In the NFC decider, 49ers were a cool team dressed badly

A couple of weeks ago, when an overtime win against the Los Angeles Rams took San Francisco 49ers into the postseason, bookmakers had them 12/1 to get from there to the Super Bowl. Playing against the odds has suited their season. Back at the start of the campaign, George Kittle remembered, they’d won two and lost four, “and every time I got on social media, everyone’s telling us that we should fire Kyle [Shanahan] and bench Jimmy [Garoppolo], that we had to change everything up … This team was gritty and salty and got us to the NFC Championship Game.”

Winning that Championship game would give the 49ers the National Football Conference title, and put them through to the Super Bowl to play the winners of the American Football Conference, which is the same but different. After two hard-fought play-off matches going down to the clock’s last ticks and the snow’s last balls, 49ers could go into this one confident because they were up against the Rams again. When they’ve been unable to beat anybody in Santa Clara, their home since being dragged into the desert away from Frisco itself, they could beat the Rams. Last season they started with two wins and three defeats, 2-3 in gridiron scripture, then they beat the Rams. Then they went 1-3 before beating the Rams. This season, 3-5, they beat the Rams, only their 24th win versus 34 defeats in regular season games at Levi’s Stadium, the Field of Jeans. That started an upturn that gave them a chance of the play-offs, but to get there, they had to go the Rams and win. Job done, as a play-off ghost of Leeds past liked to say. This weekend they were off to Los Angeles again with the Super Bowl on the line. Job done? Maybe you can see what’s coming.

First we need to deal with the LA Rams’ uniforms. They wear primary blue shirts with yellow shoulder stripes, yellow shorts with blue and white piping down the thighs, blue socks, and blue helmets with yellow squiggles; it’s a Leeds United kit, basically, or more exactly a Leeds United away kit you might have drawn when you were bored at school, even down to the way the big yellow numbers fade down to white at the bottom, the sort of detail you’d add if you’d just learned how to do shading and wanted to show off. If you were a Leeds fan putting this game on TV at random and picking a side, there is no way you’d reject these guys in favour of the Niners, who might wear white shirts with Macron-gold shorts, near enough Leedsy, but ruin the whole effect with red stripes and flashes and red socks, which is supposed to be a baseball team so I don’t know about that. This is a Manchester United away kit and it’s terrible, but we in Leeds are lashed to the 49ers whether we like it or not because their investment limb rustled up enough bored tech-wealth to buy into LUFC. Why couldn’t it have been the Rams, uniting sheep-shaggers across the Atlantic? Because their owner is Stan Kroenke and he already owns Arsenal, is one reason why. But for Leeds-49ers and Arsenal-Rams to make sense, though, the American clubs need to swap kits.

With a heavy heart, then, let’s suppress our hankering for those lovely clothes and root for the Bay Area Boys. This would be easier if they ever had the ball! But it was pretty neat when they took a big lead anyway. The Ram-a-lamas, with Matthew Stafford at quarterback almost as doubted as the four-nine’s Jimmy Garoppolo, were controlled and patient and keeping the ball for long stretches and scored first, driving for twenty plays to the end of the first quarter and getting points by throwing the ball to Cooper Kupp in the end, and the end zone, who is not to be confused with the Autobot Kup from the first generation Transformers.

The rhythm of the next two quarters was slow, steady, and potentially match winning for the Nine Spots. If this sport gave out points for aesthetics they would have been miles ahead, not just 17-7. They threw a field goal in there, well, they kicked it, but the two touchdowns were cool, which they threw, but one of which they also ran. It turns out you can do a lot of stuff! Deebo Samuel scored the first one, and I mean he scored it, really scored it himself. Garoppolo tossed him the ball over a few yards, and left Deebo to do his thing from something like 45 yards from where the goals are scored. I think I hide it well but often when watching this slo-mo version of rugby I don’t really understand what I’m looking at, but Deebo Samuel is one of those great players who would stand out as brilliant even if you’d never seen a second of his sport before in your life. Turning towards goal, dipping his shoulder to evade one tackle, shimmying past another, he spots a gap and leaves a guy grasping for the hem of his horrible shirt. Not even nominative determination can stop him, as all Jalen Ramsey of the Rams can do as Deebo crosses the line is shove him even harder over it. He goes flying and rolling and it’s a touchdown and it’s great. Touchdown two, deep into the third quarter, is more of a Garoppolo thing; from 25 yards out he throws to Kittle in the endzone, a precise arc with a sweet dip right into his hands.

That’s a ten point lead for the Fancy Niners, but could they keep it that way? The officials didn’t help. The sport has a new fervour this season about ‘taunting’, and after doing a tackle, Azeez Al-Shaair was penalised fifteen yards for chest-bumping a teammate too lustily and too close to the Rams bench, whose occupants all fainted away onto chaise longues, shocked by the insult. Bumped up the pitch by that, the Sheepsies got the fourth quarter off to a touchdown start, a sort of boring throw to Kupp, I didn’t care for it.

17-14, then, and the Niners had two choices from here. Grind out a victory, or squander their leading position and every new chance the last thirteen minutes gave them to win. Would you like to guess? Runs by Samuel and Trent Williams got them within a yard or two of a first down but that’s not enough, so the ball had to be punted to the Woolies. Stafford is usually up for anything and tried a 55 yard pass down the middle that was going right into the hands of 49er Jaquiski Tartt, who only had to catch the ball to get possession right back for the Niners and with it control of the game, but, well, several teammates tried lifting him by the shoulderpads afterwards like a 1980s supermodel sunk from a runway, but he stayed face down on the turf, his hands over his head, and that tells you he didn’t catch the ball. The replay is painful, showing his hands pulling the pigging thing into his chest, its escape from his clutches, his missed grab as it falls from him, his despairing fling of both defeated hands as his legs give way and he drops to the ground, and if you want to penalise anything for taunting, throw a flag at that ball for its cruel bounce across his vision while stricken.

Jaquiski Tartt drops a dime from Matthew Stafford
pic.twitter.com/J6H3phOhyy

— PFF (@PFF) January 31, 2022

What Tartt’s pain also tells you is that possession is almost as important as scoring in this sport. Stafford still had the control he showed in the early quarters, consistently able to get from third tackle to a new set of four, knowing if it ever did get to fourth tackle, which it did eventually, they only had to be close enough to kick a field goal to equalise, which they did. Niners now took the ball back with just under seven minutes left but what follows looks to me like nerves tightening unto tremble and snap. There wasn’t quite the same instant of calamity as Kiko Casilla and Liam Cooper setting fire to our play-off with Derby in 2018, but the same creeping impotent doom as afflicted the second half of that match. The 49ers’ drive reads horribly written down. Pass incomplete, penalty for being slow, pass incomplete, pass incomplete, punt. The Niners defence have lost the knack of protecting Garoppolo, who ducks and weaves away from tacklers to throw when he can, making those hurls more upchuck than they had to be. With the ball back again the Sheep go roaming into the lower fields again, picking up the first downs again, until a thirty yard field goal gives them a lead that feels, given Niners get the ball back from this, almost mundane. Los Angeles have scored a goal, sure, but that only means a three point lead. A converted try will win the match for the Niners, a field goal would draw it, and they’ve got 1m46s to get either, all the time in the gridironing world.

…all the time to mess it up, that is. Garoppolo throws an incomplete pass. He completes the next but it moves them three yards back. On third down the defence is scattered, Rams are bleating right in Garoppolo’s face, and he can’t afford to go down and make it fourth tackle ten yards from his own line. So as he falls he throws, just too high for JaMycal Hasty, who tips the ball into the air, air where Travin Howard is waiting to catch and this, more than the field goal, was the winning thing because now the Rams had the ball and were keeping it for the 1m09s left. That’s how they celebrated the interception, too, like a Super Bowl securer, before nullifying the game through three more plays to make it so. At least they’ll look good against the Cincinnati Bengals in those nice blue and yellow uniforms.

And the San Francisco 49ers? Deebo Samuel sat on the bench for ages at full-time, hiding his tears under a towel, not taking in anything anyone said to him. Jimmy Garoppolo wandered around like a too handsome ghost, after nearly taking what’s probably his last season on the team to the Super Bowl for the Hollywood ending his cheekbones deserve. While his teammates pointed out it was only one play, Jaquiski Tartt took responsibility for his missed catch: “The moment of truth showed up and I didn’t step up,” he said. Head coach Kyle Shanahan sounded miserable but sure that losing now would make the team stronger. “I’m so proud of these guys,” he said. “I love this team. Every year is a different team, and this is as cool of a team as I’ve ever been part a part of.” And in the end, more than Championships and Super Bowls, isn’t being part of a really cool team what it’s all about? Cooler if they’d wear blue and yellow but that’s their lookout. For us, if Bay Area techno-dollars are going to merge our fates with those of the 49ers, at least we’ll have plenty of play-off chat to break the ice with our new pals. ⬢