Putting A 20-10 Win Into Perspective

I'm #2! I'm #3! I'm #2 again!

It wasn't pretty, but it was a win. Following yesterday's 20-10 walk-through with the Browns, the 49ers now find themselves with the second-best record in the league and a mind-blowing four-game division lead after only seven games have been played.

If you're like me, you started getting very concerned when the Browns finally found the end zone in the fourth quarter yesterday to narrow the Niners' lead to one touchdown. During the Nolan and Singletary regimes, the team would frequently fold in these situations because they could never close out a game. But Jim Harbaugh's 49ers keep finding ways to close out games (with the lone exception of the Dallas OT loss) by either protecting leads or delivering come-from-behind victories. So naturally, the 49ers killed some clock, tacked on a field goal and notched their sixth win of the season.

While short on style points, the win over the Browns reminded me of last week's flashback to the 13-3 victory over the Packers in Green Bay in 1981. A superior Niner squad effectively dominated an overmatched opponent in a game that was never really in doubt, despite a shortage of points on the scoreboard. No, it wasn't 45-14. Or 48-3. But it was a workmanlike performance coming off a bye week during a season when many other teams in similar situations have failed.

And now, we're already talking about the 49ers clinching the NFC West before Thanksgiving. I'll take it.

Random Notes:

• Is it just me, or does it still look like there's a bunch of empty seats in the upper deck of the stadium? Every time the TV camera panned to the "Ring of Honor," I saw mostly unoccupied seats. My guess is that, while fans are back onboard the 49er bandwagon, nobody is willing to shell out money to see the Cleveland Browns on a beautiful fall afternoon in the Bay Area. If I'm going to reach into my pocketbook and drag my ass out to any game at Candlestick this year, it will be for a playoff game and not for some random contest against a team as drab and boring as the Cleveland Browns or any of the 49ers' NFC West rivals.
• How many times did Frank Gore pass Roger Craig as the second-leading rusher in franchise history yesterday? Seemed like that the first two times he accomplished this feat, he immediately lost yards on the next carry while the Niner offense bogged down in the second half.
• After watching Stanford's OT thriller against USC on Saturday night, it's easy to understand how Jim Harbaugh has become the king of football here in the Bay Area. He revived a moribund Cardinal program in the Pac 10 (now 12) and has turned a dysfunctional 49ers organization into one of the teams 2 or 3 best teams. Two of the best stories this year in collegiate and professional football are direct results of the impact he has made as a head coach. Amazing.
• As if the 6-1 record and 4-game divisional lead weren't ridiculous enough, now comes word that the Niners may open their new stadium a year early in 2014, even though finances haven't been approved. As always, I'll believe it when I see it.

And the 49ers' "MVP" Is...

Not this guy.

I usually dig Scott Ostler, but he's way off base here.

It Was 30 Years Ago Today

Special thanks to these guys
for the vintage Sporting Green scans.

Time to get things started again after last week's bye...

So, what do you remember about the 49ers' 13-3 victory over the Packers during the 1981 season? I can tell you where I was on that day - watching the game on a little black and white TV in my dad's garage. And the game was played in Milwaukee County Stadium (back then, the Packers split their home schedule between Milwaukee and Green Bay).

The game itself wasn't very exciting - at the time, Green Bay, coached by legendary Packers quarterback Bart Starr weren't much of a threat in the NFC Central, probably because Starr wasn't a legendary HEAD COACH. They had a decent offense with Lynn Dickey, who would end up passing for nearly 4,500 yards a couple of years later, and receivers like Chargers exile John Jefferson and future Hall-of-Famer James Lofton. But for the most part, the Packers of the 70s and 80s were stuck in neutral, between the Lombardi championship years of the 60s and their Holmgren/Favre resurgence in the 90s.

Meanwhile, the 49ers were coming off their 45-14 beatdown of the Cowboys with a chip on their shoulder after being slighted by the national media. They were still trying to prove they weren't a fluke, and while this victory over the Packers was short on highlights, it was one of the first signs of the 49ers becoming a methodical machine on the road, as they pounded Green Bay into submission by the beginning of the 4th quarter.

And that's probably the one word I could use to describe this game: methodical. They slowly and surely took the home team and crowd out of the game while imposing their will on an inferior opponent. Over the next 17 years, we'd see this time and time again, but back in October of 1981, the 49ers were just starting to unveil their blueprint for road dominance. While the 49ers surely didn't take the victory for granted, this became the first of dozens of "ho-hum" road wins  against the league's soft underbelly that the fans would come to expect during the Walsh, Seifert and Mariucci eras.

On this day, the 49ers marched into town, took care of business, and that was that. Nothing more, nothing less. Now, it was payback time for another long-time tormentor with the Rams coming to town.

Next week: The 49ers battle Los Angeles with an assist from The World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band.

Everybody's Talking About It, Why Shouldn't I?

"Waaah, waaah, waaah - you shook my hand too hard
and you said a naughty word!"

The Jim Harbaugh - Jim Schwartz altercation following yesterday's impressive come-from-behind victory in Detroit has now been dissected and discussed by every sports media outlet for the past 20 hours. Except "Adios 49ers." Until now.

Here are my quick thoughts:

Schwartz had it coming. Anybody who's checked out his fist-pumping theatrics on the sidelines this year knows he'll stick a victory in any opponent's face. For the first time this year, it was the Lions who ended up on the short end of the stick against a superior team with a head coach who's maniacally wired just as much as Schwartz. If you're going to dish it out, you better be able to take it as well, "protocol" be damned. Otherwise, you just end up looking like the sore loser and poseur that you are.

The Lions as a team had it coming, too. I can't remember a mid-October game with so much posturing and celebrating after routine plays as the Lions were doing on Sunday afternoon. I know Detroit has been awful for several years/decades/centuries, and they have every right to be excited. But, when you disrespect an opponent by flapping your gums about how you're going to hurt their quarterback while trying to punk them on the field after every play, you better expect to get it all thrown back in your face when you can't walk the walk.

I suppose it would be easy to tell the Lions that they should "act like they've been here before," but when your last NFL title was nearly 55 years ago and you're one of only four teams who have never played in a Super Bowl, maybe that's asking too much. So instead, my advice to the Lions is to just shut your mouths and play hard. Maybe - MAYBE you'll have the good fortune of seeing the 49ers again in the playoffs. If you manage to win your wild card game in the first round.

Pure Mockery

Yep, just another road victory in the Eastern time zone.

Now that the 49ers have stormed out of the gates with a 5-1 record while playing their best football since 2001, a lot of folks have asked me how I feel about dropping my season tickets and running a blog that rips the organization for their incompetence.

Basically, Jim Harbaugh and the 49ers are completely mocking me with each victory as they force-feed an extra-large helping of crow down my throat every week. That's a good thing. I'd rather be the jackass who was wrong about this team's fortunes than the naysayer who was correct. I'm cool with it - it's kinda funny, in a way.

But if you ask me about missing the experience of going to Candlestick on gameday, I'll tell you that I'm perfectly content to flip the game on at 1 o'clock and turn the channel the moment the game has ended.

• I don't miss the traffic getting in and out of the stadium. 
• I don't miss navigating my SUV through the parking lot to squeeze into a space made for a Mini Cooper. 
• I don't miss looking at my ticket stub and seeing a price tag of nearly $150 per seat. 
• I don't miss the dumbasses that chant "Niiiiiiiners, Niiiiiiiiiiners" up the escalator heading into the stadium. 
• I don't miss 10 dollar beers or the awful stench in the Hofbrau bar at halftime.
• I don't miss the stadium PA trying to force excitement with that goddamned "DEFENSE" cheer. 
• I don't miss the mouth-breathers in Niner Noise trying to turn every TV timeout into a re-inactment of "Drumline." 
• I don't miss the trolls that would carry several bags of trinkets and garbage who sat in our row and refused to budge an inch to let us into our seats.

Quite frankly, I don't miss that shithole at all, and I doubt I ever will.

It Was 30 Years Ago Today...

Fred Dean's presence was immediately felt
during his first game as a 49er.

First off, I have to continue giving props to the 2011 49ers for not giving me much to write about the last 10 days or so. Two impressive victories will do that - and I couldn't be happier.

Before getting into this week's flashback to the 1981 season, I wanted to mention that Al Davis, who helped broker the deal to get the Morabito family to sell the 49ers to the DeBartolos during the mid-70s, may end up helping the Niners in death as well. With Davis out of the picture, a major hurdle in the Niners' proposed new stadium may have been significantly reduced.

While there was little chance Davis would ever agree to share a stadium with the 49ers in the South Bay (and thus pave the way for the NFL to kick in money from their stadium fund), there's a very good chance that the new Raiders regime will reconsider all of their options for a new facility (both in the Bay Area and Los Angeles).

Whether Niner and Raider fans would be happy sharing a stadium in a "neutral" location is a completely separate discussion/argument. But for now, the Yorks' path to their fancy new stadium just became a little bit clearer.

Now let's get back to the 1981 season, when the 49ers announced their arrival to the rest of the league with a Week 6 45-14 trouncing of the Dallas Cowboys at Candlestick Park. I have to admit it's kind of odd to be talking about this game after watching the current 49ers clobber the Buccaneers by a 48-3 score this past Sunday. Maybe there are more parallels to the 1981 season than I previously thought.

So here we have the 1981 49ers, sitting at 3-2 after a dominating performance against the winless Redskins in Washington, hosting America's Team. Just one year earlier, the 49ers walked into a buzzsaw in Dallas while being humiliated by a 59-14 score. Adding insult to that defeat was a devastating knee injury to Paul Hofer, who was a huge fan favorite during that era. Hofer was done for the season, and only managed to play a handful of games during the '81 season before suffering a similar injury that finished his career.

During the previous decade leading up to this mid-October contest, the Cowboys dominated the 49ers while crushing San Francisco's postseason dreams three times in a row (1970-72), including an improbable come-from-behind victory during the '72 playoffs when Roger Staubach tossed two touchdowns in the final minute of play. When it came to facing the Cowboys, the 49ers were snakebitten. The Cowboys were the class of the NFC. The 49ers, on the other hand, weren't even an afterthought on the NFL landscape.

At the stadium that day, I remembered being in awe of the Cowboys' mystique and everything they represented. Although Staubach had retired, they still had their Doomsday Defense, Tony Dorsett and Tom Landry. They ALWAYS won. And they were all business on the field - almost robotic.

I hated them. And I hated how they tore up Paul Hofer's knee the year before. And I hated how they arrogantly dismissed opponents like the 49ers, who they treated with disdain as unworthy opponents.

I hated the Dallas Cowboys.

Anyhow, the game started, and I was just hoping the 49ers could keep it close and not embarrass themselves. After all, the Niners had a nice little start to their season, and if they could just refrain from wetting the bed, I'd be satisfied with a 3-3 record heading into the heart of the season. Who knows? Maybe the 49ers could avoid their first losing season since an 8-6 aberration during Monte Clark's lone year as head coach.

What ended up happening on that day was something that nobody in the crowd (and sidelines) could have possibly imagined. The 49ers raced out to a 21-0 lead. Even Paul Hofer got in on the action, diving into the endzone for San Francisco's second score of the day. After a Ray Wersching field goal extended the lead to 24-0, the Cowboys finally got onto the scoreboard to narrow the margin to 24-7 at the half.

Were we excited? Hell yes. The stadium was going nuts, as 10 years of pent-up frustrations were unleashed with joyful whoops, hollers and high-fives after each score. But we all knew the game was far from over. If anybody could come back and ruin this day for the 49ers and their fans, it was the Cowboys. It HAD to be the Cowboys. It would only take one score for that awful feeling of dread to start creeping in from the back of our heads.

But not on this day. Things were different. Not only did the 49ers have a long-haired skinny quarterback throwing darts to Dwight Clark, Freddie Solomon and Charle Young, we now had a rapidly improving defense led by three rookie defensive backs, ball-hawking Dwight Hicks and shithouse-crazy Hacksaw Reynolds. And on October 11, 1981, Bill Walsh unwrapped his newest toy: future Hall-of-Fame defensive end Fred Dean, acquired earlier that week in a trade with the Chargers.

Dean's presence was immediately felt as the Cowboys had no answer for his pass rush. Dallas quarterback Danny White was harassed throughout the afternoon. The Cowboys were taking their licks on both sides of the ball. Suddenly, the 49ers had a defense that was just as lethal as their "West Coast" offense.

Early in the third quarter, Joe Montana connected with Dwight Clark on a 78-yard gallop for a 31-7 lead. That sealed it - we knew the final outcome of the game was a foregone conclusion. But the Cowboys still had 20+ minutes of gameplay left to continue taking their lumps, and these 49ers weren't about to let them off the hook. When Ronnie Lott took one of White's passes back to the house to make it 38-7, the rout was officially on and the Cowboys were toast. Candlestick erupted in the first of many "Can you believe this?" moments of that season.

Still, the 49ers weren't done. Bill Walsh remembered how Dallas piled on the 49ers a year earlier, and now he was returning the favor. An Amos Lawrence(!) touchdown made it 45-7 before Dallas closed out the scoring on a Benny Barnes fumble return. The victory was complete and absolute. Dallas was humiliated and the 49ers had shocked the NFL.

45-14.

There are numbers and scores that I'll always remember. 45-14 is one of them. This was the day that the 49ers became "THE 49ERS" - the team that would dominate the NFL for the better part of the next two decades. This was the day that Candlestick became the place to be on football Sundays. This was the day that the 49ers and their fans began exorcising the demons that had haunted them since their days in the old AAFC. This was the day it all began.

Not everybody was convinced yet, especially outside of the Bay Area. Despite the dominating performance, not a single highlight from the game was shown during halftime of Monday Night Football the following evening. Clearly, the NFL establishment wasn't ready for the 49ers.

But on that day in mid-October, the 49ers served notice that THEY were ready for THEM.

Next week: the 49ers travel to the land of Lombardi seeking a rare fourth-straight win.

It Was 30 Years Ago Today...



The Sporting Green wasn't always green.

Before we start in on this week's flashback to the 1981 season, I want to take a moment to praise the 2011 49ers for their performance this past Sunday in Philadelphia. As far as I know, that's biggest road comeback victory in franchise history. The only bigger comebacks that have been identified have all been at home, most notably the 21 and 28 point comebacks against the Bengals and Saints. I'm still waiting for confirmation, but if the 49ers ever erased a greater deficit on the road, it must've happened during the early NFL or AAFC years.

For the past several seasons, the 49ers have had opportunities to win games like last week's, but they've always failed to close the game out. Last week, the 49ers succeeeded thrice: by driving for the winning score, stopping the opposing offense, and subsequently running out the clock. On Sunday, the Niners did something that hasn't happened very often during the past decade: they added another chapter to their lore.

And now, this week's flashback: Week 5 of the 1981 season. I doubt this matchup was greeted by much more than a collective yawn by the rest of the league: the 2-2 49ers facing the winless Redskins in Washington. Little did anybody know that this game would feature two teams with Hall of Fame head coaches that would claim the NFC Championship over the next four seasons, including three Lombardi trophies.

The Niners raced out to an early 7-0 lead, on a Ricky Patton 16-yard dash into the end zone (if you would have told me that Ricky Patton, who led the team in rushing yardage that year with a whopping 543 yards, actually had a single run of more than 10 yards during the '81 season, I'd request another Jaegermeister and challenge you to a duel).

That's when things got interesting, and when the 1981 49ers started to kick things into gear. Shortly thereafter, Dwight Hicks picked up a fumble - in midair (I think Carlton Williamson laid the hit on the Redskin receiver) - and returned it 80 yards for another touchdown. 14-0. Keep in mind, that this kind of thing NEVER happened to the 49ers up to that point - if anything, it would have been the Niners who popped the ball into the air and into the waiting arms of an opposing defensive back. We couldn't believe our good fortune!

Suddenly, the 49ers smelled blood, and the game was basically over by halftime with a 24-3 lead following a Johnny Davis 1-yard plunge (now THAT's the Johnny Davis I remember) and a Matt Bahr (subbing for the injured Ray Wersching) field goal.

I remember watching this game with my family on TV and thinking "What happens now? We rarely have a lead at halftime, and now we're in the midst of a blowout? What do we do? Make a sandwich?" We were stunned - this was how the OTHER half - the teams that played us every week - felt. Not us. But I remember liking it, and wanting more...

Of course, Dwight Hicks wasn't done. In the third period, he picked off an errant Joe Theismann pass for another touchdown to put the game away at 30-3. Despite a couple of late Redskin touchdowns, the victory was definitive and a message was sent to the rest of the league: "We Are Legit - we are coming after YOU." And Dwight Hicks cemented his place in Niner history as the first defensive player to record two touchdowns in a single game.

Still, despite the highlight-reel big plays, the Niners weren't much more than a blip on the NFL's cultural landscape. They'd have to prove themselves against the establishment before anybody would take them seriously. And with America's Team rolling into town the following Sunday, they wouldn't have to wait very long.

Next Week: The 49ers make a statement against the Cowboys - and a dynasty is born.

Glad to be Wrong

As bad as the first half was, the second half was good. Well done, Niners -and Alex Smith, too. Obviously, my motivational halftime post lit a fire in the visitors' locker room...

Gotta check the records, but that 20-point deficit may well be the biggest road comeback in team history.

Second-half adjustments - I had forgotten what those were until today.

The Return of Alex Smith

That was a first-half performance of Singletary-era caliber.

Alex Smith has three plays: throw the ball at the receiver's feet, throw the ball two feet over the receiver's head and take a sack/fumble the ball.

Time for the Red Zone Channel...