Black Hole Sun

For the second season in a row, the 49ers season came to a crashing halt when a fade pass to the corner of the end zone that was intended for Michael Crabtree fell someplace other than into the hands of Michael Crabtree. Last season, that pass fell incomplete on a 4th down play in the Super Bowl. This time, the pass was tipped by Richard Sherman into the hands of Malcolm Smith, cutting off a last-minute 49ers attempt to win the game. In a game that can only be described as piercingly intense, the 49ers were once again at the precipice of victory only to be turned away, done in by three 4th Quarter turnovers, falling to the Seahawks 23-17 in the NFC Championship Game.

This game had so many vicissitudes, so many different angles and plays that seemed key to the outcome. Losing the Super Bowl last season hurt, and certainly this game seemed awfully reminiscent of that, but for so many reason, this game just feels worse.

Perhaps it's the way it started out, which for the 49ers was great. Aldon Smith strip-sacked Russell Wilson on the first play of the game, immediately setting the 49ers up at the Seattle 15-yard line. Even though the drive went nowhere, Phil Dawson's Field Goal gave the 49ers an immediate lead and served notice that this wouldn't be the same Seattle romp as prior 49er trips to Seattle had been. Early in the 2nd Quarter, Colin Kaepernick seemed to be taking control of the game. Though he hadn't thrown much, if at all, to his receivers, and though Frank Gore was unable to establish anything rushing, Kaepernick

shrugged it all off and put the team on his back, providing most of the team's yardage with his legs, including a 58-yard dash that dazzled in terms of both athleticism and elusiveness. Kap's run set up an Anthony Dixon Touchdown that gave the 49ers a 10-0 lead. With the defense thoroughly confusing Russell Wilson and holding Marshawn Lynch in check, things couldn't have been better. But for whatever reason, you could sense it wouldn't last.

Perhaps it was the way the Seahawks stormed back into the game, first by Wilson hitting Doug Baldwin for a 51-yard prayer on a bomb that seemed to epitomize Wilson's own abilities. A busted play, Wilson scrambled around and kept things going long enough for Baldwin to sneak behind Eric Reid and Donte Whitner for a catch that set up a Field Goal. After the 49ers managed nothing in their first 3rd Quarter possession, the Seahawks responded with a healthy dose of Marshawn Lynch, who pounded and pounded and eventually broke through on a 40-yard run that tied the game.

Now stuck in the dogfight of dogfights, Kaepernick appeared to regain control of things when he hit Anquan Boldin for a Touchdown that put the 49ers back ahead. A thing of beauty, this was. We all know, by this point, that Kaepernick has the ability to run around, but rarely have we seen him run around to keep a pass play alive. But that's what he did, and his one-legged jump-throw was an absolute laser beam that just barely snuck over the reaching arms of Earl Thomas and into Boldin's sure hands. This was the kind of play that probably scared the shit out of everyone in Seattle, because clearly, the 49ers weren't folding this time. After a catch like that, I had to think to myself that the 49ers were going to find a way to do it, beat the Seahawks and go on to the Super Bowl.

Sadly, I was wrong. In a 4th Quarter sequence that featured an endless string of nightmares, the 49ers saw their lead evaporate on a counter-miracle from Wilson, their best Defensive player go down with a truly horrible-looking injury, and their season come crashing down amid a flurry of trash talk and ill will.

The Seahawks were rewarded for their gutsiness in going for the kill on a 4th down play, as Jermaine Kearse scored on a 35-yard Touchdown pass, and eventually the Seattle defense wore down Kaepernick enough to force him into some mistakes. Cliff Avril's strip-sack was recovered by Seattle and set the stage for a sloppy sequence that saw Navorro Bowman force a fumble near the goal line, recover said fumble, and then get his knee shredded in the ensuing pileup. This, for me, was truly the point when I felt the game slipping away. Though replays showed that Bowman had clearly recovered a fumble, after getting injured and piled on, he lost the ball, because, when you get injured like that, you usually aren't thinking about holding onto a football. Patrick Willis said as much after the game, because when his close friend was on the ground screaming in pain, the focus isn't so much on the ball, but his teammate. Just to make matters worse, referees awarded Seattle the ball. Somehow, after Bowman was carted off and showered with food by the classy Seattle fans, the 49ers defense kept it together, stopped the Seahawks on 4th down and got the ball back.

But, before that drive could get going, Kaepernick was intercepted by Kam Chancellor on a badly underthrown pass for Anquan Boldin. A little air under it and Boldin certainly would have caught it. By this point, the air was really starting to come out of the 49ers. To their credit, though, the Defense wouldn't let the game get away, holding Seattle to a Field Goal to make it a 6 point game with around 3 minutes to play, setting the stage for one final shot for the 49ers to win the game. This, I suppose, was all you could ask for in a game that had lived up to its billing as an all-out slugfest. And damned if Kaepernick didn't shake off the interception and the fumble and lead that drive, hitting Gore on a 4th down pass and Crabtree and Vernon Davis for gains that moved the ball down to the Seahawks 18-uard line. We'd been through this last year. It seemed almost certain that this time, things would turn out differently, as Kaepernick reared back and lofted one more pass towards Michael Crabtree in the right corner of the End Zone...

The 49ers and Seahawks, I suppose, can be best equated to the Mets and the Phillies, two teams that don't like each other and two fan bases that clash continually. A game like this could probably be best described as if the Phillies had beaten the Mets in the 2008 NLCS, had such a thing come to pass. Certainly, Richard Sherman (playing the part of Jimmy Rollins) ended up stealing the show, thanks to his tip of Kaepernick's final pass and his postgame rant, which was both classless and self-aggrandizing...but ultimately doesn't change the outcome of the game. Most people, myself included, didn't like it, and it certainly didn't win him any fans, but the over-the-top criticism and media attention he's received from it is probably just what he intended. So be it. He talked the talk, he walked the walk, now his team's going to the Super Bowl. So he got everything he wanted. Good for him. Hopefully his coach doesn't forget the Adderall when they leave for New Jersey.

For the 49ers, this is now three seasons in a row where they've been right at the precipice. And each time, they've managed to come up just a bit short in spite of the fact that they were probably the better team on the field each time. On the one hand, well, they're still a really well-built, well-coached team that's set up for an extended run of success. But on the other hand, this is now three years in a row that they've made it as far as the NFC Championship Game and didn't win the Super Bowl. NFL History is dotted with teams that have had extended runs into the Playoffs but never came away with the ultimate prize. The fear is that the 49ers of this generation might start to earn themselves that kind of a label.

The other thing that's concerning is that while Colin Kaepernick certainly improved greatly by leaps and bounds, he's still very much a work-in-progress. His performance in last night's game, much like his performance in last year's Super Bowl, was borderline brilliant, but dotted with moments of inconsistency and mistakes. In order for the 49ers to have won in Seattle, they had to play mistake-free, and they didn't. And it's magnified because those mistakes all came

very late in the game, after the 49ers had led most of the way and one more scoring drive might have made the difference. It shouldn't, however, take away from his fine finish to the regular season, and the pair of outstanding performances he had in Green Bay and Carolina. With 3 Postseason road victories, he's proven that he has the ability to be successful in a hostile environment, and he damn near did it again in the most hostile of places. But, oh, those crucial mistakes did him in again.

Kaepernick was for the most part inconsolable after the game, putting the blame on himself. His teammates, Patrick Willis in particular, would have none of it. It speaks loudly to the togetherness of this team, the core of which has managed to stay mostly intact. This season was, perhaps, the most difficult of the last three, given the peaks and valleys the team seemed to encounter over the course of the year. But they managed to make it through to late January once again. But one can never tell just how long this success can be maintained. The Atlanta Falcons can be used as a cautionary tale of this, dropping from 13 wins to 4 in a blink. Certainly, the 49ers don't seem to be a likely candidate for a major dropoff, but there will inevitably be turnover on this team. Key players like Jonathan Goodwin, Anthony Dixon and Donte Whitner are all Free Agents, as is Anquan Boldin, who was really a godsend for the 49ers this season. That's to say nothing of the impending contracts that are likely due to Kaepernick and Crabtree. Frank Gore's contract is up after the 2014 season as well, and who knows what next season will hold for the 49ers elder statesman, who unfortunately really wore down late in the season and may be nearing the dreaded Running Back Wall. Fortunately, the 49ers do have depth in Kendall Hunter, LaMichael James and Marcus Lattimore, but none have proven much to this point in their careers (Lattimore of course being injured all season) and so who knows if they can be trusted replacements for The Inconvenient Truth. Defensively, much of the front will return, led of course by Patrick Willis, Justin Smith and Aldon Smith. Poor Navorro Bowman, however, now has an offseason of surgery and rehab after last night's ACL injury (in another testament to Willis' leadership, he stated that he "would be there every step of the way" in Bowman's recovery).

So, another year has come to a close in disappointing fashion for the 49ers, and this one was probably the most frustrating of all. It's easy to think about the good moments in any given season and what a crazy ride it was, but it's terribly frustrating to think about what might have been. Nonetheless, it is a sadness tinged with pride when you consider just what it means to get this far three seasons in a row. I mentioned last year that each of these runs to this high level of the Playoffs is special and precious and cannot be taken for granted. I talked at the beginning of the season about the tough road of the Alpha Dog, and seizing the opportunity if they were able to make it all the way back. They almost did. Unfortunately, all it's brought them is another frustrating ending and more questions as they move into another offseason.

Maybe next year they'll get the ending right.

Stars Shine Brightest

It seemed fitting that the final game at venerable Candlestick Park would take place on the stage of Monday Night Football. Candlestick Park hosted more Monday Night Football games than any other, and it almost always featured some kind of memorable performance from one of the hosts. During the era of 49ers dominance in the 1980s and into the 1990s, it seemed like their best players always raised their game a little higher under the National spotlight. Since 1983, the 49ers hosted 29 Monday Night Football games (and a record 36 overall) and won an astonishing 22 of those games, and it usually included Jerry Rice stealing the show, or Joe Montana rising to the occasion, or Ronnie Lott and Charles Haley spearheading a defensive masterpiece, or Steve Young picking apart a defense. Recently, Frank Gore has shown a flair for this spotlight and Colin Kaepernick had his own coming out party last year on a Monday Night at Candlestick. Monday night, Candlestick Park went out with one final blast, as NaVorro Bowman saved the 49ers from certain disaster by intercepting a Matt Ryan pass with 1:10 to play and dashing 89 yards for a Touchdown to clinch not just a 34-24 victory, but also put the 49ers back in the playoffs.

Ostensibly, any sort of victory would have been satisfactory for the 49ers and their fans, but this game certainly ended up a bit hairier than they would have liked. Though this was certainly circled as a marquee matchup when the schedule was released, since the 49ers met, and beat, the Falcons last January in the NFC Championship game, the season took these teams in vastly different directions. Though the 49ers have, to this point, continued the success they've had under Jim Harbaugh, the Falcons have struggled, suffered through injuries and basically flopped (in spite of being mostly the same team that was a whisker of the Super Bowl last season), coming into the game a miserable 4-10 and looking only to spoil the 49ers party.

Early on, the Falcons certainly appeared ready to do some spoiling. Though the 49ers offense marched down the field on their first drive, with Colin Kaepernick hitting Anquan Boldin on a pair of passes (which put Boldin over 1,000 yards for the season in the process, a testament to how valuable he's been to the 49ers), the drive stalled when Kaepernick took a bit of a panic sack and the 49ers, as has been their wont, settled for a Phil Dawson Field Goal. Though the drive appeared to set a tone, it was really a false alarm, because that Field Goal ended up being the only consequential offense the 49ers would generate in the 1st half of the game. Atlanta Defensive Coordinator Mike Nolan, former head coach of the 49ers, dialed up some exotic blitzes and schemes designed to make Kaepernick uncomfortable, and for the most part it succeeded. He was throwing too early, or taking a sack, and generally the offense just stagnated.

In spite of the defense putting up their general solid effort, they still managed to let Atlanta sustain one drive when Ryan hit Drew Davis for a 59-yard gain on a 3rd down play early in the 2nd Quarter. This was simply a blown play. Davis sort of got lost in traffic in the middle of the field, but Ryan was able to hit him over the middle in front of Carlos Rogers, and Davis basically outran everyone most of the way down the field. This set up a Steven Jackson Touchdown (in spite of being on a different team, Jackson still seems to do it to the 49ers), giving Atlanta a 7-3 lead. The 49ers couldn't mount a response, and eventually Robert McClain broke a long punt return that set up a Falcons Field Goal as time expired in the half. The Falcons led 10-3 and this game was shaping up disastrously.

But the 49ers righted themselves in the second half. Aided by an egregious offsides penalty on Atlanta that helped extend the drive, the 49ers zipped down the field to start the 3rd Quarter, the drive capped off by a Boldin Touchdown and aided by a pair of clutch catches by Michael Crabtree, one of which went for 45 yards on a 3rd down play, and the second for 19 yards to set up Boldin's score. One drive later, the 49ers regained the lead on Dawson's second Field Goal, and one drive after that, Kaepernick scored himself on a 4-yard Quarterback Draw. All the while, the Falcons could do nothing, and so the game seemed to be fairly stable with the 49ers ahead 20-10 early in the 4th Quarter.

But the action was just beginning. The Falcons embarked on a painstakingly slow drive that appeared to be headed nowhere, until out of nowhere Ryan reared back and hit Roddy White on a long bomb for a 39-yard Touchdown that cut the lead to 3 with 8 and a half minutes to play. The 49ers, on their ensuing possession, set out to eat up some clock behind Frank Gore and Kendall Hunter. The problem was, the Falcons defense proved themselves pretty much incapable of stopping the run, so instead of chewing up yards and killing the clock, Gore and Hunter pretty much ran wild, including a 45-yard run from Hunter that set up Gore to score on a 2-yard Touchdown, having used up only 3 minutes worth of time. Nonetheless, with 5 minutes to go and the 49ers ahead 27-17, it appeared unlikely that the Falcons could mount the necessary comeback and Frank Gore would, appropriately, go down as the man to score the last Touchdown at Candlestick Park.

That, however, was nowhere close to the reality. The Falcons, perhaps sensing the moment and an opportunity to prove they're better than their record might indicate, refused to fade into oblivion and mounted a spirited, hurry-up drive, with Ryan moving the Falcons down the field at will and eventually getting them within 3 when he hit Tony Gonzalez for a Touchdown with just over 2 minutes remaining. So, all the 49ers had to do was recover the onside kick, right? Sounds simple enough, but sometimes funny things happen. And a funny thing did happen when the kick sort of knuckled past NaVorro Bowman and bounced into no-man's land, where Jason Snelling recovered for the Falcons, putting them well within Field Goal range with 2 minutes to go and 3 Time Outs.

Now, this wasn't what anyone expected. All of a sudden, not only were the 49ers looking at potentially an Overtime game, but the Falcons certainly had enough time and weapons to score a Touchdown and win the game. This would have been a real kick in the ass to everyone expecting the 49ers to shut down the Falcons and close Candlestick Park in a blaze of glory. It was starting to look, to me, like the unmitigated disaster that was the Final Game at Shea Stadium. Ryan started the drive strong, hitting consecutive passes to move the Falcons down to the 49ers 10 yard line on a 2nd down and 1 play. But just when disaster seemed imminent, that old Candlestick Park Monday Night spirit showed itself one final time.

The 49ers blitzed Ryan on the next play, in an attempt to force him to throw a pass quicker than he would have liked, or, perhaps, sack him altogether. They didn't sack him, but his pass to Harry Douglas was quick and short, enough that Tramaine Brock was able to break up the pass and bat the ball away. This normally results in an incomplete pass, but for NaVorro Bowman flying in from the fray to pick the ball out of the air and dash in the other direction with nothing in front of him but open field and a convoy of 49ers behind him, ready to lead him into the end zone and leap on him when he got there. Bowman had blitzed on the play, but had ended up getting blocked out and lost in traffic. Unable to get to Ryan, he instead went after the ball, which was fortuitous since the ball ended up getting knocked practically right into his arms. Certainly, it was the right place at the right time for Bowman, but it's fitting that he would be the one to make the game-clinching play to close out Candlestick Park. He's been making big plays all season long. He may get overlooked next to Patrick Willis (and let's not overlook Willis in this game—he played like a man possessed all night, ending up with an absurd 18 tackles and generally disrupting everything all game), but he's become a major star in his own right, and making a play like this one further enhances his reputation as one of the NFL's best Linebackers.

This was the kind of game that the Final Game at Shea Stadium should have been. A great, Championship-quality effort that was punctuated with one of those magnificent plays that will live on in team lore forever. And the end result was that it put the team in the Playoffs. So the 49ers can rest a bit easier next Sunday when they go to play in Arizona against a Cardinals team that needs a win and some help to make the Playoffs. But a win would be in their best interest, not simply just to finish on a strong note, but, though it's a longshot, should the Rams beat the Seahawks in Seattle (a tall order indeed, but one that the Cardinals accomplished on Sunday) and the 49ers win, the 49ers would end up winning the Division and Candlestick Park would live on for one more game. To say nothing of how hilarious it would be if the 49ers ended up assing the Seahawks out at the final leg after the Seahawks have been considered an overwhelming favorite all season long. But that's not something that needs to be worried about until Sunday.

Take It Away!

I guess many around the NFL figured this glitzy, glamorous Sunday Night matchup between the 49ers and Houston Texans was perhaps a Super Bowl preview, since both of these teams figured to be right around the top of their respective divisions. So far, this season hadn't brought overwhelming success to either team; both stood at 2-2 after two solid victories and two perplexing defeats. The Texans were actually sort of reeling, after getting socked in the mouth at home by the wonderful Seahawks, while the 49ers sort of righted their ship 10 days ago in St. Louis. But if the Texans have any sort of championship aspirations, that certainly wasn't on display last night as the 49ers whipped them into submission in a 34-3 rout.

This wasn't exactly a pretty game by the 49ers standards. They struggled on offense for a majority of the game, only sort of establishing a running game with Frank Gore, who finished with 81 yards rushing on the night, and Colin Kaepernick was barely on track, finishing with 6 completions in 15 attempts for only 113 yards. The game was won by the Defense. For the second straight week, NaVorro Bowman stepped up in the absence of Patrick Willis and played out of his mind, and the rest of the unit rallied around him, intercepting 3 passes from the hapless Matt Schaub—one of which was run back for a score—and forcing a 4th turnover on a fumble, creating several short fields for the offense and basically allowing Kaepernick and Company to do the minimum amount necessary to win.

The tone was set 3 plays into the game. Schaub, who's been on a nightmarish streak of throwing interceptions and having them run back for Touchdowns, was victimized on his first pass of the game. His 3rd down out route pass was intended for Andre Johnson, but Tramaine Brock jumped the route, intercepted the pass and walked into the End Zone. From there, the 49ers never looked back as things just spiraled out of control for the Texans. Houston was able to move the ball smartly on their ensuing drive, converting a pair of 3rd downs, but when the drive stalled, their kicker Rich Dullwasp pulled the Field Goal attempt wide left. This was pretty much the story of the Texans night. Either their drives were cut off by turnovers, or their sustained drives ultimately ended short of where they needed to be.

Following the missed Field Goal, the 49ers had one of what was really only two long drives they were able to put together on the night. Behind Gore and Kaepernick spreading the ball around to Vernon Davis and Anquan Boldin, San Francisco moved efficiently down the field, eventually scoring on a short run by Gore to extend their lead to 14-0. After that, things mostly stalled out for Kaepernick. It gets lost in the grand scheme of things, particularly since the 49ers were on cruise control even in the 2nd quarter, but he's really been a shell of the player we saw last year and in Week 1 this season. The quality of his passes was generally erratic; though he looked good when he was completing passes, he only managed 6 of them, and his incompletions were overthrown or forced, rather than dropped. That being said, because the defense was on such a roll, Kaepernick simply wasn't forced to make any kind of a big play, and the case was pretty similar last week. Still, even when the 49ers raced ahead by miles, you still want to see Kaepernick put forth a little better performance. His best pass of the day was probably his last, after going the entire 2nd and 3rd quarters without a completion, Kaepernick opened the 4th Quarter completing a short pass to Bruce Miller and followed that with a beautiful rainbow to Vernon Davis, who, despite still recovering from a hamstring injury, managed to outrun Ed Reed to the End Zone for a game-icing 64-yard Touchdown.  So, at least he left some kind of a positive taste on what was generally a blah night for him.

If I hadn't mentioned it already, the rest of the game belonged to the Defense. Brock got his 2nd interception on a similar play to his first, jumping in front of a pass intended for Johnson, batting it in the air to himself and running it back deep into Houston territory to set up an Anthony Dixon TD that made it 21-0. Schaub's 3rd interception was equally horrible; after a good-looking drive had gotten the Texans inside the 49ers 30 yard line and Al Michaels talking about the Texans' ability to come back, Schaub tossed a short pass without bothering to account for the presence of lightly-used backup Defensive Tackle Tony Jerod-Eddie, who lived the lineman's dream by dropping back into coverage as a decoy and surprisingly ending up with a football in his hands. This set up Kaepernick's TD to Davis. The 4th turnover was a Fumble late in the 4th Quarter, when, just to rub salt in the wound, Eric Reid held up Ben Tate at the end of the run just long enough for Donte Whitner to come in, pop Tate and strip the ball that was ultimately recovered by Tarell Brock to set up the final 49ers Field Goal.

After a pair of really bad-looking losses, the 49ers clearly appear to have righted their ship. But I don't think it's quite as much "righting the ship" as much as they're not making mistakes and varying their offense more. The Defense, which was just worn down in the two losses, hasn't really been the problem. Kaepernick, after a pair of truly terrible games, hasn't been outstanding in the two wins, he's only done the minimum necessary. Frank Gore has really stepped up, which has been a big boost. But the key is that the 49ers, who had ended up -4 in Turnovers after week 3, are now even. The Defense, which has been such a huge factor in the team's success over the past two seasons, has been forcing turnovers again and generally been stifling, keeping their opponents off the scoreboard and giving the Offense short fields to work with. Houston outgained the 49ers last night 313 yards to 284 and won the time of possession battle, and yet the 49ers ran away with a 31-point victory. That's what forcing turnovers can do. That's what has made the 49ers so successful.

So, after a difficult first 5 weeks that saw the 49ers go 3-2, they now enter what on paper is an easy stretch on the schedule, with games coming up at home against Arizona, and then on the road in Tennessee and in London against the woeful Jacksonville Jaguars. Of course, they still have to go out and play hard and win, but after rolling over the Texans last night, there's a little swagger back in the 49ers step. Now they just have to keep the momentum going.