typically these questions come from 30-somethings too young to have lived -- and others that simply don't know -- the 49ers' 15-year run of NFL dominance. Poor miguided souls. But the question did get me to thinking back to those early days of my sports fan life, so on the eve of the franchise's 6th Super Bowl trip, I thought it might be fun to take a trip back down memory lane.
To start, when I was a freshed-eye 8-year-old football fan, an early-season rising Niners came into New York and <a href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/198009210nyj.htm">beat the Jets</a>, my dad's favourite team. Two months later, the 49ers played and <a href="www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/198011230sfo.htm">beat the NY Football Giants</a>, who just so happened to be my godfather's favourite team. That those two NY wins bookended a long 8-game losing streak is, of course, of no relevance; I was, again, 8 years old and likely too busy acting out scenes from "The Empire Strikes Back" to follow the league's weekly happenings. And though it's equally-unlikely that these two games made me notice the team on my own, what *was* extremely likely was that it made my two most prominent male figures notice them, laying the foundation for what would come soon thereafter. A team that was 2-14 beating the Jets? Losing to a team that had been on an 8-game losing streak? I can only imagine the conversations in NY and between those two.
The following season, those same 49ers <a href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/198111290sfo.htm">beat my godfather's team again</a> in a regular season matchup. Then, for good measure, barely one month later they <a href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/198201030sfo.htm">beat the Giants yet again</a> in the playoffs, this time a 38-24 smoking unlike the earlier defensive struggles. At this point, any Giants fan was disgusted with this team from the Bay Area, and impressionable 9-year-olds were irrevocably turned off by the local team's repeated failures against them. Especially in light of what came next.
With the single most celebrated play of the 1980s, those 49ers <a href="pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/198201100sfo.htm">took down America's team</a>, Joe Montana-to-Dwight Clark's "The Catch" halting the Dallas Cowboys' run at dominance (and beginning their decline to irrelevance, but that's another story). And, of course, when the 49ers proved they were more than mere Cinderellas by <a href="http://www.pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/198201240cin.htm">winning the big game</a> two weeks later, a wide-eyed soon-to-be 10-year-old couldn't help but be swept in fully. That it turned out to be the best sporting "choice" one could have made at the time, well, just blame fate, or clairvoyance.
Two years later, the Jets did actually manage to beat the Niners in the regular season -- not that it much mattered, seeing as how (1) the Jets were going nowhere fast (7-9 that year) and (2) the Niners did end up making it all the way to the conference title game, losing to the eventual-champion John Riggins, Joe Theisman Washington Indigenous Persons team.
The following year, 1984, saw the 49ers win the (otherwise meaningless) revenge game vs. the Washingtonians, as well as beat the NY Giants twice yet again (regular season and playoffs) on their way along a *tremendous* 15-1 march to their 2nd Super Bowl. The last 12 weeks featured 8 blowouts and only 2 game decided by less than 7 points. That team is in the discussion for best team ever. 2nd ranked offense. First ranked defense. Just think about that for a second. The top offense *and* defense in the league? Crazy. 15-1? Insane. And then to top it off by destroying the league's darlings, the blinding flash that was the Dan Marino Miami Dolphins, in the Super Bowl?
Well, that was it for me. The final door had been hung on the foundation that was laid in 1981. My gold 49ers starter jacket was as prominent in my days as was suede Pumas and shell-top Adidas. I had a football game for my Commodore-64 ("4th and Inches" I believe is the name), where you essentially played offensive and defensive play-caller, that only solidified my connection with the team, and helped me know it better than any 12-year old fan back then normally would. Just thinking about the names instantly transports me back to junior high school. Roger Craig and Wendell Tyler running hard. Freddie Solomon and Renaldo Nehemiah catching passes. Dana McLemore returning punts. Ronnie Lott smashing into people everywhere. Dwight Hicks, Eric Wright and Carlton Williamson locking people down (the entire secondary went to the Pro Bowl. Just chew on that). Keena Turner, Riki Ellison...I could go on for days. What a team. I used to play that game endlessly...almost always as my Niners of course.
There was something else about rooting for the Niners that was appealing: the uniqueness of it. There wasn't anyone else I grew up with that claimed a team 3000 miles away; it allowed me to be an individual, to stand out, be different. As the 80s rolled on, the 49ers were always in the thick of things, and I could always put on that starter jacket and be like no one else around me. After losing to the Giants twice and watching a couple of once-and-dones get the crown, 1988 came around. Time for the Niners to claim team of the decade once and for all. An unlikely 10-6 run to the Super Bowl closed my senior year in high school in style; a dominant repeat season allowed me to start my college career with the same unique, dominant team identity.
So there, in a nutshell, is how I became a 49er fan and why it stuck. A team that constantly stuck it to the teams of my mentors. A team that went from fashionable Cinderella to the indomitable beast. A team that, for all it's offensive accolades, was typically *even better* on defense -- which is why I never got swept up in the Saints, Packers and Patriots of the past 2 years. Defense wins championships. Always. A dominant defense backing a merely half-decent offense has a great shot to win a title. A flashy offense carrying an average-or-worse defense on its back? Not so much.
A couple more years that I might as well cover on the 49er glory years. After putting Super Bowl parties to sleep by <a href="pro-football-reference.com/boxscores/199001280den.htm">dancing all over John Elway's Ponies</a>, we lost an incredibly tight NFC title game to the Giants, a team that rode that blueprint all the way to a ring.
The following year, 1991, will however always remain a what-if. After sleep-and-injury walking thru the first 10 games, the Niners became a beast. They won the next 6 games in increasingly-dominant fashion by the week, culminating in a 52-14 mauling of the Bears on the final weekend. They were rolling. They were ready, the proverbial hot team no one wants to play. Alas, their early swoon doomed them and they didn't qualify for the playoffs. You can't tell me other teams didn't breathe at least a small sigh upon seeing them miss the postseason.
Anyways, here's to those great 1980s 49er teams that are an indelible part of my youth. And here's hoping that the 2012-2013 San Francisco 49ers are also that proverbial team getting hot at the right time. And here's hoping that they can add to their other unique mark: an undefeated multiple-Super Bowl record. Quest for Six! Who's got it better than us!!
We here in the Martian sports landscape believe in respect for all peoples of Earth, so I'd like to note a quick thought on the mascot of the NFL franchise that occupies the Washington, DC area. The nickname is dumb. It's offensive. Period. This is not up for debate. No one would ever accept the Detroit Darkies or the Houston Honkies or the New York Kikes. That we have allowed our sensibilities to become dead to the offensiveness of the Washington mascot does nothing to relieve or lessen its...offensiveness. On that note, I will make it my personal rule to never use the name when referring to the franchise, or anything else for that matter -- unless my intent is to be offensive, of course. Greg Easterbrook, an ESPN writer known as "The Sports Guy", has taken such a stance in his writings, referring to them (in longform) as the Potomac River Basin Area Indigenous Persons. Naturally he abbreviates most of the time. (The Potomac Persons, while not descriptive, does have a ring to it doesn't it?) I'll follow his lead and do the same, referring to them in word only by the city they represent, and in type in various ways, none of which will include that childishly-derogatory name. Group-think hasn't infected us all.
As I'm reading article on the upcoming NFL divisional weekend matchups, which looks as trends while trying the handicap the games.
* John Clayton notes that the Packers "only run the ball 40% of the time." Well, that's only true because they ran it 20-30% of the time early in the season, but have been running it at damn-near 50% for the majority of the year. Why quote an overall number when for 9, 10 games it doesn't hold? Right, because you're just randomly looking a stats.
* A number of people have noted that Aaron Rodgers is a "master" at winning road games, offering his 3-1 record as evidence. However, as someone on an ESPN board noted, those 3 wins all happened in one postseason run. While taking absolutely nothing away from the impressive nature of that run, let's not quote this as some career-long type of trend. We have had a number of wildcard-weekend Super Bowl runs over the past decade, meaning each one of those QBs have a minimum of at least 2 road wins under their belt.
...there were a few other silly stats thrown about throughout the playoffs, but I got distracted and never quite finished this blog entry...but, for the two that were included, I'll just post an incomplete entry for once...
* Well, well, we meet again. This Saturday, the 49ers will welcome into Candlestick Arena the one team that truly harrassed the franchise around the turn of the millenium. 4 of 5 playoff trips ended in or by Green Bay, mitigated only by the last-second Catch-II, Terrell Owens' best 49er moment. Let's get it on!
* I read that the 49ers have been game-planning and practicing on the assumption they will be hosting the Packers since last Monday. Intriguing at first, the more I thought of it, the better the idea sounded. Had the Vikes won, the 9ers would have to wait for the winner of the last game of wildcard weekend (Seahawks @ Washington). Were that to happen, you're none the worse for prepare. Now, they have a truly bye-week-like 2 weeks of preparation for the Pack. Common sense and brilliant all at once.
* Read an article by Kevin Seifert that said, in part, the Packers have evolved from "the pass-happy scheme" of the week 1 game. I was a bit skeptical, seeing as how he used *touches* by Packer running backs (passes + rushes) as evidence that they leaned heavily on their running backs in the Vikings wildcard-game win (27 of the team's 54 touches). But in fact, if you compare pass attempts to rushes as the year wore on, they did demonstrate an evolving attempt to balance the offense. Now, the effectiveness of the running game is debatable; I saw quite a few games off less than 3 yards/carry throughout, including the wildcard win (2.5 y/c, 76 total yards). It did look a bit weird to see talk of a running game with absolutely no mention of number of carries or yards gained.
It's worth noting that they reverted back to old habits in week 17 -- 40 passes against 16 rushes, and that've yet to have a single 100-yard rusher all year (though they've had a handful of 100-yard ground games as a team).
* I saw a stat that the 49ers are 1-3-1 in games where they allow 100 or more yards rushing. The flip side of that of course is their 10-1 record in games where they hold the opponent to under 100 on the ground. My curiosity drove me to seek out those specific high-yield ground games. The 100-yard gainers were:
Both Seattle games, Lynch (103 and 111 yards): 1-1 record.
The Rams tie (obviously), Jackson.
Giants loss, Bradshaw 116 yards.
Minnesota loss, AP with 86, 146 team yards.
I thought it curious that the Rams accounted for the lone loss in the 11 non-100 yard rusher games. I was surprised to see that the 49ers held Jackson to 48 yards in a losing effort -- until I remember how they completely squandered that game with repeated missed FGs and an awful deep-in-your-own-territory turnover. The Rams were truly stifled for the entire game, not scoring a single offensive TD, gifted an arguable safety and multiple missed FGs, and needing a 53-yarder at the final gun just to force OT.
I say all that to say this: when the 49ers hold down an opponent's rushing game, they put themselves in a very good position to win.
No doubt the coaching staff in Candlestick has long known this, and continuing their preparations accordingly.
* Sending out Keep-Getting-Better vibes to Justin Smith and his healing tricep. He's a big part of that defense.
Another intra-divisional game for the 49ers, another egg laid all over. What is this brain lock the team has against peforming well for too many weeks in a row? After taking huge steps forward in beating down the Bears and dominating the Saints, here we go stepping backwards again against the Rams. And this time, St. Louis was without Amendola to run circles around the 49er secondary. Not a good look.
Since we've hit December, I will present my Christmas wish list for the 49ers:
* Delanie Walker: Good hands tutoring sessions. What are these stone metacarpals protruding from Walker's wrists? How can someone be so prone to dropsy at all the wrong moments? Can Michael Crabtree (great hands) and Vernon Davis (reliable hands) work with this guy?
* David Akers: a time machine. For this 2012 version of Akers to occupy the same physical space as the 2011 Akers is downright insulting. There've been whispers of a hip ailment of some sort. There must be. Anything else outside of injury doesn't add up. We might have been 4-12 last year (as opposed to 13-3) with this version of Akers. As I told one friend, FGs have ceased to be a strategic option. They are, for the time being, an absolute last resort.
* Colin Kaepernick: A Swiss timepiece. It's great that the kid is so willing, and seemingly adept at, reading defenses at the line and changing plays accordingly...but he can he do it with a little more than 5 seconds left on the play clock? We are guaranteed at least 2-3 reading-defense timeouts and 1-2 delay-of-game penalties per game. At least get out of the huddle faster to give him a precious few more seconds to do his thing.
* The whole team: Discipline. False starts and neutral-zone infractions. Unsportsmanlike-penalty-earning extra-cirricular kicks and head-slaps. Illegal motions. Can we stop with the dumb play-killing penalties already?
* Aldon Smith: a choreographer. When you're about to set a new record for sacks, you need your very own dance to celebrate the record-breaking and all future sacks. Actually, I'm joking. Seriously. Please don't invite any excessive-celebration yellow flags. A humongous yellow flag is likely going to torture me in my dreams tonight. But let's get Smith a few more sacks to solidify that most career sacks for a sophomore player record.
* Fans: Muzzels and non-functional keyboards. I can't take any more of the Smith/Kaepernick comments and arguments.
- J
And another NFL season is underway, which for me brings melancholy feelings in that it indicates the unofficial end of summer and the start of the steady march towards the cold days winter. These half-full half-empty feelings are eclipsed only by those experienced at the start of the NBA season, but I digress...
Not much to report, other than the San Francisco 49ers surprising everyone except themselves and their supporters (present company included) by going into the house that cheese built and "upsetting" the Packers. I certainly found it strange that all these pundits were picking Green Bay to win without much trepidation: you have arguably the #1 defense in the league going against arguably it's top offense -- a wash -- but on the other side of the ball, you have a swiss-cheese defense going against a middle-of-the-pack offense with improved weaponry. I'm not saying this automatically spells a 49er victory, but it should certainly be enough to offset the home-field advantage and make the game's outcome a difficult pick. If nothing else, didn't anyone see what the Giants did -- when their defense was performing on all cylinders -- in Green Bay the last time a meaningful game was played there?
This was the one game I watched fully, and if the officiating was any indication, Lord help us in 2012. As a fan, your gut tells you to say your team got an unfair share of calls against it; as a person who keeps his emotions in check, I know there were just far too many questionable calls on both sides of the ball. So while the non-call on the block in the back during Green Bay's TD punt return was easily the biggest game-changing referree error of the game, that was only due to the immediacy with which it affected the scoreboard. The game's outcome turned out the way it should have, but there is easily a missed interefence call that disrupted a drive or two for both teams.
In any case, kudos to the Niners for hitting the ground running in a big game on the road. Big things lie ahead if they just keep playing their game, improving every week, and believing in 'team team team'.
* Sports Illustrated's Peter King gets a big huge shout-out for coining a term that really should be standard issue around the NFL:
"Did you see the silly interception Mark Sanchez threw on the first possession of the Jets' season? Rolling out on second down at his 47, Sanchez neared the sideline when, for reasons known only to him, he tried way too hard to make something happen, flipping the ball *in Favrian style* to tight end Jeff Cumberland. But safety Bryan Scott picked it off"
Priceless! Favrian! Has there ever been a more perfect marriage of player and tendency than described here? Every ill-advised, overly-forced pass should henceforth be labeled "Favrian". Hell, I'm submitting this to Webster's. There's simply no quarterback in NFL history with a greater tendency to get himself in trouble trying too hard to force an issue than Brett Favre. I may start using this term in analogies outside of football, it's so perfect. Take a bow Mr. King. Take a bow.
Ah yes, the ongoing Dwight Howard saga. Even way off in Mars, the story has grown rather wearisome. So, I will dispense with the usual recap and get down to usual uniquely-skewed Martian viewpoint.
What if just about every one of you critical of Dwight for repeatedly changing his mind have it completely wrong? Let's see, run both of these scenarios through your thinking cap and see which one makes the most sense:
Scenario 1: Dwight Howard, the affable lovable smiling character we've known, is torn between feelings of loyalty for the NBA city that's cheered him from day one, and a desire to start anew on a new team. He doesn't want to leave Orlando high and dry (like a certain other franchise center did over a decade prior), so he requests a trade, allowing the team to get value upon his departure. The trade deadline comes, but the team, unhappy with the offers that've come their way, doesn't pull the trigger on any deals. So, again, rather than leave the team for nothing, Dwight signs an extension, giving the team one more trade cycle -- the summer of 2012 -- to make a deal for him.
Scenario 2: Dwight, the uber-selfish Orlando hater we've all come to know, can't wait to leave the team and city, so he demands a trade. The trade deadline comes and goes, but the team is either unable or unwilling to find a deal for him. Dwight, by some random act of coincidental timing, suddenly rediscovers his love for all things central Florida, and decides to stick it out for another year, and signs an extension. Then, two months later, he again morphs back into Bizzaro-Superman, decides that he's fed up with everything from Mickey Mouse to the inability to pay state taxes, reverses course yet again and demands a trade.
Hmm.
Everyone is so incredulous that someone could (supposedly) change their mind repeatedly in such a short period of time. Well humans, is it not possible, that perhaps, just perhaps, it sounds utterly ridiculous because...it never happened? Is it not at all possible that Dwight's biggest flaw is simply trying to please everyone? For being too self*less*? That for example the alleged 'blackmail' comment was in reference to a reneged promise to trade him as quickly as possible for a reasonable offer to (one of) his choice destinations?
Just something to chew on, if you ever get tired of masticating on his name that is.
- Disclaimer: nothing of the above is a hard-set opinion on past events. Just something to make us all think: does what I believe even make a bit of sense?
