Disappointing Finish To A Great Season

After a great season for the San Francisco 49ers, it all came down to yesterday's NFC Championship game versus the New York Giants. It'd been almost a decade since the 49ers last saw the playoffs. Last week's exciting see-saw game against the New Orleans Saints, culminating in a last second victory, hopes for this week's game were high.

San Francisco played their usual game: A tough defense complimenting the offense that's done just enough to win games. With the number one run defense in the NFL and a spotty but effective pass defense, most people new this would be a relatively low scoring affair. The offense played it's usual game of a few flashes of brilliance in the big pass plays between Alex Smith and Vernon Davis. The rest was a grind it out offense, using Frank Gore and Kendall Hunter pounding away at the Giants' defense to keep them honest and help open up the passing game.

The Giants also posed a pretty good defensive front, that made relatively few mistakes. And of course their offense was led by Eli Manning and his trio of receivers that tend to step up when called upon. Eli of course possesses the good instincts of a great quarterback, which of course tends to be one of the big reasons the fans of any other team hate him for getting out of a bind, always in the nick of time. That's not to say that he wasn't harassed..a LOT by a bruising 49er rush, but he tended to step out of the way of danger and get the ball where it needed to go to keep the offense going. He had a lot of help from Victor Cruz, who seems to have an invisibility cloak to get that wide open short, medium and deep ranges, over and over and over. Yes the guys really freaking good, but it's not like the 49ers subbed in a pee-wee defensive backfield for the enitre game. How do they not cover him up and make plays on the ball at least 1 out of 4 times, rather than let him get open and catch the ball 5 out of 4 times. Ridiculous!

The difference was made in the realm of turnovers and special teams. Usually the 49ers are known for creating turnovers...last night was an exception. One interception was nullified by a penalty, 2 other would-be-picks were broken up, not by the Giants receivers, but by 49ers safety Dashon Goldson. The first was when he collided and almost knocked out Tarrell Brown while they simultaneously converged on one of Manning's passes. Later on, Carlos Rogers nearly had a pick before being hit by Goldson. Other than stopping the Giants on 4th and short, the 49ers created zero turnovers. And on special teams, lacking Ted Ginn, Jr., a young Kyle Williams was tasked with punt return duties.

As a faithful 49ers fan all my life, I too wanted the young man cut fromt he team, and have his hands and face stomped on. My statements were made out of frustration, but never turned into real credible threats, much less more public ones I've heard have been swirling about. The kid is young, inexperienced, and will learn. On one punt, after the ball bounced erratically, Williams made the mistake of getting in the vicinity of the ball, which hit his knee and was recovered by the Giants at 49er 30 yard line, making short work for Eli Manning to throw his 2nd touchdown pass to put the Giants up 17-14. Yes, many of us football maniacs know that if you let the ball start bouncing around you stay the hell away from the ball. If you aren't going to catch it, you run AWAY from the ball. Let the other team down it, and let your offense worry about moving the ball after that. Had he done so, the next score may have made it 17 or even 21 to 10 in facvor of the 49ers. But a rookie mistake gave a seasoned offensive veteran like Manning what he needed to change the momentum of the game.

We came back and tied the game, forcing overtime to ensue. After stopping the Giants cold for another punt and an opportunity to drive down the field for the winning score, Williams again tried to do too much, and failed to protect the ball. He fumbled on a pretty standard tackle attempt. Coaches all our lives have drilled into us, do NOT hold the ball like a loaf of bread. Protect the points, and in traffic use BOTH hands to hold on. He failed in this, lost the ball, and it was recovered again by the Giants, who went a very short distance before Lawrence Tynes kicked a very easy chip shot of a field goal to win the game.

Yes, it basically came down to the two punt return snafus by Williams, resulting in 10 points for New York, that brought the game into reach, and then ultimately decided the outcome of the game. If you need me, I'll be in mourning until next season. We had a good run this season. It wasn't always as flashy as the days of Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, but it was still good to see a consistent season. Hopefully it's the beginning of a new non-losing era for my beloved 49ers.

To All My Friends Who Are Bears Fans...Sorry?

To all my friends who like the Chicago Bears...sorry, but I have to write this down.

Your team went and got rid of Rex Grossman. Probably the smartest thing the organization could have ever done in their history. The boy, while great at the college level, just never matured to the point of being a great Pro quarterback.

The year that the Bears managed to get to the Superbowl was purely on the backs of a stellar defensive squad. In fact, during the NFC Championship game that year, it was the efforts of the defense that managed to win the game against the New Orleans Saints. And it wasn't enough to win the SuperBowl. The only thing consistent about Grossman's playing was its inconsistency. One half, or one game he'd be great, and then as quickly as the next game he'd put on one of the most mediocre performances ever.

Now you have Jay Cutler. The Green Bay defense hassled him all the first half and he threw 3 interceptions, and they only scored a measly safety for 2 points, thanks to their stellar defensive efforts. Then, in the 2nd half, he showed more poise, completing more passes and avoiding turnovers. He managed to throw a touchdown pass to Devin Hester to make it a competitive game. Brian Urlacher and a couple other defensemen were out of the game due to injuries at this point, and Green Bay's Aaron Rogers took full advantage of this, running a slightly smoother offense and allowing them to win the game. Green Bay's defense kept up and managed to cause Cutler to go back to his uncertainty in the first half mode.

Now, many of you know I'm an avid 49ers fan. And it's been a few years since I've really been able to follow football with my work schedule. so you're asking yourself, "how in the world could Mookie even know what the heck he's talking about?" A- I'm a football nut, who knows a lot about the sport, and B- its mostly common sense.

We 49er fans were spoiled with the combination of Joe Montana and Steve Young over the years. Two of the leagues most prolific quarterbacks over the history of the NFL. And since Steve Young's departure, we have had a litany of QB's come and go, and none of them were really worth a damn. We kept bringing in promising defensive backs, who by the time we trained them up to a level considered more than adequate, we'd trade them to teams who would then beat us with great secondary players we'd developed for them. It's pretty bad to go from being a football dynasty to the farm team for the league we have been for almost a decade now. Part of it was coaching. Most coaches came to San Francisco thinking they could ride the wave of greatness, only to lose a lot of the old team members wo helped make the 49ers a great team. And those coaches weren't good enough to produce the same greatness out of a bunch of 'nobodies.' Luckily for us, Mike Singletary, the legendary Bears defensive player from the 80s is our new coach. He is a no nonsense, high caliber personality when it comes to performing in games and his expectations of players. He isn't going to put up with prima donnas, and allow that kind of drama to take away from our efforts to field a competitive team, so hopefully, our win over the defending NFC Champs, the Arizona Cardinals, will be a sign of whats to come. Albeit, we'd like more than 30 yards rushing per game out of Frank Gore.

So now, the Bears, while they basically have the defense down pretty well, really need to learn to put together an offense to boot. And that starts with the quarterback. Trading for QB's who came from teams with an odd assortment of palymakers to help him, isn't going to be the answer. Otherwise, you'll just end up seeing the repeat of Rex Grossman, over and over and over.

Which brings me to Bret Favre (I pronounce it FAV-RAY because that's how its spelled dammit!) Favre is a great quarterback, no doubt about it. All this retiring and unretiring has dominated the sports news the past couple of years. And it really is tiring to listen too. I've never liked Favre, and part of that is that his Packers kept beating up my 49ers, and I've never been a Packers fan anyways (I lump this hatred as being equal to that of my hatred for the Dallas Cowboys- is there a rule that both can lose the game when playing each other?). The one thing Bret had to add to his great performances were playmakers for running backs and receivers. And he has good leadership qualities about him, to help them out in return. He will be a Hall of Famer, no doubt about it. When he went to the Jets, though, their offense was pretty much all about Favre. His supporting cast wasn't strong enough to get him anywhere significant.
Now he is with the Vikings. They looked okay on Sunday. Running back Adrian Peterson was clearly the star of that game however, and made Favre's efforts and leadership seem that more imposing. It could be that Favre has added his experience to improve the Vikings, or the skill of enough Viking players that will add to Favre's status. Either way, they should have a decent team. Far better than the Bears season is looking, if Week 1 was any indicator. The NFC North Division will be between Green Bay and Minnesota, with the Bears and Lions competing for 3rd place in the division.

A bit on Announcers

I think that John Madden, ever in love with Bret Favre, should be forced to unretire himself since Favre did. Their careers with the football world should (if they weren't to a degree already) be inextricably linked. That way we can here drooling commentary from Madden, over Favre's play, abilities, talents, liekability, etc. Also, more teleprompter drawings accompanying "BOOM, and BAM" (John Madden is the audio equivalent of the old Batman flare words), and other exclamation being used while pointing out generally obvious things to anyone who actually knows anything about football.

And if he wasn't so old, and set in his ways, I'd love to see Mr. Whoa Nellie himself, Keith Jackson, back on the announcing scoop. In my mind he is the best sports commentator ever. Not too much chit-chat during the lulls of the game, and he had a way of really ratcheting up the history and importance of certain games, venues, rivalries, along with the right amount of excitement when necessary. He is truly missed by the old school true fans of sports, not unlike myself. His style is a lost art. He coined University of Michigan's stadium "The Big House", and most viewers of college football knew that if Keith Jackson was announcing the game, it was the big game for that week. You know, back when all the network television stations actually showed you games from all around the country. Then Cable stations stole Americans right to watch all those football games and left them with dumb games like Notre Dame Vs anybody. Ahh, the era of good days gone by...kind of like the Bears Football program.