By Art Spander
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There’s something wrong. With the football team, which is evident. With the new stadium, which is apparent. The 49ers are showing up as a mystery, one that has coach Jim Harbaugh so perplexed he can’t even get angry with media questions.
The fans after halftime aren’t even showing up at all.
A new home, a $1.3 billion beauty of steel and class constructed in honor of champions of the past. The tickets are sold, but the people who hold them must not be sold on the Niners.
This is what happened Sunday. The nation returned to standard time. The 49ers, however, didn’t turn their game clocks ahead or back. They just stood figuratively still before all those empty seats at Levi’s Stadium, and they were upset by the St. Louis Rams, 13-10.
The Rams, 3-5, were not very impressive. The Niners, 4-4, were very unimpressive.
Niner quarterback Colin Kaepernick was sacked eight times — by a team that had six sacks total in its previous seven games.
“We have all the talent in the world,” said Niners left tackle Joe Staley. “We’ve been doing some dumb stuff, and they took advantage of it.”
Like not keeping the Ram defense out of the Niner backfield. Again. Two weeks ago, Kaepernick was sacked six times at Denver. Then, after a bye week to make fixes, he was sacked eight times.
“We prepared for this during the week,” said Kaepernick. Maybe the situation is unfixable.
Maybe Harbaugh is as distressed as he is bewildered. Usually, when he’s asked what went wrong, the competitive, combative man he is takes issue, as if the media doesn’t have a clue so just sit down and be quiet.
Not this game. Harbaugh was restrained, responding with generalities, not specifics, the old, “Not enough good football, we got beat.”
Old, except for Harbaugh, who normally is loathe to concede that his squad was outplayed. This was a new frontier for the Niners’ fourth-year leader. This took some swallowing.
Yes, as poorly as they played, the Niners could have won. They had the ball, third and goal on the Rams one, with nine seconds remaining. A field goal would have sent the game into overtime. Instead, Kaepernick bulled up the middle and fumbled. The Rams recovered.
“I was juggling the ball,” Kaepernick conceded. He also believed he had crossed the goal. A replay review verified he did not.
Could have won. But did not win, because now, at the midpoint of the season, when the Niners usually are becoming their best, priming for the playoffs, San Francisco is a mess. And the next game is against the Saints at the Superdome, where the Niners invariably have problems.
The Niner offensive line seemed confused, not only because rookie Marcus Martin was starting at center for the first time. The pressure on Kaepernick came from everywhere, from William Hayes at left defensive end, from James Laurinaitis at middle linebacker, from Robert Quinn at right defensive end.
“We’ve been talking up those things,” said Rams coach Jeff Fisher about harassing the quarterback, “and I said we’d been getting close. You’ve got to credit the guys up front. These were individual efforts.”
So in a way, as Staley confessed, were the Niner failures. “Penalties,” said Staley in review, “dumb blocks, dumb techniques and dumb schemes.”
By supposedly some very smart football linemen, certainly for the most part by veteran football linemen, who two years ago helped the Niners to the Super Bowl.
Could they have grown too old? Could they have grown complacent? Change is a constant in sports at any level. No team remains at the top all the time. No players remain the best forever.
They tell us O-lines have great staying power. Maybe this one has stayed too long.
“We’ve got to suck it up,” said Harbaugh, avoiding mention of individuals. “Got to play better.”
Of course they do, but how? Does the blocking have to improve? Does Kaepernick have to get rid of the ball quicker — and more accurately? And how much is attributable to the fact that the Niners, who like to set up the pass with the run, could rush for only 80 net yards?
“We had opportunities in both halves,” said Kaepernick, “and we didn’t take advantage.” Not when they score a paltry 10 points. Not when the quarterback is tackled eight times behind the line of scrimmage.
“That’s why I’m here,” said Kaepernick. “I’m here to make plays. I can make people miss. So that’s part of my job.”
They aren’t going to miss when they sweep in from every direction, and they didn’t miss. The Rams knew something about the Niner offensive line. And now everyone knows.
“We’ve got to look at ourselves in the mirror,” said running back Frank Gore, the spiritual leader of the Niners, “and we’re going to try to get to this postseason. We’ve got to do it and stop playing around.”
Or, when the postseason arrives, they’ll be forced to stop playing. Period.