49ers not good enough to overcome bad officiating

By Art Spander

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — There was a football coach named Henry (Red) Sanders, best known for his years at UCLA, who had the perfect response when people complained about the referees or others in football who judged what was happening on the football field.

“When my team makes as few as few mistakes as the officials,” said Sanders, “we’ll win every game.”

That said, the officiating of the Cardinals-49ers game Sunday was awful, both in terms of making calls and keeping the pace of play from slowing to a point of stagnation.

That said, good teams overcome whatever is beyond their control, or whatever is within their control, which is why they are good. The 49ers are not a good team.

Indeed, they played well defensively against the Cards, who statistically have the No. 1 offense in the NFL. And the Niners were also decent, if once again inconsistent, on offense. At the end, however, they were losers, 19-13, to a Cardinals team that, after a sloppy, boring, perplexingly erratic victory, has a 9-2 record — best in the NFC West — compared to the Niners’ 3-8 mark.

Sport is about getting the job done, no matter how many bad plays, bad breaks or bad calls. Sport is about making the best from the worst. When he was at the top of his game, Roger Federer blinked away a linesman’s error and won the next point and invariably the match. When he was at his best, Tiger Woods would pull off a great shot from a terrible lie — where others might have moaned about their misfortune.

Those 49ers of the '80s and early '90s, the ones that won Super Bowls, faced bad calls, bad weather and other obstacles that would have stymied lesser teams, yet they didn’t stop the Niners. They had the talent, the courage and the confidence.

These Niners of 2016 at the least have resilience and perception. They comprehend that the battle is to the strong and race to the swift. They realize that grumbling about the officiating doesn’t help; in fact it seems an excuse more than a justification. So, despite their won-loss mark, and the inescapable fact they are destined for no better than a .500 record even if they win their remaining five games, they are to be respected.

The officiating crew for this game at Levi’s Stadium, where maybe one third of the 70,799 sold-out seats were empty, was to be pitied. And belittled. And questioned. What was going on out there? Why did they need to confer so many times after a penalty flag? Referee Pete Morelli appeared befuddled by everything and anything.

Maybe this wasn’t the sequence that decided the game, and maybe each call was correct and needed, but early in the third quarter the Niners were called for seven penalties in 12 plays, four in seven plays, three of those defensive pass interference near the goal line or in the end zone. Eventually, painfully, the Cardinals scored on a one-yard run to take a 13-3 lead.

Were the Niners simply that clumsy, that klutzy, that they were grabbing and clutching the potential Cardinals receivers? Or were the officials subconsciously favoring Arizona, which certainly came in as the superior team?

“Them not being able to get those quick-hitting touchdown passes,” 49ers linebacker NaVorro Bowman said about the Cardinals, “and flaring their arms and things like that. I think that’s what caused the flags. We’re playing hard.”

And then there was a seemingly phantom roughing-the-passer penalty against the Niners in the fourth quarter. Second and 10 on the Arizona 32, and Quinton Dial bulled into Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer, dropping him for a loss. But the hit was high in the chest, or perhaps at the neckline, and the 15-yard roughing the passer penalty moved the ball to the 47. From there, Arizona drove in to score. 

“I’m not going to comment on the officiating,” the Niners’ beleaguered first-year coach, Jim Tomsula, said wisely. One, because he would be fined. Two because not only would it be fruitless but it also would detract from his image — as bad as that might be.

“I’m not going to comment on the officiating,” he repeated when asked a second time.

Tomsula did comment on his team, however, saying it has made progress — in its previous game against Arizona it was battered, 47-7 — and there were positives in a negative game, especially from quarterback Blaine Gabbert, who completed 25 of 36 for 318 yards and had one TD pass along with one interception.

“I thought Blaine has continually gotten better as he’s been in here,” said Tomsula after Gabbert’s third start since replacing Colin Kaepernick. “There’s obviously things that we need to clean up, but I think he’s continually getting better.

“I see a positive in the offense in terms of reads and picking things up. But it is a loss. We lost the football game.”

And no matter how terrible we believed their work was, the officials are not to be blamed. They didn’t drop a pass or miss a tackle. The 49ers are not good enough to overcome bad officiating.