SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: Tough but spectacular

By Art Spander
49ers Insider, San Francisco Chronicle iPad App

You watched, as much in dismay as disbelief. The 49ers were down by 17 points early in the second quarter.

Down against the Falcons, a team with the best record in the conference.

Down at the other team’s home, a domed stadium full of hysteria and great passing by the other quarterback.

Down but, despite the way many of us thought, not even close to being out.

“It’s hard to break us,” said Niners running back Frank Gore, the nonpareil. “We’re tough.”

Tough mentally, which is where it starts.

“We still had confidence we could beat those guys in their house,” said Carlos Rogers, the cornerback.

Tough physically, which is where it continues.

“There had been breakdowns in communication and coverage,” said Dashon Goldson, the free safety. “We did a good job of tightening up some things.”

A great job of holding the Falcons scoreless in the second half and, in the process, recording the third-biggest post-season road comeback in the 90 years the NFL has been in existence.

A spectacular job of defeating the Falcons, 28-24, in the NFC Championship at the Georgia Dome and reaching the Super Bowl a sixth time – where the Niners, coached by Jim Harbaugh, will face the Baltimore Ravens, coached by his brother, John.

Coaches talk of players who make plays.

Players such as Joe Montana and Dwight Clark who three decades ago combined for The Catch and altered the path of history for San Francisco football.

Players such as Ahmad Brooks who, on third down, and NaVorro Bowman, on fourth, broke up consecutive fourth-quarter pass Atlanta pass attempts.

Players such as Vernon Davis, suddenly rediscovered in an offense quite capable of adapting to the moment, who caught five passes for 106 yards. “It’s bigger than me,” insisted Davis. “It’s not about me. It’s about the team.”

Players such as Gore, who, with Atlanta having schemed to stop the expected running of quarterback Colin Kaepernick, ran for 90 yards and two touchdowns.

Players such as Kaepernick, the second-year quarterback, who after last week, when he rushed for a record 181 yards, this time carried only twice for 21 but completed 16 passes in 21 attempts for 233 yards and touchdown.

“The Falcons put a spy on Kaep,” said Gore, using football language for a defender assigned to keeping the quarterback from running. “We kept hearing all week how they were going to pound Kaep. He made the right decisions. I got the opportunities.”

On the CSN Bay Area post-game show, Clark, pointed out. “I thought it was a brilliant game plan. They came out in the read-option, and Colin made the right decisions. Even when they got behind, they didn’t panic and try to pass a lot.”

Atlanta certainly passed a lot. In the first half alone, quarterback Matt Ryan threw 24 times, completing 18, three for touchdowns. The Falcons appeared unstoppable.

“We had the jitters,” said Niners cornerback Tarell Brown. (So did Niners fans). “We knew it would be a challenge. We just settled down.”

Once they did the gloom started to settle in on Atlanta. A week earlier the Falcons had squandered a 20-point lead to Seattle but rallied to win. This time they squandered a 17-point lead, but it was to the Niners. To a franchise which after 18 years is back in the championship game.

The post-game locker room offered not only athletes in celebration but a glimpse into the past. There was Eddie DeBartolo, who owned the Niners when they won their five Super Bowls, presenting the NFC Championship trophy to his sister, Denise DeBartolo York, who owns the team today. And right there were Denise’s husband, John, at last a happy man, and his and Denise’s son – and Eddie’s nephew – Jed York, the Niners president.

There was a sense of solidarity and tradition, a feeling that after the lean years the restoration of the Niners franchise is all but complete.

“This is fun to be a part of,” said Justin Smith, the defensive tackle. He is playing with a torn triceps. He will need surgery. But he wasn’t going to miss being a part of scene. And he was a very big part of the success.

“We knew Atlanta had weapons all over the place. We knew they started fast. But we never got down and we won. It’s an awesome feeling.”

At halftime, Harbaugh, the coach was simply businesslike. It was Davis, the receiver, who was emotional, giving the motivational speech. Later he would shout out, “Kaepernick is the man.”

The 49ers are composed of a lot of men, symbolically as well as literally, a lot of people who never concede.

“Everybody goes through adversity,” reminded Patrick Willis, the All-Pro linebacker. “The way we came back makes it so more captivating.”

Donte Whitner, the safety, would say, “When we had to stop them at the end, there was a lot of pressure. We knew what was at stake.”

In three words, the Super Bowl.

Copyright 2013 San Francisco Chronicle

Newsday (N.Y.): Colin Kaepernick leads 49ers over Packers, 45-31

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco 49ers -- with Colin Kaepernick rushing for 181 yards, an NFL postseason record for quarterbacks -- crushed the Green Bay Packers, 45-31, Saturday night at Candlestick Park in an NFC divisional playoff game.

The 49ers will face the winner of Sunday's Atlanta-Seattle game in the NFC Championship Game. For the second straight year, both 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh and his brother, Ravens coach John Harbaugh, will be coaching in the conference championship games.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: How bad could it be?

By Art Spander
San Francisco Chronicle 49ers Insider

There’s a word for how the 49ers played against Seattle on Sunday night: Awful. The question is why?

Because defensive tackle Justin Smith was missing? Because Colin Kaepernick was missing? Because as linebacker Patrick Willis said, “Sometimes the best of us in sports have those moments”?

Or because, perish the thought, the Niners were not who we thought they were.

Without Smith, injured a week earlier, the 49ers defense wasn’t what it had been. The Seahawks, riding a wave and running figuratively at will – at least in the case of Marshawn Lynch – crushed San Francisco, 42-13.

A team that ranked No. 2 in overall defense, No. 1 against the run, was helpless and hopeless. Lynch – starting with the opening minute 12 seconds when be crashed and smashed 24 yards for a touchdown through the hole where Smith would have been – gained 111 yards by the end of the night.

On the other side, quarterback Kaepernick, denying the obvious, that he was frazzled by the insanely loud crowd at Seattle’s CenturyLink Field, had trouble either getting off plays or getting yards from those plays.

After a brilliant game eight days earlier against the Patriots, Kaep reverted to the second-year player he is, twice getting called for delay of game penalties, twice needing to call time out to avoid delay of game penalties and, although completing 19 of 36 for 244 yards, throwing as many interceptions (one) as touchdowns (one).

One report: Seattle coach Pete Carroll had noted that Kaepernick and the Niners were pitifully slow in having a play run off once they came to the line of scrimmage. In the noise and tumult of a place where the crowd, known as the 12th man, has its own flag flying from a pole, that tardiness would haunt.

The 49ers’ success has come from stopping the run, which they couldn’t do, and running without a stop, which they couldn’t do either. San Francisco gained only 82 yards rushing, and its main man, Frank Gore, had only 28 yards on six carries.

Now, with their seeding in the playoffs having dropped to No. 3, meaning no bye the first weekend, the Niners are confronted with some unnerving reality: How are they going to win in the postseason if the offense and defense are no better than they were against the Seahawks?

“We didn’t coach well enough,” said a grim, and newly 49, Jim Harbaugh. “Didn’t play well enough. We didn’t win the down enough. Everybody came away after this with the same feeling. This wasn’t good.”

This was depressing. This was awful.

“But we’ll wake up (Monday),’’ Harbaugh reminded, “and still have a half-game lead in the division. Our hand will be on the dial.”

The program to which they tune hardly will be the one the Niners expected to watch. The Niners fell a half-game behind Green Bay for the No. 2 seeding in the NFC. Unless the Vikings beat the Packers on Sunday, while the 49ers defeat Arizona, San Francisco will be playing wild card weekend.

And with Smith questionable – surely, as Adam Schefter of ESPN tweeted, Smith will not face Arizona – Mario Manningham on crutches after having his knee smashed and Vernon Davis recovering from a “mild” concussion, the 49ers could use a recuperative period.

“I thought it would be a closer game,” said Harbaugh tersely of the most one-sided loss in his two-year tenure as the 49ers' coach. “We don’t feel good about it. It’s how we handle it, how we respond.”

On a night of rain and revelry along the Puget Sound, Pete Carroll, Harbaugh’s adversary since Carroll was at USC and Harbaugh at Stanford, got his points (Seattle has scored an even 150 total its last three games) and, gleefully, his revenge.

The Seahawks were 0-for-3 against Harbaugh, and who would forget when, three years ago, Harbaugh had Stanford go for a 2-point conversion with a 30-point lead and Carroll at the post-game handshake queried him, “What’s your deal?’’

Carroll’s deal Sunday night as the Seahawks gained a place in the post-season was to stand hatless on the sideline and laugh and cheer at each Seattle score. There went a happy man.

Two of Harbaugh’s former Stanford team members, now with Seattle, receiver Doug Baldwin and defensive back Richard Sherman, were no less delighted. Baldwin caught two of the four touchdown passes thrown by Seahawks rookie quarterback Russell Wilson. Sherman returned a blocked David Akers field goal 90 yards for a touchdown in the opening minute of the second quarter.

“A 10-point swing,” said Harbaugh, meaning the three the Niners should have had and the seven Seattle did have.

The 10 points didn’t matter that much in the end. The runback, however, proved stunning, leading to speculation that the Niners’ focus didn’t make the trip from the Bay Area.

“I don’t know about that,” said Willis, “but whatever it was out there tonight, it wasn’t good.” Not at all. Not at all.

Copyright 2012 San Francisco Chronicle

SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: All for one: Harbaugh, Kaepernick joined at the lip

By Art Spander
San Francisco Chronicle 49ers Insider

His father, Jack Harbaugh, said it specifically a while back: “Loose lips sink ships.” Provide no information that will benefit the enemy. To Jim Harbaugh, that would be every other team in the NFL.
  
Also the media.
  
We’re never going to learn much from a Jim Harbaugh press conference other than what we already know.
    
Grass is green, rain is wet, and each game will be difficult.  
   
Hey, Jim, how are you going to prepare for Seattle, one of the loudest stadiums in the league?
  
“We’re going to prepare like we do for all our away games,” was the Harbaugh answer.
   
Thanks, that was informative.
    
Now and then, Harbaugh adds a fillip, as when asked about his quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, being voted NFC Offensive Player of the Week, for the four touchdown passes in the win over the Patriots.
   
“As always, we’re happy for the other guy’s success,” said Harbaugh. “And our team won a big game on the road. Great team victory. Sometimes a rising tide lifts all ships.”
   
Aye, aye, admiral.
   
Jim’s troops, well taught, are no more informative than their leader. You might say they are joined at the hip. Or the lip.
   
Kaepernick, asked if on the bus back to the airport in Boston, he thought to himself, “This was a pretty darn good game, worthy of that kind of award,” answered: “I was just happy we got the win.”
   
His predecessor, the now diminished Alex Smith, wasn’t much more outspoken – when he was starting. After he was benched, Alex came out with a legitimate gripe that he only thing he did wrong to lose his first-string spot was incur a concussion.
   
A coach’s first priority is to win games, of course, and as long as the Niners do so – ESPN’s Adam Schefter put them atop his NFL rankings this week – Harbaugh blithely will continue withholding what information he chooses.
 
Jim is a graduate, literally and symbolically, of the Bo Schembechler School, Michigan, where Bo coached Harbaugh – and Jack was an assistant – a place where both the opposition and the press were kept in the dark.
  
You want to learn about a Harbaugh team, watch the game. Bo was historically brief in his dealings with the press, which barely was allowed to do interviews after games. Harbaugh is brief, if not quite historically.
   
And while Harbaugh may quote from poets and poseurs, probably to tease, his own quotes are of little value.
  
What did (the 49er) defense do to succeed against QB Russell Wilson (of the Seahawks) the first time the teams played in October?
  
“Well, they made plays,” said Harbaugh, “We made plays.”
   
That’s usually what occurs in a football game.
    
For Harbaugh, as preached by Schembechler, “No man is more important than the team. No coach is more important than the team. The team. The team. The team.”
  
A fine concept, but obviously not entirely accurate. If Kaepernick were not more important, he wouldn’t be first string, having replaced Alex Smith. If Aldon Smith were not more important, the Niner defense wouldn’t be what it is.
        
Indeed, football is a team game, and a quarterback is nothing without an offensive line or receivers, while a linebacker requires other defenders to get his shots and his tackles. The Harbaugh argument – never given – would be with Kaepernick at QB, The Team is better than it was with the other guy, now consigned to stand and watch.
   
What, someone wondered, was Kaepernick’s reaction to being chosen the top NFC player? “Excited about it.”
  
Why? “I think it’s a great accolade for the team.”
   
No less an accolade for Kaepernick and Harbaugh.
  
“He’s crazy,” defensive tackle Ricky Jean-Francois, said of Harbaugh last year. “Plus, he’s comfortable with the way he is.”
  
A way that perhaps makes others, such as sports writers and TV and radio journalists uncomfortable.
  
“Jim, are you expecting a higher-scoring game this time around against Seattle?”
   
“It’s possible,’’ said Harbaugh.
    
Anything is possible, except the coach or his players offering in-depth information.
  
“Colin, you and Michael Crabtree work well together. What do you like about him as a receiver?”
   
“He catches the ball and makes plays after he catches it,” said Kaepernick.
   
As they tell you in English 101, make it clear and simple. Kaepernick and his coach have done that, so apparently criticism be damned.
 
The Niners will do what they must; their players will say what they’re allowed. Maybe their football, wins over the Patriots, the Packers, the Saints, all on the road, are more eloquent than any words.
  
“But Colin, we have this job, as you have your job, and if you were standing in our spot, what would you ask you?”
  
“The same questions every week like you all do,” said Kaepernick, and then he laughed.
  
Presumably the joke’s on us.

Copyright 2012 San Francisco Chronicle

SF Chronicle: 49ers Insider: Frank Gore Is a Football Player

By Art Spander
San Francisco Chronicle: 49ers Insider

The accolade was simple yet elegant. “Frank Gore,’’ said his coach, “is a football player.”  From one man to another, from Jim Harbaugh, who believes in toughness and persistence, to Frank Gore, there could be no greater compliment.
 
A football player, a back who will run over you if he can’t run past you, a back who can block on passing assignments, a back who as time goes by never looks back and as his play Sunday showed, never looks bad.
  
The 49ers weren’t brilliant against Miami, but they were effective. They made enough plays to overcome both themselves and the Dolphins, gaining a 27-13 victory before the usual announced sellout of 69,732 at Candlestick Park.
   
Colin Kaepernick’s minor mistakes, a few overthrows that brought a few boos – hey, San Francisco fans demand much of their quarterbacks – and a fumble, were offset by a 50-yard touchdown run in the final minutes.
   
Rookie LaMichael James' awaited debut was satisfying, eight carries for 30 yards, some decent blocking and one reception. “It’s been a long time,” said James, the Niners’ second-round pick in April, “but great things come when you’re patient.”
   
The defense was the defense, allowing only a cumulative 227 yards to the Dolphins, although we’ll learn a great deal more about the Niners this Sunday night when they play the best offensive team in the NFL, the New England Patriots.
   
There’s not much to learn about Frank Gore but plenty to admire. His 63 yards on 12 carries, one of those over a yard for the 49ers' first touchdown in more than 96 minutes, lifted him above 1,000 yards rushing for the sixth time in eight seasons.
   
He’s been nicknamed “The Inconvenient Truth,” borrowed from the title of a book about global warming by another Gore, Al, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2000. But there’s nothing inconvenient about Frank, to the Niners’ thinking.
   
“Frank Gore had another phenomenal game,’’ said Harbaugh. “Some great running throughout the game. Blocking, everything that Frank does . . . Let me just reiterate this, Frank is a football player.”
  
Frank is part of the season James had not been activated. They play the same position, although at the moment very few in the NFL play it as well as Gore.
 
“He’s got tremendous ability and great heart,” said Harbaugh when asked about Gore’s endurance. “The assignments, the technique. He’s just on everything. He goes into every one of these games so on mentally.”
   
The talk is that 30 is the age of decline for a running back, who by then is starting to slow and beginning to take more hits. A man loses a step, and subsequently loses his job. Gore, at 29, won’t listen.
   
“When you (hear) everybody say, ‘When you turn 29, 30 you can’t do it anymore,’ when I got to 29, I told myself I’m going to overcome that.  And it’s all about training, training in the off-season, working, being smart during the week. And I love the game of football. I’ve been playing it since I’ve been four, and I’m just having fun.”
   
The Niners have used modifications of the Pistol offense that Kaepernick played at Nevada-Reno. “I don’t like it,’’ said Gore. He laughed. “No, it’s good. Kaep did a great job reading. He made the big play. Everything came toward me, and Mr. Everything did his thing.”
   
Not a bad nickname for Kaepernick, Mr. Everything, although with the Niners struggling to score, leading only 6-3 at halftime, for a while Kaep looked like Mr. Nothing.
  
“These games are really hard,” Harbaugh said in defense of his offense, and particularly his QB. “Miami’s a heck of a team. We knew they were going to be tough to move the football on.”
   
Said Kaepernick, asked the obligatory question whether he was pleased,  “I wish I had a few throws back, a few different decisions, but overall, yeah.”
  
He doesn’t wish he had different running backs, however.
  
“LaMichael,” said Kaepernick. "Very shifty, very fast. He opens up a lot of things for this offense. For Frank, a greater appreciation. I always knew he was a great running back. Being out there on the field and seeing some of the cuts he makes and how he protects in pass protection, I don’t think there’s another back like him in the league.”
  
When Gore, who went to the University of Miami and off-season lives in the Miami area, came out of locker room, he was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the print of a dolphin on the front, the dolphin’s tail up and head down.
  
“I know we had the Dolphins on the schedule,” Gore said, then smiled. “I’m not a planner, so I said, ‘We’ve got to flip them upside down when we play them.’ I was a Niners fan.”
   
More than that, he’s a football player. One of the best.