 |
First Quarter Report:Same Old Cheese, Same Old 49ers |
|
|
First Quarter Report:Same Old Cheese, Same Old 49ers |
October 9, 2002 (NHS) -- We're 25% through the 49ers season, and some things are clear:
Here's a more in-depth look at the games:
This was one of those games that really separates the 49er Problem into two camps: those that get it, and those that don't.
The 49er fans and the 49er-smooching media, of course, don't.
What should have been digested as an unimpressive debut and proof that all the 49er hype of the preseason has been undeserved, the 49ers continued to be placed on a pedestal. Because the 49ers walked off with an unearned win, all their shortcomings and shenanigans were swept under the table and they are still on their way to the Super Bowl. Yes, the days of proudly talking about "winning ugly" and being "more lucky than good" are back in the Bay Area. So if you're looking for honest discourse about the Niners, once again it's time to turn to nowhere else but your friendly neighborhood NHS.
Let's start off with the easy part, the overrated 49ers defense. Kerry Collins sliced through the 49ers virtually unobstructed en route to being the #1 quarterback of week 1. These weren't a bunch of cheap 2-yard 49er-specials, either. Collins was particularly impressive in converting 3rd and longs.
Your chief take away from this? No, it's not that "seeing Collins throw for 342 yards against a tough San Francisco defense could be the start of a great season" as a giddy "expert" at The Sporting News suggested. Hell no. Statements like those make you wonder how these "experts" get their jobs.
The obvious take is that the 49ers secondary is extremely vulnerable and an obvious weakness. A "tough defense"? Hardly. There is absolutely no basis for such garbage other than the wishful thinking of the 49er-smoochers in the media. Their defense was ranked 13th last year despite playing two hands' worth of marshmallow opponents (10 games against losing teams). Tough?? They are starting mostly young players who to this point are still defined more by potential than fact, and it's just not an automatic default that they will all miraculously improve simultaneously. The most likely scenario is that some will improve, some will get injured, and some will experience the sophomore slump. The prudent conclusion, therefore, is to expect business as usual by the Bay as opponents soar through the air with the greatest of ease -- assuming the 49ers actually play some decent opponents this year.
Switching now to the 49ers' overrated offense, going back to last year, in six of their last seven games, the 49ers failed to gain 300 yards of offense. But this isn't a surprise, since four of those games were against winning teams, against which the 49ers' offense always bogs down. Yet, according the every media "expert", the 49ers are a vaunted offensive juggernaut.
Reality: the 49ers run an offense based on the 2-yard dink pass that succeeds primarily because it is a wimpy system with little risk, protected by NFL rules, and in the 49ers' case appears much better than it is because they are mostly matched up against mediocre or worse opponents.
Jeff Garthia, of course, is Exhibit "A" for this reality. Did the nation finally wake up after yet another horrid display? Yeah, right: "The great play of New York's defense was the main reason for the subpar numbers, so Garcia should be back to Pro Bowl form next week," assured The Sporting News.
There you have it. It's not that Garthia is overrated or played poorly -- heavens no! -- it's just that the Giants defense is now of Super Bowl caliber (apparently like Kerry Collins). A message to those living on planet Earth, not the media in 49er-fantasyland: Garthia is an inconsistent QB that has no skill other than throwing a 2-yard pass. He will have bad games against teams that actually decide to take away the dink and slant pass.
Exhibit "B" is Terrell Owens who, as we have already discussed at length, is overrated (which is, of course, an epic understatement). Owens was shut down the entire game until, inexplicably, the Giants shifted their entire defensive philosophy at the end and went into a soft zone.
The result was a very early Christmas present. They left Owens wide open for a long gain to help along the final drive of the game, and sent reporters clamoring for a spot in line to smooch Owens' heine. His unimpressive game was swept away and excused by the 49er propaganda machine in that the Giants used 2, 3, 4 maybe 8 guys covering Owens every play -- after all, it's the only possible explanation as to why he didn't have 20 catches and 200 yards -- and in a testament to his greatness, Owens "caught the one that mattered," to use Owens' own humble-as-usual words.
"The play spotlighted Owens in all his glory -- the determination, the power, the desire to have the ball, especially when it matters most," gushed Gary Peterson of the Contra Costa Times, writing only with one hand since his other hand was obviously occupied.
Actually, it's true; the play was in fact Owens in all his glory -- if by which you mean being given undeserved accolades after an unearned gift.
If you polled every member of the NHS watching the game, there would have been a 100% result that it was fully expected the Giants would stick their collective heads up their asses and let Terrell Owens make a catch on the final drive just so he could unjustly appear the hero.
When the expected occurred, the rest of the world seemed shocked. Why? Haven't they seen this for the past 20 years? Is the NHS just that much more knowledgeable about the NFL? It shouldn't be. It just doesn't take genius to observe that history has taught us that in such situations, the 49ers would be recipients of the usual gratuitous cheese, like letting Owens have his catch. Yes, that's right -- the Giants let him. Owens did not earn the catch. He did not run a special route, he did not beat anyone. Instead of manning-up against the overrated Owens and shutting him down easily as they did all game, the Giants took a page from the 1980s and changed their defense completely. They sat back in a soft prevent zone. And in case you have been absent these past 20 years, the wussy 2-yard dink offense has the most success against such zones. In short, the Giants played right into the 49ers hands.
On one hand, the media seems to understand this concept. "For the first time all night, Owens was wide open, thanks to a blown coverage by a linebacker," stated NFL.com. While not exactly correct in assigning blame to an unnamed linebacker instead of the poor zone decision, at least it is a start in realizing that the reason for Owens being open was the defense. But then NFL.com added, "When the game was on the line, Owens stepped up to set up the victory."
How the hell, in what system of alternative logic, does "blown coverage" equal Owens stepping up??
Look, Owens was the beneficiary of stupidity, period. The only credit you can give to Owens is that he made a wide open catch instead of dropping it. And while maybe for the brick-handed Owens this is quite a feat, fact is that 99.9% of other NFL receivers in the same situation make the same catch. But of course, as predicted, the media is drooling all over it as "proof" that Owens is a big game player. Right. Mm-hm. All that and a bag of chips won't erase the fact that Owens had a terrible night against an average secondary and that 14 of his 16 TDs last season came against losing teams. Hardly a guy who's there "when it matters most".
Unfortunately, we've seen this script play out too many times over too many years to really expect the media to get it. We even checked with New York papers to find a legitimate take to this game, yet found the New York Times pushing usual pro-49er bilge. Owens' greatness was regurgitated there, of all places, and the culprit? None other than Damon Hack, who is notorious for licking the Niners' behinds when writing for the Sacramento Bee. And now he's a pox infecting New York via the Times. Sigh.
Thank goodness the New York Post actually had the guts to write that the play was the result of the Giants switching to zone coverage. Of course, nobody would write an explanation of the stupidity of the Giants to switch out of a scheme that had been working all evening. No quote. No explanation. Apparently, it's just as it should be according to the script.
And what about that almost subliminal repetition that Owens is just so good that it's impossible to cover him without quintuple coverage? What was the Giants magic secret? "We didn't do anything special against (Owens) except play football," revealed Jason Sehorn.
In short, the 49ers walked off with a win they didn't deserve, and the reason isn't a mystery. "These are the Giants, who sometimes blow opportunities by playing dumb football," explained the Post. A good start, but an understatement in this game. The Giants went backwards on just about every first down. Then like clockwork they ran up the gut on 2nd and long. On 4th and 1 they gave the ball to Tiki Barber who was at 50% strength at best.
There was also the tried-and-true "lay down like dogs" factor; i.e., the concept that opponents and especially marquee players never seem to be fired-up or care as much when they play the 49ers. Where was sack leader Michael Strahan against a pedestrian 49ers offensive line? Sure, their wussy 3-step drop and dink it offense almost eliminates the need for an o-line, but still. "We should have won this game," Strahan said, "Had we not played with all those penalties and missed opportunities the game is not even close."
True statement, and the penalties were egregious. Certainly the 49ers committed way more than the 5 penalties for which they were actually flagged. There was the usual phantom pass interference call and big penalties, like one erasing a 44-yard pass to Amani Toomer, to help the 49ers along. But by now, doesn't Strahan and all 49er opponents accept they are going to be "homered" by the refs every time they play the 49ers, even if at home? Don't all teams go into games against the 49ers knowing that beating the 49ers is the easy part, the difficult part is escaping their cheese factor? Once again, it seems only the NHS understands.
So one game into the 2002 and 49ers already have 1 cheesy victory, a win not earned but handed to them by circumstances and their generous opponent. How many more of these wins are on the way, it's impossible to know. The only real certainty is that their cheesy wins will outnumber the wins they actually earn, and the ignorant Bandwagon rolls on.
The 49ers loss at the hands of a superior Broncos team was a reminder that when the 49ers play good teams, it's still better to be good rather than lucky. Most of the time the Niners will be exposed as the pretenders that we know them to be.
To win in the NFL, normally you have to be a good team with good luck. The 49ers, of course, are an average team with constant luck unparalleled by any other franchise in any other sport in the universe. In week 1 the 49ers cashed in on this luck, because the Giants did the easy part of beating the 49ers but forgot they also had to overcome the 49ers cheese factor. This week, the Broncos solidly trounced the 49ers enough to overcome even their 12th man, which came this week in the bizarre form of Denver's headsets.
The Broncos were unable to communicate from the sidelines with QB Brian Griese thanks to an apparent problem with 3ComdleStick's broadcasting frequencies. How this could actually happen in a multi-billion dollar industry like the NFL that performs just once a week and in supposedly the Tech Capital of the World is suspect, but the Denver brass was quick to exonerate the 49ers from anything more than accidental blame.
Nevertheless, NFL rules do not ensure equality in the headset communication, even in cases where the home team is having no problems and the visiting team is being victimized by the home team's stadium. In short, advantage 49ers, because while it was business as usual for the Niners, the Broncos were forced to send in plays via the Pop Warner method -- running them in with substitute players -- which caused some havoc on the Denver sidelines.
But not for long. In the end, the Broncos ran at will, had no trouble shutting down the dink pass offense, and coasted to a win on cruise control. Denver didn't even complain much about the inequality of the headset situation, but you can imagine the unbelievable whining we'd still be hearing today had the 49ers been screwed by it.
It was nice to see the Broncos throttle the overrated ones, but disappointing that due to the headset snafu we were denied our rightful pleasure at seeing them hang 40 or 50 points on the pretenders, as they very easily could and should have. "We didn't play a great game," said Denver defensive end Trevor Pryce, "Trust me, we didn't."
Pryce also had some delicious comments regarding the so-called Niner-faithful. "There was no excitement. It's like they lull you to sleep. I was going, like, 'What's happening here? What kind of stadium is this?' We feed off each other, off the crowd. It was like there was nothing to feed off of. But we got the job done, so who cares?"
Doubt you'd ever hear that about the Oakland Coliseum, sold out or not.
The game's telecast was the usual exercise in mostly covering up the truth about the 49ers and instead kissing their ass; however, Phil Simms had one bright moment. In the second quarter, Owens scored on the typical cheesy 49er WR special 2-yard play, the first TD of the game, which of course was received by the Whiner fans as the Best Thing Since Sourdough Bread. But Simms, instead of hopping on the Bandwagon like the typical commentator and spewing a string of Best Ever superlatives to describe Owens, instead equated Owens' TD to the exact same garbage we've seen over the years with Jerry Rice. "I asked Rice how many touchdowns he had from the 2 yard line," said Simms, "And I forget what he said, but he knew the exact number and it was high."
Translation: those cheesy 2-yard TDs that padded Rice's stats are now padding Owens' stats. The timing of the comment was great and basically sucked the wind out of the play. No, Simms didn't come out and say it fully, but we Niner-haters know we're never going to get full disclosure about the 49ers on the air, so this is about the best we can expect.
Too bad Simms played into Gumbel's ass-kissing when Owens got popped and dropped the ball (yet again) later on. Amazingly, instead of remarking that to be considered an elite player in the NFL, Owens has to make catches like that, Gumbel actually spun it into a positive for Owens, remarking that he was tough to get hit like that, to which Simms agreed!
Such spin is typical of the view from 49er Fantasy land these days. Perhaps the most telling part of how bad the problem is was San Jose Mercury columnist Ann Killion mewing that Denver wasn't actually a more talented team, but "the 49ers beat the 49ers". Uh-huh. Question: why even bother calling the Merc a newspaper if it is going to be completely devoid of any sort of logic, neutrality or journalism?
Sorry, Ann, but that sort of talk is reserved for teams that are actually elite. Of course, while we see the obvious facts, the 49ers are Just That Good to qualify for such excuses in the eyes of the "neutral" media that it is just impossible to accept the reality that the 49ers are not as good as the Broncos and on the same talent level as the Giants. In short -- part of the large contingent of second-tier NFL teams.
The Associated Press is notorious for not understanding the 49er Problem, but the offering from Greg Beacham following the contest is a reminder of how idiotic our so-called "expert" media is, when he adopted Mariucci's take that "there's no single reason his team failed to run the ball, failed to throw long passes and failed to maintain possession long enough to stay with the Broncos,"
Perhaps, Mr. Beacham, you should remark that maybe there's no single reason, but at least name the obvious reasons like Denver has superior talent, played a better game, it was the rare occasion on the 49ers schedule when they happen to play a better team, and there were not enough cheesy referee calls or tipped balls to help the 49ers along in this game.
Instead, Beacham remained mystified: "From the apparently overmatched offensive line to Jeff Garcia's shaky arm to Terrell Owens' butterfingers, almost everything went wrong."
No, it didn't go wrong, it went as it should. The 49ers o-line is mediocre, it should be overmatched most of the time. Jeff Garthia's arm is, in fact, shaky, unless he's throwing little dink passes. And Owens was among the worst ranked of receivers last year in terms of drops. Yet this is "wrong" according to the unbiased Associated Press.
Just to top off his ignorance Beacham remarks, "San Francisco is the birthplace of the West Coast offense." Uh, no.
So even in a loss, the 49er Problem rolls on.
On one side of the ball were the 49ers, with many players ill from a flu virus. On the other side were the Redskins, who were pasted and embarrassed the previous Monday Night, had lost their starting QB to injury and controversy, and were clearly in no condition to perform after the short week.
The outcome, therefore, would not reveal much about the 49ers, except that it was yet another game where the 49ers technically won, but a bad opponent actually deserved the credit for the loss. "Right now it looks like we need a week off," middle linebacker Jeremiah Trotter glumly remarked following the lack of showing.
Indeed, there was little suspense as the Redskins' follies started at the opening gun. Stephen Davis fumbled the ball during the opening minutes of the game which gave the ball to the 49ers on the 14-yard line, and, viola, the 49ers were up 7-0 just seconds later.
The fumble was classic Niners cheese. First is the fact that Davis is usually sure-handed. In a seven-year career, 89 games, 65 started, Davis had lost just 8 fumbles, yet he promptly turned it over against the 49ers right at the beginning. The bizarre manner in which he coughed it up was classic as well, in the sense that it would happen to no other team, but for the 49ers it is accepted as the norm. The ball didn't bounce to the ground to be pounced on and fought over; no, it went into the air and magically fell into the awaiting arms of Niners DB Tony Parrish, who actually ran it back 10 yards as if it was a punt return!
The Associated Press game review, as printed at NFL.com, decided in their infinite wisdom that it wasn't necessary to mention the opening minutes fumble even though it basically set the tone to the entire game.
The Redskins' circus continued in a muffed punt, messed up reverse play, and atrocious quarterback play. The Washington Post thankfully summed up things nicely: "A 20-10 loss largely due to inadequate-to-terrible quarterback play ... The 49ers could have been had Sunday ... But the Redskins' offense wasted good field position, committed careless penalties and failed to hit open receivers down the field."
Naturally the Redskins could expect no breaks from the officiating. The 49ers challenged 2 replays and won both, and just like the Giants game the 49ers were magically flagged just 5 times all game despite blatant holds in broad daylight, especially on the first touchdown.
In short, it was perfect timing for the 49ers to suffer from the flu, because it was the Redskins that truly looked sick. As the Washington Post summarized, the 49ers are nothing special, yet walked away with another unearned win.
As expected, the rest of the media wanted nothing to do with the reality of things and spun the game into a great, gritty win. ESPN, like usual, was there to list it in their week's "most impressive wins". Also making their "best of the week" list was the broken-trick-play run of Terrell Owens, which they listed as a "54-yard TD run" instead of the actual length of 38 yards. Hey, it's the Niners, why bother to be accurate when you can inflate it a little? And why should a broken-trick-play be listed among the "best", anyway?
Finally, ESPN's "professors" listed as their #1 best hit of the week, "49ers DE Andre Carter's crushing blow to Redskins' Shane Matthews, who looked like a crash dummy on impact." Of course, no mention that Carter hit Matthews late and was flagged on the play. Guess if they don't bother mentioning Carter shouldn't even be a 49er since he was drafted with one of the first round picks the 49ers deserved to forfeit for cheating the salary cap, why bother mentioning other little facts like it was an illegal cheap shot? That doesn't factor into their definition of "best", only the fact that it's the 49ers does.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote: "The 0-5 Rams went out to San Francisco and rolled over, not even trying to pretend that they cared."
'Nuf said.
Although we should comment that it took a lot of conspiring for the 49ers to finally beat the Rams. It started with the NFL many months ago, when planning the 49ers schedule. First, they gave the 49ers a bye week before the game in order to give them extra time to prepare and get healthy. Next, they scheduled the game at San Francisco, even though that would mean the 49ers haven't left home for a month (3 games in a row plus the bye). The rest of the job was left to the Rams. Kurt Warner, gone. Orlando Pace, gone. Aeneas Williams, gone. Mike Martz's control over the team, gone. Super Bowl swagger, gone. Pretending to care, gone. And there to be the willing recipient of the gift? The Niners, of course.
Yes, once again, the 49ers are the top dogs in their division, and they did it exactly as expected, by not earning it at all. Who would have thought that realignment would bring an even greater unearned advantage to the 49ers? Amazingly, the new NFC West looks even worse than the old, if that can actually be possible.
A lot of Rams fans were bitter about the phantom "roughing the passer" call that basically gave the 49ers a touchdown and sucked out whatever life the Rams might have brought. Certainly, there's a point to be made there, but, really, what's surprising is that any Rams fans would have thought a game against the 49ers would be devoid of such referee cheese. Once again, it seems only the NHS understands that one must assume that the Niners will have their 12th man and only express shock when it doesn't happen.
So the Rams have returned to the days of when Tony Banks was giving free touchdowns to the 49ers, Arizona is the 49ers biggest competition, and every break that's gone down this year has gone the way of the Niners. The opponents just keep getting weaker on an already weak schedule, and the media experts have already started revving up the hype . Strap it on, Niner-haters.
Return home.
We welcome comments.
http://www.49erhaters.com/quarterly02.html
created: October 12, 2002
copyright© 1996-2002 49er-Haters Society (NHS)