The Whine Heard 'Round The Bay

Despite Bandwagon's bemoaning, injuries are no excuse; Hearst injury recycled

Update:

Bandwagon tires of whining about this year, recycles whining about last season

November 8, 1999 (NHS) -- There are many unknowns in the universe and many eternal questions that may never be solved. Today, we once again ponder one of the great mysteries that has plagued humankind:

Will the 49er Bandwagon ever stop whining?

Yes, for generations -- well, at least generations dating back to 1981 -- we have witnessed the unlimited capacity of the Bandwagon to bemoan. And as we mentioned in our original story below, the Bandwagon has not disappointed this season by spending every waking moment whining about injuries.

Still, we may have seen the first hint that critical mass has been reached. After all, just how many times can a collection of people blubber about Steve Young? Just how many times can the "experts" in the Bay Area media rationalize that if not for all the injuries, the 49ers would be on their way to their proper 10-6? Indeed, all around the S.F. Bay Area, Niner fans everywhere have whimpered back and forth to each other so much that the momentum seems to be dwindling.

So as the Bandwagon expels their last breath sobbing about The Great Injury Injustice of 1999, is it time for 49er-haters everywhere to rejoice? Will the Bandwagon cease its insufferable bleating and let legitimate fans enjoy one of the best NFL seasons in years?

Dream on. Now that the Bandwagon has whined all it can about 1999, it's not time to stop. It's time for them to whine about 1998 all over again!

Yes, in the span of 48 hours during the bye week, the San Jose Mercury printed not one, but two different pieces that hearkened back to last year's team and the injury to Garrison Hearst in the NFC Divisional Playoff Game. NHS readers will easily recognize these two shills from our Smooch Scale:

Clark Judge, in a story on Oct. 31: "A year ago, the 49ers were a Garrison Hearst ankle injury from graduating to the NFC championship game."
Ann Killion, two days later, reiterated: "[Mariucci] is in the first year of a five-year contract extension and had his team one game -- possibly just one injury to Garrison Hearst -- away from the NFC championship game last season."

To hear these two tell it, had it not been for that untimely injury to Garrison Hearst -- the injury-prone Garrison Hearst, remember, who somehow had survived the whole season without getting hurt -- the Niners could very well have gone to get their thumbs fitted for their sixth title ring.

Please.

First of all, let's change Judge's quote to one that more accurately reflects reality: "A year ago, the 49ers were a blown officials' call on a Jerry Rice fumble from getting bounced out of the playoffs in the Wild Card round." Or how about, "The 49ers were a couple fabricated penalties against the Colts from having to travel to a quick and painful exit at Lambeau Field."

Not that we'd expect Judge or any other member of the Bandwagon to remember this, but if you're going to play the "what-if" game to look at alternate realities, you gotta do it both ways. Aside from the little fact that the Niners shouldn't have even been playing Atlanta in the Divisional Playoff, much less advancing past them, Judge and Killion also seem to forget the events of the game, and of last season in general, including:

The fact that the Niners were playing an Atlanta team on the road. The Niners haven't beat a winning team on the road since 1996, they have own only 1 playoff game on the road since 1981, and they had already lost at the Falcons handily earlier in the year;
The fact that the Falcons had held Hearst to a paltry average of 57 yards and 3.3 yards per carry in the two previous meetings that year. It's unlikely that Hearst would have suddenly exploded and made a huge difference on the ground;
The fact that the Falcons dominated in the trenches and shut down most of what the 49ers had to offer, outperforming the Niners so much that even noted ass-kisser Matt Millen had to comment of the Niner running game, "it won't matter who's running"; and
The fact that the game was not as close as they would like to think. The officials blundered once again, reversing themselves not once but twice to overturn a Falcon fumble return that would have blown the game wide open to the tune of 21-0, denying Atlanta their rout.

Apparently, if you want to discard all these factors and the fact that the Falcons were simply a much better team, the Niners certainly could have won the game. Naturally, though, Niner fans and the media don't want to think about the hard facts, they just want to look at the final score of 20-18 and assume that Garrison would have put them over top.

The most pathetic part of all this speculation is the fact that we're smack-dab in the middle of a football season right now! It's not like it's March and we're in the middle of the off-season with nothing to talk about -- it's November, the season is motoring along, and yet the media is still looking back and trying to build the 1998 Niners into something they were not -- a championship-caliber team. It is the very definition of whining.

Sadly, Judge and Killion aren't the only media members promulgating this line of thinking. Just last week alone, a talk show host on KNBR and noted Smoocher, Ralph Barbieri, opined that the Niners would have gone to the Super Bowl last year with a healthy Hearst in the Atlanta game. Not five minutes later, the host on KTCT -- the supposed alternative to the Niner-smooching KNBR in the Bay Area -- gave the EXACT SAME opinion. Two different sports-talk stations, two different idiot hosts, same silly whining. You gotta love the Bay Area. You gotta love the Bandwagon.

As a finishing touch to this story, as the clock was winding down in the 49ers less-than-triumphant return to action after the bye week against Pittsburgh, the radio announcer for the 49ers, Joe Starkey, made the excuse official, claiming once again that the 49ers were a "Garrison Hearst broken leg away" from the championship game, if not the Super Bowl.

In a way, we should probably appreciate that some of the focus has been shifted to last year. That means that Bandwagon is clinging to the past, which is an indication that the present is something less than attractive. Face it, Niner-haters, the Bandwagon can't stop whining just like a tiger can't change its stripes. So it's time to start the over-under line: name the date when we start hearing some new 49er takes on the Don Beebe penalty...

Original Story

October 30, 1999 (NHS) -- Now that the season is at the halfway point and it is apparent that the Niners won't make any more of a blemish on the NFL landscape than, say, the Browns, the whining has begun from what is left of the Bandwagon. The focus of the commentary is pretty much in two different places at this point: there's the "Well, we had a great run, and no team has ever been as good as we have for so long" camp, and there's the "If it weren't for all the injuries, we'd be right there fighting for the Super Bowl again" camp.

As far as the "dynasty" camp goes, we'll be touching on that in a series of articles in the coming weeks, outlining exactly what the Niner "dynasty" has consisted of, especially over the last five years. It is the second group of people we are concerned with now -- those who think that the downfall of the Niners is due to nothing more than bad luck, because Steve and Garrison and Terrell have been hurt. The fact that the Niners are currently trash, the theory goes, isn't their fault; it's those nasty injuries that have kept them from ruling the roost in the NFC West again.

Well, let's take a look at that notion, because, like most things that come out of the mouths of rabid starry-eyed Niner fans, it's a bunch of garbage.

First of all, injuries in football aren't just some magical things that are dependent solely on luck. Granted, luck does play a huge part in injuries; it was no more Joe Theismann's fault that he got his leg snapped in two by Lawrence Taylor than it was Jerry Rice's fault that that he was able to play for 12 consecutive years with nary a scratch. Nor was it Rice's fault that he got hurt in the opening game of the 1997 season and missed most of a year -- that, too, was the product of luck.

However, there are other circumstances which mitigate the likelihood of getting an injury -- all of which, in one way or another, have affected the 49ers this year. Yet, these circumstances are often conveniently forgotten as Niner fans rage about the injustice of their injuries.

Age -- the older one gets, the more susceptible the body is to injury, and this is especially true in football. Despite this, the 49ers began the season with 37-year-old Steve Young at quarterback and didn't provide a real adequate backup, despite the fact that Young is about 65 in football years.
History of injuries -- some people are just simply injury-prone. NFL history is rife with examples of good players who just couldn't seem to keep themselves on the field for a majority of a season. Garrison Hearst had a history of injuries when he signed with the Niners, yet amazingly played the full 1998 season before going down in the playoffs. Hearst will probably miss most, if not all, of 1999, yet the Niners and their fans act as if it's a complete shock, when in reality, it was a likely occurrence based on his medical history, dating back to a major knee injury he suffered in college.
Recovery time -- Even those who don't suffer many injuries, like Rice, can't beat the natural healing process when an injury does occur. Thus, when Rice sustained his first major injury in 1997, and tried to come back too early, he got hurt again in his first game back, in the same place where his original injury happened. The second injury to Rice wasn't so much bad luck as it was an inadequate period of recovery from his previous injury.

Given these mitigating factors, it becomes clear that some of the injuries to the 49ers are no accident. Steve Young recently turned 38 and has suffered at least three concussions in the three years prior to this one. Given his age and the propensity for injuries, not to mention the sorry state of the 49er offensive line, was it really reasonable for the 49ers to think that Young would play out the entire season without getting hurt? Was it arrogant of the San Francisco brass to believe that Hearst would suddenly become an iron man upon donning a Niners uniform? Isn't the Niner front office at least a little to blame for their short-sightedness?

Sure, it's unfortunate that the 49ers have suffered injuries to their major offensive contributors almost simultaneously. But aside from the fact that at least two of those injuries could have been predicted, or even expected, there are a couple other things at work here that seem to be left out in the cold whenever the old injury excuse is dredged up.

First off, again, EVERY team suffers injuries. The Niners aren't alone in seeing some of their guys in the injury list. Ricky Williams was playing hurt when the Niners eeked out a win over the Saints. Arizona was missing two of its top receivers in its loss to San Fran. Tennessee played without its top quarterback, Steve McNair, in its showdown at CandleCom, but all we heard about was that Steve Young was out. The Rams have run their record to 6-0 with their backup quarterback, and they trashed the Niners not only with Kurt Warner at QB but with their two best running backs missing most of the game due to injury. Heck, Carolina beat the Niners -- in San Francisco -- with two of its best receivers out, and this week, the Vikings crushed San Francisco with their backup running back.

So why can these other teams succeed despite injuries and win with backups, while the Niners can't? This question leads us to our second point regarding the Niner injuries: namely, that the Niners have brough this situation upon themselves. See, as usual, the garden-variety Niner fan wants to have it both ways -- they want to completely enjoy the last five years of winning in the free agency era, as the Niners continually brought in high-priced free agents and signed them to hugely back-loaded contracts in their effort to keep their little 10-wins-a-year streak alive, and yet they also now want to complain now that injuries have decimated the team.

The true fact of the matter is that the last five years of deficit spending has caught up with San Francisco. Faced with a total salary that was way over the cap, the Niners were finally forced this year to start purging some of the talent from the team. Sure, many of the guys that were released or traded were no better than average players, but when compared with the complete chaff that lines the current 49ers' roster, those players would have been huge upgrades. However, because they tried to cheat the salary cap system and stay competitive for the last five years, they're now in a position where they've got to get by with what little talent they have -- and as their 3-4 record and three blowout losses attest, they aren't getting by.

That's the thing to remember when you hear Niner apologists start harping on injuries -- that the Niners put themselves in this position. It's not some accident that the Niners have no talent in their reserve roles -- it's a market correction that is finally slamming the team after years of big free-agent contracts and poor drafting. The Rams and the other teams that are surviving their injuries are doing so because they spent their money in a different fashion. And sure, the Rams may have been crap for the better part of the decade, but that's over -- the Rams are now 6-0 and ruling the NFC West, while the Niners are spiraling toward their complete collapse. And the delicious part of it is, the Niners have even MORE money to slash off the cap next year.

All things considered, we would have preferred that the Niners would fail with their starters healthy, because it would have eliminated the whining and the excuse, but whatever the case, the fact remains that the Niners -- and only the Niners -- are to blame for their predicament. The injuries to Young and Hearst aren't some weird freak occurrences, and their lack of talent in backup spots and other roles isn't an accident. For years, we've had to put up with the glorification of the "genius" Niner front office, with their "master capologist" and their supposedly amazing money management. Well, they're finally getting their comeuppance, and it's just going to get worse -- which, of course, is fine with us here at NHS.

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