SF Chronicle 49ers Insider: Tough but spectacular

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

You watched, as much in dismay as disbelief. The 49ers were down by 17 points early in the second quarter.

Down against the Falcons, a team with the best record in the conference.

Down at the other team’s home, a domed stadium full of hysteria and great passing by the other quarterback.

Down but, despite the way many of us thought, not even close to being out.

“It’s hard to break us,” said Niners running back Frank Gore, the nonpareil. “We’re tough.”

Tough mentally, which is where it starts.

“We still had confidence we could beat those guys in their house,” said Carlos Rogers, the cornerback.

Tough physically, which is where it continues.

“There had been breakdowns in communication and coverage,” said Dashon Goldson, the free safety. “We did a good job of tightening up some things.”

A great job of holding the Falcons scoreless in the second half and, in the process, recording the third-biggest post-season road comeback in the 90 years the NFL has been in existence.

A spectacular job of defeating the Falcons, 28-24, in the NFC Championship at the Georgia Dome and reaching the Super Bowl a sixth time – where the Niners, coached by Jim Harbaugh, will face the Baltimore Ravens, coached by his brother, John.

Coaches talk of players who make plays.

Players such as Joe Montana and Dwight Clark who three decades ago combined for The Catch and altered the path of history for San Francisco football.

Players such as Ahmad Brooks who, on third down, and NaVorro Bowman, on fourth, broke up consecutive fourth-quarter pass Atlanta pass attempts.

Players such as Vernon Davis, suddenly rediscovered in an offense quite capable of adapting to the moment, who caught five passes for 106 yards. “It’s bigger than me,” insisted Davis. “It’s not about me. It’s about the team.”

Players such as Gore, who, with Atlanta having schemed to stop the expected running of quarterback Colin Kaepernick, ran for 90 yards and two touchdowns.

Players such as Kaepernick, the second-year quarterback, who after last week, when he rushed for a record 181 yards, this time carried only twice for 21 but completed 16 passes in 21 attempts for 233 yards and touchdown.

“The Falcons put a spy on Kaep,” said Gore, using football language for a defender assigned to keeping the quarterback from running. “We kept hearing all week how they were going to pound Kaep. He made the right decisions. I got the opportunities.”

On the CSN Bay Area post-game show, Clark, pointed out. “I thought it was a brilliant game plan. They came out in the read-option, and Colin made the right decisions. Even when they got behind, they didn’t panic and try to pass a lot.”

Atlanta certainly passed a lot. In the first half alone, quarterback Matt Ryan threw 24 times, completing 18, three for touchdowns. The Falcons appeared unstoppable.

“We had the jitters,” said Niners cornerback Tarell Brown. (So did Niners fans). “We knew it would be a challenge. We just settled down.”

Once they did the gloom started to settle in on Atlanta. A week earlier the Falcons had squandered a 20-point lead to Seattle but rallied to win. This time they squandered a 17-point lead, but it was to the Niners. To a franchise which after 18 years is back in the championship game.

The post-game locker room offered not only athletes in celebration but a glimpse into the past. There was Eddie DeBartolo, who owned the Niners when they won their five Super Bowls, presenting the NFC Championship trophy to his sister, Denise DeBartolo York, who owns the team today. And right there were Denise’s husband, John, at last a happy man, and his and Denise’s son – and Eddie’s nephew – Jed York, the Niners president.

There was a sense of solidarity and tradition, a feeling that after the lean years the restoration of the Niners franchise is all but complete.

“This is fun to be a part of,” said Justin Smith, the defensive tackle. He is playing with a torn triceps. He will need surgery. But he wasn’t going to miss being a part of scene. And he was a very big part of the success.

“We knew Atlanta had weapons all over the place. We knew they started fast. But we never got down and we won. It’s an awesome feeling.”

At halftime, Harbaugh, the coach was simply businesslike. It was Davis, the receiver, who was emotional, giving the motivational speech. Later he would shout out, “Kaepernick is the man.”

The 49ers are composed of a lot of men, symbolically as well as literally, a lot of people who never concede.

“Everybody goes through adversity,” reminded Patrick Willis, the All-Pro linebacker. “The way we came back makes it so more captivating.”

Donte Whitner, the safety, would say, “When we had to stop them at the end, there was a lot of pressure. We knew what was at stake.”

In three words, the Super Bowl.

Copyright 2013 San Francisco Chronicle

Newsday (N.Y.): Coordinator Vic Fangio has 49ers' defense near top of NFL

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- He has a voice that has been described as both piercing and maniacal. He carries the nickname "Lord" from when he was an assistant at Stanford. He leaves messages on his voicemail at the office just before he falls asleep or if he wakes up in the middle of the night with a thought.

Vic Fangio is coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers' defense, which was the NFL's third best during the regular season and is the best of the four remaining teams in Sunday's conference championship games. The 49ers play the Falcons in Atlanta for the NFC title.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

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.

Newsday (N.Y.): Packers, Niners have a lot in common

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO -- The quarterback who wanted to be with the San Francisco 49ers is playing against them. In perfect symmetry, the quarterback who wanted to be with the Green Bay Packers is playing against them.

Aaron Rodgers, who grew up three hours north of San Francisco and was a 49ers fan but was ignored by them in the draft after a great career at Cal, leads the Packers against the 49ers Saturday night in an NFC divisional playoff game at Candlestick Park.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Does Anyone Doubt Barry, Roger Are Hall of Famers?

By Art Spander
 
The issue is one of perception more than of judgment. Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens – and yes, Mike Piazza – have not been allowed to pass muster. Yet does anyone, including the balloters who rejected them, doubt they are Hall of Famers?
    
Which is why the vote as a lesson to future generations, if you will, is nonsense. Yes, I voted for them, along with Mark McGwire. And I would vote for Pete Rose, who merely recorded more hits than anyone in the history of major league baseball, except he’s never going to be on the ballot.
    
We know Rose is a Hall of Famer, even without the plaque. Same thing for Bonds, the all-time home run leader, and Clemens, who won seven Cy Young Awards.
  
The prettiest girl in town doesn’t necessarily have to win Miss America for us to recognize her beauty. Rose, Bonds, Clemens and Piazza won’t have to get elected for us to know they are Hall of Famers.
    
Bonds won three MVPs before most of the country even had even heard of performance-enhancing drugs. Clemens struck out 20 in a game back in 1986. (And McGwire hit 49 home runs in his rookie season, 1987, before anyone could tell a steroid from a stereo.)
    
A little chicanery – although the self-righteous will say one has nothing to do with the other, even if it does because both play loose with the rules: Gaylord Perry was elected to the Hall and then wrote a book describing how he doctored the balls he was pitching with petroleum jelly. A little wink and nod. And a permanent plaque.
   
Either the Hall of Fame is a reward for greatness or it is not. The voting writers failed to make that decision.
  
“The Hall of Fame is supposed to be for the best players to have ever played the game,” was the statement released by Michael Weiner, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association on Wednesday when it was announced for the first time since 1996 that not a single player had been elected to the Hall.
   
Understand, the man is biased. He represents the players, good and bad. Understand, the man is correct.
   
The “best players to have ever played the game.” If Bonds, Clemens and Rose are not in that category, then we better create a new category.
  
The New York Times on Wednesday had an article about the reprobates who are in the Hall, the racists, the sociopaths. “Plaster saints is not what we have in the Hall of Fame,” the baseball historian John Thorn told the Times. Nor, for the moment, suspected PED users, not that some hadn’t already been elected.
    
A candidate, someone who has played 10 years and been retired five years, needs 75 percent of the votes from the eligible members of the Baseball Writers Association of America to make the Hall. Bonds received 36.2 percent, Clemens 37.6 percent. Nearly two-thirds of the voting baseball writers opposed each? Please.
    
They talk about the smell test. What we lack here is the vision test. Was Barry Bonds the player in the bigs from the early 1990s until he left after the 1997 season? Was Roger Clemens the man you’d want on the mound when it mattered? Yes to both those questions.
    
Cooperstown isn’t Lourdes. The inductees only had to be recognized as some of the best players of their time, not Mother Theresas in spikes. The only position player I saw better than Bonds was Willie Mays, Barry’s godfather.
    
What made Bonds so effective wasn’t necessarily his power -- not until the later years when we’re told he bulked up to get the home runs and attention of McGwire and Sammy Sosa – but his baseball skills, learned at the foot of his major league dad, Bobby.
   
Barry Bonds knew when to steal, where to position himself on defense, toward which base he should throw. His arm wasn’t the best, but his instincts were.
   
The wonderful arm belonged to Clemens, who at times simply wound up and threw the ball past people. He was the Rocket Man, an Elton John song come to life and come to win. As with Bonds, he made games adventures, full of excitement.
   
Piazza is the finest-hitting catcher ever. He’s never been accused of using steroids, at least not openly. But he was a star in what detractors have labeled the steroid era, and so by suggestion and association he is linked and punished.
   
Buster Olney of ESPN pointed out that baseball, the game, the business, exploited Bonds and Clemens – and the rest – making money and making headlines off of their accomplishments. There was elation as McGwire and Sosa had their home run battle in the summer of ’98. There was box office.
    
Fun while it lasted. Guilt ever since it finished.
   
No one is certain who took what, but what is certain is that a Hall of Fame without Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, the best of their time, is inconsequential.

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

Newsday (N.Y.): Stanford gets fast start, shuts down Wisconsin in 2nd half to win Rose Bowl

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

PASADENA, Calif. -- The new year brought old-style football to the Rose Bowl, the pound 'em, ground 'em game of an earlier era. And Stanford -- contrary to its image as a school that relies on passing -- grounded and pounded relentlessly and effectively.

The Cardinal -- living up to the promise of coach David Shaw, who insisted in a pregame media session: "We're going go run the ball. That's what we do" -- ran it well enough.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2013 Newsday. All rights reserved.