49ers win 'by any means necessary’

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA — The people who play and coach the game understand what it’s about: Success. How you achieve it is inconsequential.

They don’t judge on style points, only on final scores. Al Davis told us exactly what matters in the NFL with his mantra, “Just win baby.”

This 49er season hasn’t been what some thought it might be. The team has struggled at times, mystified at other times. It lost to the Chicago Bears at home — the Chicago Bears, for heaven’s sake — and couldn’t even be competitive against the Denver Broncos.

And yet a few days before Thanksgiving, here are the Niners, perplexing, confusing — at least to the fan base — but still hanging in there. On Sunday, San Francisco, albeit unimpressively, defeated the Washington Redskins, 17-13. Then, Thursday, again here at Levi’s Stadium, they play the Super Bowl champion Seattle Seahawks, who at 7-4 have the same record as the Niners.

The Niners needed a touchdown with only 2 minutes 59 seconds remaining to overtake a Redskins team that now has a 3-8 record, a quarterback (Robert Griffin III) who knocks his teammates and a coach (Jay Gruden) who knocks his quarterback.

The important thing is they got that touchdown, the first one all season in the fourth quarter with Colin Kaepernick at quarterback.     

The important thing is when the time came, on fourth and one from their own 34 with only some five minutes remaining, they got a three-yard run from Frank Gore.

The important thing is the next play Kaepernick connected with Anquan Boldin for 29 yards, and when Redskins safety Ryan Clark was called for unnecessary roughness for his hit on Boldin the ball was on the Washington 19.

“We’ve got to make plays when they’re there,” said Bruce Miller, the Niner fullback. “Today, especially late in the game, we made them.”

That’s what winners do, of course. Even when they turn the ball over three times. Even when they give up 136 net yards rushing.

“That’s one thing about this team, and I applaud them for their efforts to keep going when it gets tough,” said tight end Vernon Davis. “We fought. We stayed in there, and we pulled it off.”  

Up north, the Seahawks were beating the division-leading Cardinals, 19-3. Then Thursday they’ll be in Santa Clara. If the Niners are going to the postseason it’s a game they have to win, because later they play up in Seattle where they never win.

Yet what might happen concerned the Niners less than what did happen, the victory over the Skins. 

“We win these kind of games by any means necessary,” said Niners coach Jim Harbaugh. “When you (turn the ball over), it’s about the team sticking together.

“We turned the ball over, and some teams will hang their heads when that happens. But that’s not what this team’s about. This team’s about each other. They’re about the team, the team, the team. Not into criticizing each other. We’re not into badmouthing each other, talking about each other. We’re into lifting each other up. Guys just kept playing and fighting. That’s what good teams do.” 

If by implication that was a zinger against the Redskins and their apparent dissension, Harbaugh made no effort to make anyone believe anything else. He read and heard what Griffin said about his teammates, that they needed to play better, and what Gruden said about Griffin, that he needed to worry about himself and not the others.

The unity of a football team is essential if unpredictable. A week ago, Niner linebacker Ahmad Brooks whined about coming out of a game. Just as the issue seemed about to enter crisis stage, Brooks gave his apology and Harbaugh wisely was in complete acceptance. He’s ready with a quick show of support. His guys are his guys.

One of those guys is Boldin, whom the Niners acquired from Baltimore before the 2013 season. Although 34 and in his 12^th season, the ability has not ebbed.

“He’s a shining star,” Harbaugh insisted of Boldin, “a stalwart. Still making the big plays.”

Which is what Boldin hopes to make. His touchdown for Baltimore in the Super Bowl XLVII two seasons ago helped defeat the Niners. Now he helping the Niners beat others.

“At some point,” said Boldin, “we were going to have to make a play, win a game on offense. Defense played their butts off. I think (the offense) played well in spurts, but we shot ourselves in the foot at times. Three turnovers definitely were detrimental. Tough games, but guys are making plays when called upon at the right times.”

Boldin made them. Kaepernick made them. The defense made them.

“A good team doing what it has to do,” said Harbaugh, “to win a football game.”

How good? We’ll know in a matter of days.

Cal can't keep composure — or the football

By Art Spander

BERKELEY — So this was the year Cal had a chance against Stanford, the year the Golden Bears had a defense and had tenacity. What they didn’t have one play into the game was their starting strong safety.

What they often didn’t have after that was discipline. Or, more critically, the football.

The air shooshed out Saturday virtually as the balloon was inflated. All the excitement, the hopes, the possibilities, disappeared in moments.

An ejection. A rapid 10-point deficit. Dejection.

The sun came out above Memorial Stadium after a morning rain, but the day metaphorically was dreary for most of the less-than-capacity crowd of 56,483.

The Cardinal was too much for Cal, maybe not as much as 2013 when the score was 67-13, the most one-sided in the history of a series that now has reached 117 games, but plenty nevertheless.

The final this time was 38-17, and the way the Golden Bears played defense, made penalties and threw interceptions, you never felt Cal had a chance. Both teams entered with 5-5 records, but there was no question one was superior.

“Frustrating” was the primary word tossed around in the Cal post-game comments, followed by “disappointing.” No one expected the Cal people to be pleased. Yet the remarks are becoming litany, and for the faithful, the Old Blues as Cal alumni designate themselves, agony.

The game overall was a bewildering mix of mistakes and official video reviews. In the third quarter alone, Cal had three touchdowns overruled on three consecutive plays. But good teams overcome all that incidental stuff. Bad teams don’t.

Was it a shock that on the first play from scrimmage Cal strong safety Michael Lowe was penalized and ejected for what the official believed was “targeting,” driving his helmet into Stanford tight end Austin Hooper? Of course.

“In 20 years,” said Cal coach Sonny Dykes, “I have never seen something like that happen the first play of the game. I wish that something like that wouldn’t affect us as much as it did. It affected me, and I think it affected our players.”

Which tells you perhaps as much you need to know about Cal. It is an improving team but also a fragile team, working its way back from a 1-11 record in Dykes’ first season. One blow knocked it off kilter.   

Not that Stanford’s defense and a Cal offense, which lost four turnovers — against a team that only had nine takeaways all season — weren’t major factors.

“They are a physical team,” Dykes, painfully honest about his program and other programs, said about Stanford. “And they laid some pretty good hits on us. They did a nice job tipping a couple of passes, and you have to give them credit for that. We have to make sure we move the pocket and make space.

Starting quarterback Jared Goff threw a couple of those, which were tipped and picked. His alternate Luke Rubenzer also threw two interceptions. Running back Daniel Lasco fumbled near the goal line, Stanford recovering. And there you have part of the tale of self-destruction.

“Our kids really wanted to play well,” said Dykes. “We really wanted to play well as a coaching staff. Our fans wanted us to play well. We didn’t make a very good showing today, and I am really disappointed about that.”

Goff, the sophomore, broke his own single-season record for passing yards. He had 182 Saturday on a so-so 16-for-31 completion mark and now has totaled 3,580 for the season with a game left to play against Brigham Young.

“They’re playing Savannah State,” quipped Dykes. “Probably winning 120-0, getting their confidence.” (It was only 64-0, but his point was understood. BYU gets a lot of points. And the Bears give up a lot of points.)

Goff, said Dykes, didn’t have one of his better games. “When you face a good defense,” reminded Dykes, “you have a small margin for error. Five turnovers are pretty significant errors.”

And 113 yards in penalties (Stanford had 21) are no less significant.

“I am disappointed in the way we played,” said Dykes. “I anticipated us playing better football. It was a bit of a strange football game, and it certainly didn’t start the way we wanted it to start.”

It didn’t end the way they wanted either. Stanford has won the last five years, half a decade. Somehow, Cal has to find a way to keep the other team out of the end zone — Stanford’s Remound Wright tied a Big Game record with five touchdowns — and, no less importantly, find a way to keep its composure.

Raiders weren’t going to let Chiefs out of the deep end

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — That “O’’ in Oakland? No longer does it equal the Raiders’ win total for the year. The streak is over. The streak ended here, at the O.co Coliseum — maybe they should change it to the 1.co Coliseum — on a Thursday night of rain and success.

Go ahead and say it, the drought has ended, for Nor Cal, for the Raiders.

It was inevitable. The football, that is, not the downpour, although the forecasters said that too was coming. The way Raiders interim coach Tony Sparano said a win was coming.

Teams don’t go through a 16-game NFL schedule without a victory. Sure, the 2008 Detroit Lions did, but since the 1976 Tampa Bay Bucs, an expansion doomed to failure by the system, the Lions were the only team.

Somehow, the Raiders were going to win one.

And they did against the Kansas City Chiefs, who had won their previous five games in a row and were tied for the AFC West lead.

They did by sweeping ahead 14-0 early in the second quarter. By letting that lead go and then, on a 9-yard touchdown pass from rookie quarterback Derek Carr to James Jones in the closing minutes, going back in front and winning 24-20.

“We’d been getting close,” said Sparano, who was coaching his seventh game since replacing Dennis Allen. “We’d been getting better in practice. I saw a different look in this team.”

And now there’s a different look with their record. One win may not seem like much, but to the contrary it’s huge when you’ve lost 10 out of 10 for the season and cobble that to the six straight defeats that concluded last year.

Not since Nov. 17, 2013, 368 days if you’re counting, had Oakland come out ahead.

“Those losses had been hard,” said Carr. He took over as starter from the veteran Matt Schaub before the first game. So since last year at Fresno State, he was always on the losing side. Until Thursday.

There was unabated joy in the Raider locker room. Such yelling and shouting. It was as if they had won the Super Bowl, not merely a scheduled game. “All that frustration that we’ve gone through when something goes wrong at the end,” said linebacker Sio Moore.

Moore and rookie Khalil Mack, also winless as a pro, did a bit of unprofessional celebrating — in the Chiefs' backfield — slapping hands after sacking quarterback Alex Smith on the K.C. 48 with 28 seconds. But before a penalty could be called for delay of game, Oakland wisely signaled time out. One more play, an incomplete pass, and the Raiders owned the ball. And the win.

“I was so caught up in the moment, man,” said Moore, who’s in his second year. “That was an error I’ve got to clean because in another situation — in all seriousness — that can make the difference. I do apologize for putting the guys in that situation. I can’t let emotions get the best of me.”

For 10 weeks, teams have been getting the best of the Raiders, although the way Oakland played defense in losing 13-6 to the Chargers last Sunday was verification that they were improved — if without results. Until Thursday night.

“I don’t know how to explain the feeling,” Moore said about finally winning a game. “It’s a good feeling to see through the culmination of weeks all the work that we’ve been putting in.

“We decided when we came in at halftime (with a 14-3 lead) that we weren’t going to let them get out of deep end of the pool, and we were going to finish it out.”

The Chiefs made it to the shallow end, but then the Raiders swamped them again.

Oakland scored first on an impressive eight-play drive, Latavius Murray bulling the final 11 yards. Then Murray dashed 90 yards two and a half minutes into the second quarter, and Oakland had its first 14-0 lead since the Twelth of Never.

“They blocked us,” said Chiefs coach Andy Reid, “(he) hit the hole, and we just weren’t able to catch him.

From two touchdowns back, Kansas City did catch the Raiders, however, and the guess was it would yet another Oakland defeat. Not at all.

“We learned a little something today,” said Sparano. “Learned something about ourselves. Today they just refused to give up the rope. My hat is off to the people in that locker room. Greatest feeling in the world is to see them smile. Helluva bunch of guys. They don’t stop playing. We don’t always do it right, but they play hard.

“Today the offense took the football down the field and did it in the old-fashioned Raider way. They ran it. They ran it. And we made a big play. It was a heck of a thing to watch, and if you didn’t learn anything from it, I apologize to you.”

No apologies needed this time. Only kudos.

Warriors have the look of a contender

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — The owner, Joe Lacob, walked out of the tunnel that goes from the court to the locker room and said to nobody in particular, “I feel better now.” Of course.

The Warriors had won, had stopped a mini-losing streak at two games. Still, with the team he has, Lacob should always feel good.

As should the Warriors fans.

This team has the look of, well, it’s tough to say champion, what with San Antonio and Cleveland very much a part off the NBA, but a definite contender, a team that will not crash out until very late in the playoffs. If at all.

The two guys we have declared as the heart and shooting soul of the W’s, Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, the “Splash Brothers,” were imperfect Thursday night. But with Andrew Bogut at his very best and Draymond Green quite magnificent, the result at Oracle Arena was anything but imperfect, a 107-99 win over the Brooklyn Nets.

And so the W’s, after a 5-0 start and consecutive defeats, are 6-2. Asked if he was pleased that with his stars not exactly starring (Thompson was only 8 of 22 from the floor, although he had a game-high 25 points) the team could win, Kerr chose not to be that specific.

“I am pleased anytime we win,” was his answer, implying it didn’t matter how or who.

It did matter that the 7-foot Bogut, unfettered and healthy, had 11 points, 14 rebounds and five assists.

“Bogey,” said Kerr, “was terrific. He can dominate defensively at the rim. He can rebound and he’s a terrific passer. That’s why we run the offense the way we do, with all those dribble handoffs.

“We need him to roll to the rim hard and get fouled. It was good to see him get to the line a little bit (3 of 5 on free throws) and get in the paint.”

He got to the Nets. Bogut doesn’t have a great touch, but he has great emotion and intensity. His dunks set off the crowd, which didn’t get going until about a third of the way into the second quarter once the Warriors got going.

The game was tied, 44-44, with a bit under eight minutes in the half, then, wham — or in deference to Bogut, should we say “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi”? — the Warriors were in front, 66-55.

“One of our goals this year,” said Kerr, “is to dominate the home court. The crowd was fantastic. It took us a while to get going. I think the whole key to getting the crowd involved is defense. Once you get the stops and get rebounds you can get out and run, and then the crowd gets into it.”

The first half, the Warriors had 18 assists and only three — three, count them — turnovers. That’s the stuff of a winner.

“We have a deep team,” said Curry, who finished with 17 points (for him, we say “only" 17 points). “Any night, someone can step up and make the right play.”

Like Bogut, or Green, who had 17 points and was three of eight on three-pointers.

“Our job,” said Curry, the captain, “is to be aggressive, create offense and make the right play. We need that second and third punch.”

Kerr contends that even with a winning record the Warriors are a work in progress. After all, the season’s only a couple weeks old. “We’ll get better,” he said, knowing full well every other team in the league will also — other than the sad-sack Philadelphia 76ers, that is.

“We are still adjusting and finding our identity,” said Kerr. “I want them to be explosive but a little less wild. That can be done, but it’s tricky.

“You don’t want to take away their spirit, but you have to be smart too. For the most part tonight it was pretty good, 30 assists and 11 turnovers. We missed some shots we normally make, and we had some open ones. What I tell our guys is that we are six weeks into this as a staff, and as a team we are just scratching the surface of what we are going to be.”

Which is one of the top teams in pro basketball.

There's something wrong with Niners, stadium

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.