I suspect if all this stuff about alternate realities is true then the San Francisco 49ers won a sixth World Championship. Granted, we live in this universe where the Niners with Colin Kaepernick at the helm failed to win the Super Bowl. His run, perhaps ironically, depending on who you ask around here, in San Francisco ended on one fateful throw that failed to connect with Michael Crabtree
Holding or not. That play has made all the difference for the 49ers and those involved. Crabtree and Kap, who were on the same page that season never recaptured that magic. Crabtree would depart not to long afterward for Oakland. Jim Harbaugh, love him, hate him, would be removed from his job two years later. He now prowls the sidelines for his alma mater. Certainly, there are many other departures that we could talk about, but two of them Harbaugh, and soon, Kaepernick are reminders that we as a fan base, and the ownership along with it, are on a constant enigmatic pursuit of our perfect past. We are chasing after a lie. A reality that never existed the way most talk of it or at the very least has been greatly exaggerated. A reality where we always had great quarterbacks that ran the West Coast Offense led by disciples of Bill Walsh. Don't get me wrong, we have five Super Bowls thanks to that legacy, but that ended over twenty years ago.
OVER. TWENTY. YEARS. AGO.
Shenanigans, you might say. After all with Mooch, we ran the WCO with that darling of a certain Playboy model Jeff Garcia as our Quarterback. Sure, he was a winner and a far better passer than Kap. But he never played in the NFC Championship let alone the Super Bowl. The last time we won in the playoffs with the WCO was with Garcia. No one else that followed has done the same. In fact, until Harbaugh and co. rolled into Frisco, we had not even sniffed the playoffs. And unless you didn't realize it, Harbaugh, though he promised it, never ran the WCO. He ran what worked with what he had in Alex Smith and his understudy, Colin Kaepernick. To the Alex lovers, who I once was, he was a one trick pony too: a game manager.
When I hear folks call Kaepernick a one trick pony, I wonder if they think the same about Harbaugh? His ball was "Bo Ball". But, it worked. It worked for what we had. Three NFC title games in a row, one Super Bowl loss by the slimmest of margins was not enough to warrant keeping him around. When folks talk about Harbaugh's unwillingness to change, they forget that the reason he would not change was that he wasn't nor could ever be Bill Walsh. Walsh was a gentleman, a true scholar of the game, while Harbaugh was/is a gritty and fiery competitor that would cuss out the buffet guy for failing to refill the Moo Shoo pork fast enough.
This is from today's game where Harbs went NUCLEAR on the ref. Please note the score. For f**k's sake, he looks like he is going to fight the ref.
Same thing goes for Colin Kaepernick, he is nor ever will be Steve Young. Even the alpha in the WCO family tree, Joe Montana, recognized this when he stated that you needed to let Kap be Kap. But that was not enough for fans who thought they knew better. All of us, including myself, thought he should get better in the pocket. How foolish and arrogant. We wanted to take a natural running and throwing player and make him into a statue. We made the quintessential mistake that all people make when confronted with talent that doesn't fit the mold. We tried to make him conform to our image of him. We wanted the team to throw more slants ala the WCO. We wanted, for that matter, a WCO coach to save him. And the kid complied. Again, love him or hate his Miami Dolphin hat wearing ass, but he worked with Kurt Warner (who has run the WCO), when maybe he should have worked with Randall Cunningham (who became a very capable passer at the end of his unique career and has a helluva a lot more in common with him than Warner).
We are after something that we just cannot grasp: our celebrated, perhaps too much, past. For we long to return to it and we continue to believe that it is the WCO, a QB that looks like a traditional QB in the way he plays that is going to get us there, and a coach that runs it that will take us to the promised land. For as much as I love our team, our passionate fans, the folks here, I just cannot help but think that this pursuit is hurting more than it is helping. Ask yourself, why we always long for Eddie D, Walsh, or any old Niner to come parading in here from the glory days to "save" us from the era of the Yorks. And I think you will see my point.
For those who doubt my contention that one play can make all the difference. Be hold!
I am Fropwns
