SF Examiner: New Orleans Saints streaking into San Francisco

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

This is what makes it appear hopeless for the 49ers in the NFC divisional playoff game Saturday at the ’Stick. Their opponent, the New Orleans Saints, scored 45 points each of their past three games, including Saturday’s wild-card win over the Detroit Lions.

This is what makes it appear less than hopeless for the Niners: The Saints never have won a road playoff game.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: Alex Smith managed the San Francisco 49ers to playoffs

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

The 49ers have gone beyond expectations and predictions. Who imagined, after eight consecutive losing seasons, they’d finish the regular season with the second-best record in the NFL? Who dared think they would have the top defense against the rush?

A bye in the first round of the playoffs? That’s for teams like the old Niners or the new Packers, except these Niners reached that pinnacle — and it is a pinnacle as well as an advantage — while the Saints and Steelers, Super Bowl entrants the previous two years, did not.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2012 SF Newspaper Company

SF Examiner: This year's San Francisco 49ers reminiscent of 1981 team

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

What’s made this 49ers season, this delightful journey, even more fulfilling is no one saw this coming. In a way, it’s similar to 1981, the year that changed the way the Bay Area, really the entire country, judged the franchise.

There were no expectations back then, other than the fact that somehow the Niners wouldn’t win. But as we know, they did win, and San Francisco, beside itself with joy, celebrated as it never did again. The first time never can be repeated.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company

RealClearSports: When Lights Come on, It's 49ers Football

By Art Spander
For RealClearSports.com

SAN FRANCISCO — Let's skip the obvious and refuse to describe the performance as lights out, because literally at Candlestick Park on Monday night, they did go out - twice - in a power outage.

Let's not skip the obvious: The San Francisco 49ers are a very good football team, and they proved it by defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers, another very good football team, 20-3.

Read the full story here.

© RealClearSports 2011

SF Examiner: San Francisco 49ers aren't catching breaks these days

By Art Spander
Special to The Examiner

Jim Harbaugh was talking about criticism, conceding when the 49ers lose, there will be second-guessing.

“The whys for what happened,” he calls it. The worry is not what happened, but what didn’t happen, with the 49ers unable to get a victory.

“They’re the hunted now,” Harbaugh said of his Niners, after winning the division...

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2011 SF Newspaper Company