What is the one play

I think any of the plays against Seattle are the plays that started it all. However, the culmination of the entire season was played out with the Clements fumble.

This team was good enough-as far as personnel-to be 10-6 or 11-5, but every bad thing that could happen to a team happened to the 49ers this year...and the quintisential expression of that was the Clements' fumble.

As the phrase goes, "you can't win for losing."

I have been thinking about this a lot and for me there are two plays that stand out, the pass to Norris (Seattle) and Clements not going dowen with the ball (Atlanta). The key one, however, is the pass to Norris. The team (and Alex) were doing fine and had the momentum. After that play (first missed opportunity of the season...), the momentum changed. The whole season would have been a different story if the Niners had won a divisional game on the road to start with. Useless (but still nice) discussion, by the way.

Clements fumble

should have beat the best team in the nfc on the road, huge

I'm not gonna get into the whole "one play F'd us up" thing, because so many different people did so many different things wrong this year, it's impossible to pinpoint it all to 1 moment.

But for me there was 1 play that sort of stands out in my mind that was the shining example of how psychologically fragile/immature our team is, and it was that horse sh*t PI call that went against Clements in week 1. The one where Deion Branch hooked Nate's arm and Nate got flagged for it; that was absolute garbage and I think it was the last in a chain of events to happen in that game before you could physically see our team's confidence just wither and die. It very much felt like "ok, here we go again. What else is going to go wrong today. We can't overcome all of this stuff". That was my own feeling at the time, and from where I was sitting it looked like that was the feeling of the players too.

Not to say the season died in that moment, but you could tell from that moment on when 1 thing went sh*tty, the team would just try harder and harder to push back against the negative momentum, not wavering from "the plan" one bit, until we were on the brink of getting rolled (as per Singletary's donkey instructions), and the sh*tiness would just continue to snowball and grow into a giant ball of sh*t...sh*tball; pretty much sums up my feelings regarding this season.

The team needed a plan and Singletary was the man without one. When sh*t started to go sideways on us, he'd often just freak and waste timeouts, or stomp around like a menace on the field, absolutely berating officials...the team never had a chance with him and that's too bad, because they're a good team in my eyes. I get the feeling that Singletary only expected his team to grow and get better from last year; which makes sense, we all did. What he forgot was that he needed to continue to grow and get better with his team, and he failed in that goal worse than anybody in the organization. To me, the lion's share of the blame goes to him. He's a good man, he meant well and he genuinely cared about the players growth on and off the field, but he just didn't do enough on his own end of things to up his own game and that's nobody's fault but his.

[ Edited by NatralBrnThrila on Dec 28, 2010 at 07:57:25 ]

Overthrown pass to Norris week one


that started the ball rolling !

and Sing coaching !

Originally posted by cNiner:
Overthrown pass to Norris week one


that started the ball rolling !

and Sing coaching !

I've been taught since flag football that if the ball hits you in both hands you should catch it. It could have been a better throw, and it could have been a catch both sides are to blame IMO. As you said this got the ball rolling, players didn't make the plays they should have made regardless of the position.

There are just so many stupid plays that if were made may have changed the momentum of the game. And it comes from pretty much every position. From Oline, to QB, to RB, to TE, to WR, to J. SMith pushing a ref, to CB's, to Safety's, to PR and PR coverage. I can think of at least one play per position that has been vital to the game.

I'd have to say Spencer not touching down the Rams receiver last week. It wasn't at the beginning of the season and it did not set the tone for the season but it was a perfect summation of the entire type of play that we have witnessed all year.Just shrug it off and walk away.
That and any 3rd down play where the opposition needs 4 yards and the DB lines up 10 yards off of the WR giving them and easy throw and catch first down..
OR any run up the middle over and over and over and over.....................

I voted for the 4th down Smith-Norris play against Seattle.

We were in such control of that game with the short passing attack only for it to culminate in that play. After that, it went downhill from there. The offense went to crap and the defense just was torched from then on.

I believe that if we win that game, it just sets the tone for the entire season.

-9fA

1st and 10 run up the gut.... This was used on seemingly every posession. Perhaps if this play wasn't called every ******* time, then maybe our season would be different

Axle Smith overthrowing everyone and their momma.

1st BS calls by the refs don't count

2nd Spencer touched that f**ker in the face mask before he walks away

3rd Nate running into the wr on the PI call and the would be INT was much bigger than that stupid play

and D that Norris play was not a game changer they were blown out and IMO would have been blown out if they were up 10-0 or 6-0 to start that game so they lose 31-13 who cares the D couldn't stop Seattle for s**t

[ Edited by 9erfan4life on Dec 28, 2010 at 08:18:07 ]

I was not impressed with Bradford's deep ball against us. I'd still take him over any other qb in the NFC West.

Originally posted by 9erfan4life:
1st BS calls by the refs don't count

2nd Spencer touched that f**ker in the face mask before he walks away

3rd Nate running into the wr on the PI call and the would be INT was much bigger than that stupid play

and D that Norris play was not a game changer they were blown out and IMO would have been blown out if they were up 10-0 or 6-0 to start that game so they lose 31-13 who cares the D couldn't stop Seattle for s**t

Yeah your D. could be true. That play had nothing to do with Clements biting on the short routes twice for t.d's.

Originally posted by JiksJuicy:

Originally posted by 9erfan4life:
1st BS calls by the refs don't count

2nd Spencer touched that f**ker in the face mask before he walks away

3rd Nate running into the wr on the PI call and the would be INT was much bigger than that stupid play

and D that Norris play was not a game changer they were blown out and IMO would have been blown out if they were up 10-0 or 6-0 to start that game so they lose 31-13 who cares the D couldn't stop Seattle for s**t

Yeah your D. could be true. That play had nothing to do with Clements biting on the short routes twice for t.d's.

by my count that mo fo cost us at least three games by himself

If we had won vs NO and ATL, our whole season would have been different.