Niners: Wrong audible, right quarterback

One play into the game and Brock Purdy was down, sacked. Not quite the way saviors are supposed to begin.

“Wrong audible,” was the brief, unemotional explanation from 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan.

But in time, the right quarterback.

No, Purdy, the acclaimed Mr. Irrelevant, did not by himself beat the Bucs and Tom Brady, called the GOAT or greatest of all time. Football is a team sport.

But on Sunday at Levi’s Stadium, the rookie Purdy, utilizing his talents and a game plan brilliantly created by Shanahan and his staff, was better.

Because, as has been the situation since the loss to Kansas City, the 49ers’ defense is better.

Sure, much of the pre-game material was about the two QBs — the Niners’ rookie, who took over from the injured Jimmy Garoppolo, and the Bucs’ star, who grew up in San Mateo, some 25 miles from Levi’s.

Yet as we have been instructed over the years, it’s the other people, the linesmen, the defenders, who make the difference. Brady only had thrown two interceptions all season. He threw two alone against San Francisco. Two more than Purdy.

“I was really happy for him,” said Shanahan. “He’s tough. It looked like he would be our No. 2. Then Jimmy signed. He works hard.”

After the game, Purdy was as humble as a man taken last in the draft figured to be.

“He’s very poised, but he plays with energy at the same time,” running back Christian McCaffrey said. “And I think those are two great traits to have as a quarterback.”

If Purdy had game-opening, first-NFL-start jitters, they were probably knocked out of him by safety Keanu Neal on that first play — a sack that was negated by an unnecessary roughness penalty.

Said Purdy, “Honestly it just felt good to get hit and just feel like I was in the game.”

He knows the system and his teammates after weeks of practice. What he didn’t know was that the two men ahead of him would get hurt.

What we don’t know is how he’ll respond in a road game where the crowd is hooting and jeering, but we will learn quickly enough. The Niners play at Seattle on Thursday night.

“We got turnovers in this game,” said Shanahan, about the offense. They also had 404 yards rushing and passing, And the Niners, once 1-2, are 9-4 after a sixth straight win.

Deebo Samuel is injured, a high ankle sprain, which could be a big loss in this run-oriented system. Then again, that’s why the 49ers signed McCaffrey. He is not Deebo, but he is very close.

The theory in the NFL is “next man up.” If the next man is Brock Purdy, the idea would seem to have some merit.

Bucs win belongs as much to Bowles as Brady

By Art Spander

Tom Brady was the MVP, of course, because the prediction was that Super Bowl LV either was going to belong to him or the shell-shocked kid on the other side, Patrick Mahomes. And yes, Brady is the greatest ever.

But this one, this mismatch, no less belongs to Todd Bowles as it does to Brady.

Bowles is the Tampa Bay Bucs’ defensive coordinator, the guy who designed the formations and called the plays that for the first time in the season of 2020, really the the first time in the career for young Mr. Mahomes, left him virtually helpless and hopeless.
 Never in his brief career had Mahomes, harassed, chased, and sacked, been unable to create a single touchdown.

Tampa Bay limited K.C. to three field goals in its overwhelming 31-9 victory.

Brady will get the attention, and unquestionably he deserves it, quarterback on the winning Super Bowl team for a record seventh time, having wisely joined the Bucs last spring as a free agent after 20 years with the New England Patriots.

Brady threw three touchdown passes, two to his once and current teammate, tight end Rob Gronkowski. Offense glows, but as we’ve been told, defense wins.

“Todd Bowles, Todd Bowles,” Devin White, the Bucs linebacker, said to CBS-TV. “He did it.”

Bowles once was head coach of the New York Jets, and there was a report before the kickoff of the Super Bowl that if the Bucs won, Bruce Arians would retire as Tampa Bay head coach and Bowles would replace him.

Arians denied as much after the game, for now at least, saying, “This is fun. This is what I wanted.”

For a long while. At 68, Arians is the oldest coach in the NFL. And now, certainly, the most elated.

Particularly since his Bucs not only won, but since the game was played at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium, where because of the pandemic there were more cardboard cutouts than live fans, also won the first Super Bowl held in a home stadium.

Kansas City was the defending champion and a narrow favorite (3 points). But after taking a 3-0 lead, the Chiefs were barely in the game. They struggled with a patch-up offensive line, true, but in truth they struggled with the Bucs’ relentless pursuit

There were reminders of Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium, when the Denver Broncos, underdogs, stopped a brilliant Carolina Panthers offense and Cam Newton.

Somehow these defensive coaches, with a two-week window between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, figure out how to unnerve the big boys — like Mahomes.

“Our timing was not there,” said Mahomes, who was 26 of 49 for 243 yards. He was sacked three times and intercepted twice.

Their timing wasn’t there because invariably someone from the Bucs — White, Antoine Winfield — was there, in their face. Mahomes, known for his scrambling, could not escape. Tampa defenders went wide, Mahomes not knowing which way to go.

“Give them credit,” said Mahomes about the Bucs.

So we will, as we give Brady credit, a 43-year-old who seems destined to play until he’s 53. The Serra High (San Mateo) grad is the essence of confidence and reliability. Wisdom and guile, goes the aphorism, make up for age and immobility.

Arians knew last spring he needed a quarterback, and when the Patriots decided for one reason or another not to bring back Brady, the Bucs had one. And now, after languishing since winning the 2003 Super Bowl, they have another title.

Tom indeed is one of a kind, and brought to the same franchise where Todd Bowles put together the defense, it’s a perfect union.

One knows the way to get points, the other the way to keep from getting them.

Bucs’ Antonio Brown: From troubles to a place in the Super Bowl

By Art Spander

It’s all about production in sports.

There are exceptions, individuals or organizations with a genuine concern about civility and morality. Yet the issue rarely is what the athlete has done away from the field — his troubles in society — but what he is able to do on the field.

There was a wonderfully skilled receiver on the Oakland Raiders in the late 1960s, Warren Wells, who could catch anything. Unfortunately the law caught up with him, and he was arrested just before a huge game in Oakland.

For Raiders owner Al Davis — “Just win, baby” — the problem was less why Wells had been jailed than it was getting him back in the lineup for that Sunday.

It is ironic that receiver Antonio Brown, scheduled to play for Tampa Bay in Super Bowl LV on Sunday, once was also with the Raiders, if very briefly, a few days in the summer of 2019.

Then he was with New England. Then he was suspended eight weeks for multiple violations of the NFL’s personal conduct policy (burglary and sexual misconduct).

Then in October 2020, partly on the recommendation of Tom Brady, who for a few days was a teammate on the Patriots, Brown was signed by the Buccaneers and now is to play in the most important game of the year.

Hey, it never hurts a quarterback to have another guy who can run routes. Besides, as you’ve heard before, everyone deserves a second chance. Or for Brown is it a third or fourth one?

Brown was great with the Steelers for several years. He was unable to reach an agreement for a new contract, and everything turned nasty, not the least of which was Brown’s disposition.

Which didn’t affect the way Brady judged him.

“Certainly I’m happy for Antonio to get an opportunity to resume his career,” Brady said in a Westwood One radio interview, Oct. 26, 2020, when Brown joined the quarterback on the Bucs. “He’s put a lot of time and energy into working on a lot of things in his life.”

Including the restraints placed on him by the NFL. Brown is on probation for two years, must undergo a psychological evaluation, provide 100 hours of community service and attend an anger management course.

In a Super Bowl interview session via Zoom on Wednesday, Brown was asked about the legal woes, which also included being sued for hurling furniture off a 14th-floor balcony and nearly striking a 22-month-old and grandfather walking below. His answer was really no answer at all.

“I’m just extremely grateful to be here,” said Brown, evoking memories of Marshawn Lynch (“I’m only here so I won’t get fined”) before Super Bowl XLIX in 2015.

Lynch was repetitive, offering the line repeatedly for five minutes. Brown was evasive.

“It’s a blessing to be here,” said Brown. “Super grateful. I’d be doing a disservice if I talked about things that are not the focus of the game.”

Sort of a variation on a theme by Brady’s former boss at New England, Bill Belichick, who following a rare loss talked only about the next game on the Patriots’ schedule. “On to Cincinnati,” was the memorable Belichick observation.

For Brown, it’s on to a world where the points on the scoreboard are almost all that matters, to him and those around him.

“I’ve been through some things, but that’s life,” Brown said. “We all have a story. We all have to allow ourselves to grow for the betterment of ourselves. I’m just grateful for the journey.

“I want my legacy to be a guy that was persistent, a guy that never gave up, no matter the odds, no matter the hate.”

Persistence counts. Production counts more. As we were reminded by the treatment of Warren Wells. And Antonio Brown.

Where Brady goes, championships follow

By Art Spander

It isn’t only Tom Brady. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have an excellent defense — doesn’t every great team? — and fine receivers and running backs. But so much is Tom Brady. Where he goes, championships follow.

John Brodie, who quarterbacked the 49ers when Brady’s father, Tom Sr., came to be a fan, once told me you can’t blame an individual for failure in a team sport. You can, however, credit him for success.

Some people are winners. Some are not. Brady is a winner. Thus, so are the Tampa Bay Bucs, as was Brady’s former team, the New England Patriots, the one which for a varying set of reasons, Brady’s age, a need to rebuild, chose not to re-sign him after 20 seasons.

Which allowed the Bucs to do that, and in turn after a Sunday in Green Bay, when Brady threw three passes for touchdowns and numerous others to get control and keep it, underdog Tampa Bay defeated the Packers, 31- 26, for the NFC Championship.

For the 10th time, Brady will be playing in a Super Bowl, this one LV — 55 in the vulgate. And through fortune more than preparation, the game will be in Tampa, making the Bucs the first team in a half century to play the game at their home stadium.

He, or more correctly his team, the Patriots, has won six times previously.

Not bad for the kid from Serra High in San Mateo (from which Barry Bonds also graduated), who went to Michigan because no West Coast university was particularly interested and then wasn’t selected in the draft until the sixth round. Too slow was the judgment.

But Brady had an arm and a presence. He’s never had to run the 50, only run a football team.

This one season he ran the Bucs effectively, making us wonder what would have happened if he stayed with the Patriots, or gone to the team he cheered as a youth, the 49ers — who relied on Brady’s former backup in New England, Jimmy Garoppolo.

We’ll never know. What the Bucs know is, as they hoped, Brady provided the leadership and performance that made a difference in the locker room as much as on the field.

“I was excited when I saw on television that we signed him,” said Shaquil Barrett, the linebacker who on Sunday made others excited by combining with Jason Pierre-Paul for five sacks, speaking to Fox TV.

“You know what he can do. He treats everyone the same.”

Brady knows the drill. With all the attention over the years, all the accolades, he is almost too cool in interviews, offering a “been there, done that,” response — which you suppose is to be expected from someone who had his own weekly radio show in Boston and is married to a supermodel.

“It’s great to get another road win,” said Brady, “and now we got a home game.”

That will be in two weeks against the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and their own heroic (but younger) QB. At 25, Patrick Mahomes is 18 years younger than Brady and also is a Super Bowl MVP.

Quarterbacks are a necessity to win titles. Brady has understood this for years. Tom was wasn’t quite 5 when he was taken by his dad in January 1982 to “The Catch” game at Candlestick Park.

That’s the one where Joe Montana passed to Dwight Clark, lifting the 49ers to their first Super Bowl.

A long time, from virtual childhood to actual greatness. Brady perhaps never could have imagined he would return again and again to the Super Bowl, especially this season when so much changed.

Except his brilliance.