There Are No Ugly Wins, Except...

V.D. scored career TD #34 today, which passes Brent Jones
and makes him technically the best 49ers Tight End Ever.
Also, I couldn't find a still of Goldson trying to box some dude.

So the 49ers beat The Cardinals today, as expected ("beat ____ as expected" is a phrase that still has some novelty in it), by the mark of 23-7, and, even though they're 9-1 this season and have a 5 game division lead with 6 to play, which once upon a time was very much the sort of position from which 49er fans could arrogantly grade the team on style points and complain about not beating one of the NFL's lesser teams by a wide enough margin, they're not quite back to that level yet. I'm still in the mode of the new normal established over the last 8 years of futility and disappointment, taking isolated glee in 100 yard days by Frank Gore, MISTER PATRICK WILLIS blowing some unfortunate dude the fuck up, or, in the thinnest of times, Andy Lee's gigantic Net Yards Per Punt Average. In that mode, a win is a win is a win and none of them can be ugly when there's at most only 6 a season.

But here we are, 23-7 over Arizona and the prevailing thoughts of how the win wasn't pretty. The offense never truly got going outside of about a 5 minute stretch in the 3rd Quarter. The 49ers dominated: 5 to 1 in turnovers forced, 440 to 220 in yards gained, and an amazing 44 minutes in Time Of Possession. And yet with less than 4 minutes to go the Cardinals -- led by the backup to the backup, a guy by the name of Rick Bartel -- had a chance to make this a one score game from the red zone before finally turning it over on downs for the final time.

What went wrong? Or at least "not good enough"?

6 first half possessions all ending in field goal attempts. Normally this would be acceptable, except David Akers missed one field goal and had two more blocked. That totals 3 misses, when he had 2 all year coming in.

A defense that should have had a shut out had a temporary case of the 4th Quarter Shit Yourselves, as the aforementioned WILLIS took a shot at a sliding QB (15 yard personal foul), this coming after Dashon Goldson marred the otherwise stellar day by the secondary by throwing 3 or 4 punches at one of their WRs as the game got chippy towards the end (15 yard personal foul plus an ejection and hopefully not but possibly a suspension for the next game). After finally seeing the replay of the initial contact, Goldson clearly let himself get baited like a dumbass. Unfortunately but rightly this overshadows the awesome diving play he made on a low throw to pick it off just before hitting the ground. John Skelton and Rick The Model Bartel make Rex Grossman and John Beck look like Joe Montana and Steve Young, so the Cardinals had no business even sniffing the scoreboard today, let alone getting that late TD. But they did anyway.

Bruce Miller getting a forearm to the head as he tried to score (no call) that kept him out of the game from then on, meaning he probably got a concussion. There is literally no other fullbacks on the current roster, meaning one of the 17 TEs on the roster had to fill in.

The WRs had some recurring issues with Dropsies (other than second stringer Kyle Williams, who's gotten almost his first action of the season the last two weeks), and when they weren't dropping catchable balls in the endzone, an over-eager Alex Smith was sailing his would be touchdown throws too high.

Fortunately, the Cardinals utterly stink in customary NFC West fashion so it didn't really matter, but the 49ers put up 23 points when they should've had over 40. Freddie P. Soft may not have entered the building, but it seems he did knock on the door and leave a voice mail. This is good enough an effort for a divisional foe, but in the playoffs, to say nothing of next Thursday [note: I don't like it when my team is scheduled for a Thursday game, more on that later in the week], a showing like this threatens to stain an otherwise beautiful season.

But they are 9-1, they've already guaranteed a winning season for the first time since 2002, they didn't clinch the division only because the insolent Seahawks delayed the inevitable when they poached a win by playing the woeful Rams. Now they have two days of practice to work on how to block people on a field goal, and remember that Throwing Punches is Against The Rules, before traveling to Baltimore and facing the onslaught of an entire press corps talking about how "LOL Brother Vs Brother coaching! Thanksgiving Jokes! Family Comes Together HA HA HA" along with the Ravens.

49ers Football: Keeping An Eye Out For Frederick P. Soft

In early October 49er coach Jim Harbaugh introduced the team's main nemesis this season, a man by the name of Frederick P. Soft. He's a guy who whispers into your ear and tells you that it's okay to take a play off and to not practice so hard. He tells you to be content.

“We’ve seen no evidence of that. We’ll be quick and alert for any signs or evidence. There’s a guy that walks around by the name of Frederick P. Soft. Freddie Soft’s about a four-inch guy who sits on your shoulder and talks right into your ear. (At this point, Harbaugh looked at his shoulder for Frederick P. Soft.) If we see or hear any evidence of him being on the premises we’ll act quickly and decisively to get him out of here."

It's gotten to the point where Harbaugh dismisses media compliments like other coaches dismiss player controversies. An all-out anti-Freddie campaign has obviously gone viral in the Niner locker room. When Justin Smith was asked about his game-sealing pass deflection against the Giants last Sunday, he claimed it was because he was tired and couldn't rush Eli Manning. Chronicle beat writer Eric Branch rewound the tape of that interview and heard Ray McDonald laughing as he said that. A day later, Harbaugh claimed he heard Smith telling Ray to watch out for a pass in the B-Gap, the spot where he had deflected that pass. It's almost as if no one wants to take credit for how awesome this team has become, lest Freddie Soft handjobs them into complacency.

To extrapolate on Raven's thoughts on being a free agent-fan, The NFL is basically a monopolized union that consists of 32 different nations that share revenue and compete with each other. When I watched the Steelers and the Patriots and (now) the Packers, it was like watching different teams with different business models and football ideologies that knew their shit. I would reflexively feel both hatred/admiration for the fanbase and their organizations. For the last eight years, I've felt like the 49er faithful had received punishment for our self-entitlement and success in the 80's and 90's. This was a fanbase that was polled on whether or not George Seifert should be fired three weeks into a season a year removed from losing the NFC Championship game. When Eddie Debartolo left the team, we were left with a shithead owner who allowed management to be run by Freddie Soft. Niner fans were rooting for ineptitude, a sinking ship, a "for entertainment purposes only" equivalent of Spain watching America make the Louisiana Purchase.

Certainly, other teams have suffered much longer than we have and I'm not going to make it out like that time period is worse than the other masochists that post on this blog. It's just that when you are loyal to a football team, you are consciously being patriotic to something that relies on blind faith and the odds that they'll break your heart is more likely than them warming said heart over with wonderful feelings. But when those feelings happen it just feels good, man. It's no wonder football suffering has made a dent on traditional Catholic church suffering.

The game against the Giants last Sunday felt like another "We need to prove to everyone" game. The Niners have won road games against Detroit, were a slip-up in the coverage away from beating the Cowboys, trounced the Bucs, and have been playing mistake-free football all season and you still get idiots like Merrill Hoge and KC Joyner and the Redskins defense saying that we're not for real. So watching this game was like a parent who saw all the flaws of its ugly baby but someone who still loved the baby enough to hope no one else did. It was a "fuck you" to everyone who still had to ask themselves if we were "for real" or if we were "contenders or pretenders" just because we are in the NFC West (note: we've only played one division game all year so far). It was being fearful that every idiot was true and that even if we kept up with the Giants and lost, then everything every idiot said was on point.

I was at a bar when Justin Smith knocked down Eli's final pass and every Niner fan fucking cheered like it was the Super Bowl. It was validation for every time we had to endure stupid mistakes and half-assed play and lazy performances since the first G.W. Bush administration. It was being proud of the 49ers and actually believing in it. It felt good, man.

When I drove home I passed by a kid dancing on his driveway while his dad in a Niner jersey was tossing him the ball. The bandwagon is coming back. It makes me actually really proud that Alex Smith is one of the leaders on this team. Rarely does a redemptive narrative fit into reality. When Harbaugh asks his team after every win "Who's got it better than us?", the team's "NOOOOOBODY" response has become more than lip service. All I've asked for has been to be respectable again, and realistically we're not going to beat the Packers unless we are perfect so I'm not even thinking about that right now. I'm just thinking about how people can raise their Niner flags with pride again, with one eye over our shoulder just in case Freddie P. Soft is there in hopes of us taking this season for granted.