Tag Archives: Jim Harbaugh

49ers Face Toughest Test

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Published November 11, 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

First of all, I want to acknowledge what many 49er fans are feeling this week, which is that old feeling of anticipation about a game on Sunday. This season has been a wonderful ride, but because of the nature of today’s NFL, there haven’t been many Sundays when you had that feeling in your stomach and couldn’t wait for the game.

There are milestones that teams must pass on their way from where the 49ers have been to where they seem headed, and one of them presents itself this week.
The New York Giants represent a rarity in today’s NFL: An historically good team that’s playing well this season. There are six teams with two or fewer losses, but only three — the Giants, the Packers and the Ravens — have been consistent playoff teams over the past several years. The rest are upstarts — the 49ers, Bengals and Lions.

You can make a case that the 49ers are the best team in that latter group. They beat both of the other teams on the road, and while the margins were slim, both wins were, you guessed it, milestones for an improving team. The Cincinnati win was their first in the Eastern Time Zone in recent memory, and the Lions were 5-0 when the 49ers showed up.

The Giants haven’t been dominating this year; they lost to the Redskins in their opener, and somehow lost to Seattle at home. They barely beat Arizona and Miami after trailing for much of those games. But they have three quality wins, Philadelphia, Buffalo and, last week, New England in Foxboro and a lineup that features a QB and several other key players who won a Super Bowl.

You could probably make a good argument that the 49ers should win this game two weeks ago, but the Giants’ win over the Pats last week makes a huge difference. More important was the way they won, coming back after Tom Brady threw for what seemed to be the winning TD, with Eli Manning moving them right back down the field for the win. They’re a team coming into Candlestick Park with an impressive combination of confidence and talent.

I’m not saying that the 49ers are outclassed in this matchup. I think they can win, and Las Vegas agrees with me. It just seems as if 49er fans have a newfound confidence in their team that has gotten a little out of hand, in my opinion, and I don’t hear the Giants getting the respect they deserve.

The 49ers have made big steps — first, beat somebody, anybody! Then come back from a devastating loss. Next, win a road game in the Eastern Time Zone. Now do that again, but against a better team, and let’s spot them, say, a 20-point lead. The win in Detroit was crucial, too. Alex Smith delivering the pass on fourth down was a personal milestone for him, and provided the team one as well. They had beaten an undefeated team in Week 6, and even if Detroit’s schedule was a little soft to that point (and it was), very few teams make it to 5-0 no matter whom they play.

After a bye week, there was another milestone.  To be considered a very good team, you need to beat lousy teams without drama. The 49ers did that not once, but twice in the past two weeks. Cleveland is terrible in every way, and the Redskins aren’t much better.  The only complaint 49er fans could have in either of those games was that the score didn’t reflect the extent to which they were the better team. They moved up and down the field at will, but stalled in the red zone, and that is evidently going to have to be a future milestone because they’re not ready for it yet.

Red zone frustrations aside, neither Cleveland nor Washington were ever a threat to beat the 49ers, and that is a remarkable thing to say about the season this football team is having. San Francisco has practically locked up a playoff berth, so what remains in the regular season is to beat one of the following teams: Giants, Steelers, Ravens. If the 49ers can do that, and win even four of their remaining five division games, they’ll have carved out a 12-win season for themselves, possibly a first-round bye, and the confidence of knowing that they can play with the best teams in the NFL.

And that, 49er fans, is why you’ve had that feeling in your stomach all week. Might as well get used to it, your team is going to play some very big games this year.

Harbaugh-Smith Relationship has Precedents

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Published October 6, 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

Sports fans in the Bay Area have been fascinated by the Jim Harbaugh-Alex Smith relationship since the day the new 49ers coach was hired.

One of his first actions was to announce that Smith would return as QB, much to the disappointment of The Faithful.

After watching Smith struggle for six years, fans were  convinced that he just couldn’t play in the NFL, and the talk shows were full of anger and frustration at the thought of watching No. 11 fling the ball all over Candlestick Park for another season. People just couldn’t imagine that the new coach, a former QB himself, couldn’t see the disaster right around the corner!

Now, with the 49ers at 3-1, with Smith’s performances ranging from “not horrible” to “pretty damn good,” 49er fans are starting to come around to the notion that Harbaugh may have known what he was doing.

You don’t have to look very far to see examples of QB-coach relationships in similar circumstances that worked out pretty well. One took place in Oakland, where Jim Plunkett, who had suffered through 10 nondescript seasons, hooked up with Tom Flores, a former QB himself, and the two combined for two Super Bowl championships.

Had there been a sports talk radio community in those days, it would have been very interesting how the Plunkett signing would have played on the air.

I had the opportunity to talk to a QB who had an experience like this. Sonny Jurgensen is a Hall of Famer, but looking at his career stats you have to feel for the guy.

He led the Eagles to a 10-4 record in his first year as an NFL starter (he was 27, by the way, that’s how it worked then), then suffered through eight non-winning seasons with Philly and Washington. He had good stats, mostly because his teams were always behind, but had played for a succession of coaches who didn’t “get” the passing game. One of those coaches, ironically, was one of the greatest QBs ever, Otto Graham.

That all changed in 1969. The legendary Vince Lombardi, who had retired from Green Bay after the 1967 season, was ready to go back to coaching. The Redskins hired him, and Jurgensen told me, “People know Lombardi for the Packer Sweep, and the defense, and the toughness, but what I learned was that he really was a master of offensive football. I had open receivers all over the field for the first time in my career. It was like the sun came out.”

Jurgensen led the league in attempts, completions, and passing yards. The Redskins went 7-5-2, their first winning season since 1955. Unfortunately, Lombardi was stricken with cancer, and died before the ‘Skins could build on his success. After one year with an interim coach, George Allen was hired and his defensive mindset propelled the Redskins to Super Bowl VII, but Jurgensen’s days of leading the NFL in passing were over.

Steve Young is another player who spent a couple of years in the USFL, played in the NFL for a terrible team, then came to the 49ers, where the QB position was the center of the universe.

He made a very interesting comment about Harbaugh and Smith on KNBR the week before the season’s first game. He was asked point-blank whether he could see Alex Smith hoisting the Super Bowl trophy, in a 49ers uniform. Young paused for about five seconds, and then said “I can.” He went on to explain that as a guy who played several years for coaches who didn’t understand the QB position and didn’t know how to call plays, he knows personally the difference when you get to a situation where the coach and the system are conducive to quarterback play.

Calling plays in the NFL is a lot harder than it looks from your couch, and anyone who has watched the 49ers for any of the past six seasons knows that with very few exceptions that has been a very weak point for this team. Fans have been very critical of the offensive coordinators over the years, but at the same time they have held Smith ultimately responsible for the team’s failure to move the football.

Young’s primary concern for Harbaugh and Smith this season was that because the fans had seen six years of futility from Smith there was no margin for a slow start. He felt that if the Niners got off to an 0-2 start, the crescendo of boos from the stands would be impossible to ignore, and with only a rookie behind Smith, Harbaugh, despite his own job stability, would be off to a very rocky start with the fans.

Fortunately, that isn’t what happened. In fact you could argue that the opposite has taken place, and Smith has shown enough development in the first four games that even if he has a rough game or even two, he and his new coach will have at least a few weeks to try to work out the kinks.

So next time you see Alex Smith trying to explain what’s different about playing for Jim Harbaugh, understand that what he’s trying to say is, “It’s like the sun came out.”