by Daisy Barringer
A 49ers loss used to devastate me. Literally, one bad game could impact my entire Monday, if not my entire week. I suppose that’s because I had hope for my team; I believed they had what it took to win. So when they didn’t I felt genuinely surprised and let down.
The bad news is: The 49ers lost their third straight game in a row yesterday. The good news? I didn’t feel sad for even a second. Don’t get me wrong; I am genuinely disheartened about the state of the San Francisco 49ers franchise. But because of the state because we have an unqualified coaching staff, an owner who only cares about profit, and players who are regressing, likely because of those two things I don’t have any hope. And without hope, it’s hard to feel disappointment. Rather, after the game ended, I paid my bar tab, gathered my belongings, said goodbye to the girl in the party dress next to me who unsuccessfully tried to convince me to do blow with her at 3 p.m. on a Sunday, went home, and played with my dog. WhoHasTheCutestSmooshiestFace? WhoDoes?
I guess I’d be lying if there weren’t parts of the game where I thought the Niners maybe had a chance. But even then even then, I knew didn’t really. And not just because this was Aaron Rodgers and Green Bay. I mean, especially not because of that; we beat Green Bay the last four times we met and two of those were playoff games. Of course, Harbaugh was our coach then, so No, even when this 49ers team looks a little bit like they’re qualified to be playing in the NFL, they ruin the moment within minutes with a stupid mistake that shows just how out of their league they really are.
It’s hard to know what the 49ers’ biggest issue is, but I’d say it starts with coaching, or rather the lack thereof. No seriously: can ANYONE tell me what the game plan was yesterday? It literally looked as though the Niners went into the game without a single idea of how they were going to beat Green Bay. Was the plan just NOT to lose as badly as they did the previous two weeks? If so: CONGRATS! YOU DID IT!
Seriously though. The plan definitely wasn’t to run the ball (even though Trent Baalke said that WAS the plan in his new conference); Carlos Hyde only carried the ball EIGHT times. Maybe it was for Kap to throw the ball, but with a season-high six sacks, that’s not an easy task. Also, no offense to Kap, but throwing the ball isn’t something he’s actually doing very well these days. (Actually, tons of offense to Kap because THAT IS YOUR JOB AND YOU’RE SUCKING AT IT.) And even if the plan WAS for Kap to throw the ball, very few of the play calls made sense to me. Geep Chryst needs to be able to decipher what Kaepernick is capable of and make the passing play calls based on that. Instead, it seems like the play calls are being made based on some nebulous philosophy or perhaps there’s a tarot card reader in the box with him; at this point anything’s likely.
It wouldn’t be fair not to give the defense a little love. They definitely pulled their act together since last week and were able to sack Rodgers three times and hold him to just a single touchdown pass. Still: if you don’t have an offense that can score, you actually can’t let the defense get any points, much less 17. And you also need to be able to turn the ball over and score on the turnover before the offense gets the ball back and starts sucking all over again.
So what now? Before the season started, I tweeted that the 49ers might very well go 0-4. Then they won that Monday night game and I felt a flicker of hope. I still didn’t have them winning more than eight games, but I thought eight were doable. Now, I wonder if we’ll win more than four or five. Hell, as my friend said yesterday: we might not win more than the one we already did.
So what does that mean for Kaepernick? What does that mean for the coaching staff? Kaepernick is lucky because as much as people were calling for Tomsula to put Gabbert in yesterday, we all know that Gabbert is not the answer. Tomsula’s job, on the other hand, doesn’t feel so secure. Or it shouldn’t anyway. He was put in an impossible situation without enough experience and now he’s failing at his job. I don’t blame him, but at the same time, you don’t hire the mailroom guy to be CEO unless the mailroom guy is Michael J. Fox in a movie called The Secret of My Success.
The only problem? I don’t think Jed York has the balls to fire Tomsula. Or that he even necessarily wants to do so. After all, firing Tomsula would be admitting he and Baalke made a mistake. And it would mean not holding the marionette strings of the coaching staff. And those aren’t things Jed York seems like he’d be okay with. Plus, there’s a bigger problem: Who in his right mind would come coach this team? Seriously: are there any coaches out there who are qualified and who’d be willing to take on the nightmare that is the Niners front office?
I don’t think there is. And that, my friends, is why the demise of the Niners is even more bleak than we want to admit. Because there is literally no end in sight The only solution? To just stop caring.
Next Week: SF flies to NY to take on the Giants. Probably we’ll lose.