The San Francisco (Not so) Treat
November 11, 2008 by Dylan Kitzan · 1 Comment
If you told me nine games into the NFL’s regular season that the San Francisco 49ers would be tied with the Seattle Seahawks in the NFC West, I would have been ecstatic, until you told me that Charlie Frye and Seneca Wallace had started roughly half the games the ‘Hawks had played. Then I would expect San Fran to be about 2-7.
Well look at my Niners now. How they dropped tonight’s game against the Arizona Cardinals, I will never understand. I still haven’t figured out if they overachieved or underachieved on national TV, but it doesn’t matter…Arizona-29, Frisco-24 is all that matters.
With 20 seconds left, the Niners had three PASSING plays to get one yard, if they wanted. Yet, with no timeouts, they opted to run the ball, which went for no gain and forced them to spike the ball with four seconds left to get one more chance on fourth down.
Fortunately, they had one all or nothing pass play left. Oh, did I say pass play? I meant play.
Sure enough, Mike Martz, Mike Singletary or someone else who thought we had an offensive line decided to risk the game on a dive up the gut. It had less of a chance of working than the Niners now have of making the postseason and that was that.
Sure, Shaun Hill had been bad, throwing two unforgivable picks in the fourth quarter, but on the last drive, he and former Washington State Cougar Jason Hill had been clicking, getting SF to the goal line to begin with. He also had options in Isaac Bruce (the most reliable receiver the Niners have had since T.O. left town), Vernon Davis (who clearly wanted to be playing tonight, if only it meant Singletary wouldn’t drop his drawers again) and some guy named Ziegler (honestly, I still don’t know who he is, but his catch in the fourth quarter to get the Niners close was good enough for me).
And yet, they ran the ball. And they didn’t even run with Frank Gore, who has averaged more yards per touch than any running back in the league. They went with Michael Robinson. Why?
Anyway, this was definitely the worst football week for me on the season. That was the gut-punch, end-our-season with seven games left loss. Plus, several of my fantasy teams played like the Seahawks, and that’s never good. If Mike Holmgren was our coach, we would have won tonight. At least Seattle has that going for them for another couple months…
Often, you can come across play that will be very helpful and informative. Just open play and try it for 20 seconds. After all, seven games makes perfect.