Season OVER

Brothers don't shake hands, brothers hug!

Actually, no - it's far from over. But judging by the overreaction from last night's loss to the Ravens, you'd think the 9-2 Niners are in a complete freefall. Their offense stinks. Their defense can't get off the field and make plays when it counts. The 49ers are pretenders.

Not exactly.

The much-hyped battle between the Brothers Harbaugh went down pretty much as expected. Teams don't travel across the entire country for a Thursday game and beat a quality opponent with only a couple of days to prepare. The NFL isn't built that way. In fact, no team had been forced to travel through three time zones for a Thursday game in at least 30 years. And make no mistake - if the situation was reversed, the Ravens would have been soundly beaten in Candlestick Park. It's NFL 101.

Bottom line: the Niners were mostly awful on offense (they were completely unprepared for the Ravens' blitz packages), and this was only a so-so performance by the defense. Yet, the game was tied heading into the 4th quarter, despite the Niners leaving 10 points off the board in the first half due to a questionable penalty and a bad decision to chuck the ball into the endzone that resulted in an interception.

The 49ers will live to fight another day, and they'll most likely learn from this experience and be a better team because of it.

But let's get back to this whole Thursday night thing for a moment. Quite simply, the 49ers were used by the league. There is no way that game is scheduled for national TV on Thanksgiving night if anybody with a last name other than Harbaugh was coaching either of these two teams. The league wanted to sensationalize the two brothers squaring off against each other and get as many eyeballs as possible to watch during the time slot that's usually reserved for tryptophan-induced food comas.

When the schedule was created, I doubt anybody in the league offices figured the 49ers to be anything but sacrificial lambs - they were going to lose against the Ravens no matter where or when they played them. Why not march them out to slaughter and make a big story out of it? But a funny thing happened between April and September: the 49ers got good. Real good. Suddenly, a throw-away, guaranteed defeat had playoff implications for both teams as the one-loss 49ers were chasing the undefeated Packers for home-field advantage in the postseason.

The league shortchanged the 49ers by forcing them into an unprecedented road trip that resulted in a competitive disadvantage against a quality opponent. It's doubtful the 49ers of the DeBartolo years would have graciously agreed to a Thursday-nighter across the country. They would have known the game would basically be a forfeit under these circumstances, and they would have demanded a change in the proposed schedule. Let's hope the next time something similar occurs and the league offices want to flex their muscles, Lil' Jed and co. are willing to fight back.

This isn't just sour grapes the day following a tough loss. I've always believed that the Thanksgiving games create an unfair advantage for the host teams, specifically the Cowboys and Lions every year (even though the Lions have been too awful for it to matter during most of the last four decades). I was digging through my archives and found the following paragraph I wrote prior to Thanksgiving in 2003 - oddly enough, the Dolphins faced the Cowboys in Dallas that season as well. I'll wrap up this post with my words of wisdom from eight years ago:

"...this game gives an unfair advantage to both of these teams every year.  The Cowboys and Lions get to stay home and play a game on three days’ rest.  Their opponents have to travel while barely having enough time to pack for the road trip.  Case in point: the Dolphins battled the Redskins this past Sunday night on ESPN.  It was nearly midnight when the contest ended.  Meanwhile, the Cowboys were relaxing at home and getting a good night’s sleep.  Less than 72 hours later, the Dolphins will board a plane (during the worst travel week of the year, no less) while Dallas goes through their final game preparations at team headquarters.  It doesn’t take a genius to see that when the teams take the field on Thursday afternoon, Dallas will be much more rested and refreshed than Miami.  Finally, it should be noted that the Cowboys and Lions always have a 10-day break before their next game while their opponents will be facing them on seven (or even six) days’ rest.  Fair?  Hardly."