Newsday (N.Y.): 49ers QB makes Kaepernicking the latest craze

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- It's the Tim Tebow syndrome, 2,500 miles west and a year later. Colin Kaepernick is also a quarterback with a signature gesture. But there are differences. Kaepernick has a body full of tattoos -- virtually all religious in nature -- is a starter and has the 49ers one win from the Super Bowl.

In this world of short attention spans, Tebowing -- taking a knee and holding a clenched fist to his forehead -- has been replaced by Kaepernicking, in which he kisses his right biceps after scoring a touchdown.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: We've Seen the Future: It's Name is Colin Kaepernick

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

We have seen the future and it’s unflappable, uncatchable and wears No. 7. Colin Kaepernick is football’s new wave, a player who has his coach in thrall, opposing defenses in confusion and the 49ers in the NFC Championship.
  
Some quarterbacks run for their life, to escape. Kaepernick runs for records. And Saturday night, in San Francisco’s 45-31 win over the Green Bay Packers at the Stick in the NFC divisional playoff, he set two.
    
The game we used to know is being altered forever by signal callers just as apt to call upon themselves as the halfback or fullback who lines up behind them.
   
Magicians without a cape but with an innate sense of where to go. Or where to throw.
    
The attention went to Robert Griffin III, until his injury, and Russell Wilson, both first-round picks. Runners who were passers, passers who were runners. Even Andrew Luck is elusive, adding to his talent.
   
Kaepernick is no less the athlete and the leader. That he was drafted in the second round was an oversight that he won’t forget, but for the 49ers an opportunity they won’t regret.
 
“It’s a great team victory,” was the expected Harbaugh response when asked if Kaepernick’s brilliance justified the coach’s decision to use him.
    
It was also a great individual performance. He threw an early interception for a touchdown, a "pick six" the announcers call it. Then he threw the Packers for a loop.
  
Send out the bureau of missing quarterbacks. Green Bay still is trying to find out where he went.
     
Kaepernick’s first NFL playoff game was a mad dash to greatness, not to mention a reaffirmation of his coach, Jim Harbaugh, who didn’t so much take a chance on Kaep as pull back the curtain to show others what Harbaugh already guessed: Football is about to take a step forward. In Kaep’s situation, a very quick step.
 
“He’s got keys that he’s reading,” said Harbaugh. “It’s the read option. It’s a give read, or it’s a pull and run it himself.”
    
Kaepernick’s 181 yards were both the most rushing for a quarterback in NFL playoff history and the most for any Niner player in playoff history. He also completed 17 of 31 passes for 263 yards and two touchdowns. Then he went home and fed his pet tortoise.
  
To steal from that movie title, catch him if you can. Green Bay couldn’t.
    
There have been mobile quarterbacks, Fran Tarkenton, Michael Vick, Steve Young, way back Billy Kilmer, but Kaepernick keeps the other team off balance as nobody did or does.
  
The Packers would drop back and he would sweep through or around. The Packers would move in, and he would throw.
    
The rule of thumb, the old-school thinking, is that running quarterbacks have a short career. Harbaugh, a non-running quarterback in his day, makes his own rules. And his own choices.
  
There was nothing wrong with Alex Smith. Colin Kaepernick simply had more right. And more speed. Whoosh. A quarterback who can move like that gives a team a back who’s not in the defense’s thinking but definitely was in the Niners’ game plan.
  
The Pistol was the offense created at Nevada by Chris Ault, a hybrid of the shotgun and the single back. Kaepernick ran for 4,000 yards and passed for 9,000 in Nevada’s Pistol, but the skeptics didn’t think it would work in the NFL. Nor did they think Kaepernick would star in the NFL. Wrong on both counts.
  
“I saw a lot of great qualities about (Colin) in college,” said Harbaugh. As Stanford coach, he saw a lot of Luck, who at times he turned into a receiver. Versatility comes to the fore.
   
Harbaugh said the Niner game plan went heavy on the Pistol and on Kaepernick. “Both handing the ball off and running and play action,” explained the coach.
  
“We’re pretty multi-dimensional from that formation.”
   
Pretty unstoppable too.
 
“From what we see in practice,” said Niners linebacker Patrick Willis, “and from what we see in the game, you see a quarterback run the way (Kaepernick) runs, that’s unbelievable . . . It amazes me. It wows me.
   
“Credit goes to the whole offense to have a (running back) like Frank Gore, who people have to account for. And then Kaep’s doing what he’s doing. And before you know it (the opposition) doesn’t know which one to go for. And both of them are running wild, which they did (Saturday).”
   
The other quarterback, Aaron Rodgers of the Packers, the Cal kid who wanted to be a 49er, watched Kaepernick in awe.
   
“He was running all over the field,” said Rodgers. “He’s big, strong, athletic, throws the ball well and runs the ball extremely well. We didn’t really have a whole lot of answers for him.”
     
Maybe there are no answers.

Copyright 2013 San Francisco Chronicle

Newsday (N.Y.): 49ers strike gold with record-setting, elusive QB Colin Kaepernick

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO -- His runs break tackles or break into the clear.

His passes nearly break fingers, they're thrown so hard.

He has a body full of tattoos (mostly religious icons), a pet tortoise, a lingering chip on his shoulder.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

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: San Francisco: We Have An Air Game

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

One starts with the ball. If everything is in synch, the other inevitably ends with it. There’s the quarterback, now for the 49ers Colin Kaepernick, and his favorite receiver, also known as the security blanket. Michael Crabtree. It’s always been thus.

There was Y.A. Tittle and Billy Wilson, Joe Montana and Dwight Clark, before it became Montana and Jerry Rice. Before it became Steve Young and Jerry Rice. “The two of you work together so much,” Young has said, echoing others, “you can answer each other’s sentences.”

What Michael Crabtree has answered, if in actions but not words, is the Niners' need for a deep threat, the individual with the moves and speed to get to the ball and the hands to clutch it.

They were a beautiful combination last weekend against the Arizona Cardinals, Kaepernick completing 16 passes for 276 yards and two touchdowns, Crabtree, the diva humbled, grabbing 8 of those for 172 yards – to total 1,105 for the season, ninth best in the NFL – and both the touchdowns.

“I was really impressed watching the game in person,” Niners coach Jim Harbaugh, a one-time pro quarterback himself, said on radio station KNBR, “and then I watched the TV copy when I got home, but the coaches' film copy was even better. The two of them really deserve to be highlighted."

“The throws that Colin made, the catches that Michael made, those were incredible grabs and he did a tremendous job getting open in several different ways – beating his man at the line in press coverage, creating separation downfield, the incredible one-handed catch, run after the catch. And then Colin was putting the ball, in four of those cases, in the only place it could have been. So they deserved to be highlighted. Those were huge plays and both of them did a great job.”

A job Crabtree, the No. 10 pick in the 2009 draft was expected to be doing. A job, Kaepernick, the No. 36 pick in the 2011 draft – and still irritated he wasn’t chosen until the second round – has shown he could do.

Crabtree could lord it over people a little too much, even if he had some justification. After only one season at Texas Tech, he was being called a Heisman candidate. And that spectacular play against Texas on Nov. 1, 2008, when Crabtree made the catch just inside the sideline, spun around Curtis Brown and scored the winning TD with one second left was not only voted the Big 12 Play of the Season but remains a YouTube favorite.

Supposedly, he would be picked by the Raiders at No. 7 the next spring, but the late Al Davis never followed protocol or the thoughts of others. Oakland drafted Darius Heyward-Bey, and so the Niners eagerly chose Crabtree. Who lorded it over them, with a long holdout before signing.

The first two years, Crabtree wasn’t so much a bust as non-entity. He improved in 2011, taking directions from Harbaugh, the rookie coach, and passes from Alex Smith, the revitalized QB. Still, the Niners were limited in throwing to wide receivers, Crabtree catching a lone pass for three yards.

Crabtree’s work through the offseason was evident even in the early games with Smith at quarterback. Then when Kaepernick, a bit quicker, a bit stronger than Smith, took over, the connection seemed perfect.

“My dude (Kaepernick) made it happen,” Crabtree said of becoming the sixth person in Niners history with at least 85 catches a season. The others: Rice, Clark, Roger Craig, Terrell Owens and Derek Loville.

“I’m just going out there running routes, catching the ball until I make a play.”

That’s what Niners management appreciates about Crabtree. And Kaepernick. The ability to make plays. The ability halfway through the second quarter to jolt the team into action and, after trailing 6-0, into the lead with a 49-yard touchdown pass.

“It was something we practiced at home, using my technique,” said Crabtree, who at first showed a surprise reluctance to discuss his recent success – and then almost couldn’t be stopped.

“Kaepernick threw me the ball. He’s real good with his feet and made something happen and really, really made the play.”

True or false, and there’s a degree of either, because pass plays like the tango take two (discounting blockers that is), and Crabtree can spin great tales about his own great moves. And plans.

“I think I can be a Pro Bowler,” said Crabtree. “I think I can. Now I’m trying to get to the Super Bowl.”

The next step is the NFC Divisional Playoff Jan. 12 at Candlestick, against the Green Bay Packers.

“You have to treat the playoffs like every other game,” said Kaepernick.

What you don’t do is treat Michael Crabtree like every other receiver. Because he’s not like every other. He’s Kaepernick’s main man.

Copyright 2013 San Francisco Chronicle