Bookworm Room

Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.

Post-Game Open Thread

by 12 Comments

Thought-Bubble-White-Board_8296556I’m a Niners’ fan.  Needless to say, I’m disappointed.  I’m disappointed with the refs, who I think made bad calls, and I’m disappointed with the Niners’ offense, which wasn’t up to the job.  I think Kaepernick is a good quarterback, but this wasn’t his best game.

So, have at it….

  • We’re visiting friends and arrived when the ‘Niners were ahead 17-13…..so I missed out on the ugly ending.  I’m sad….but not overly surprised…..
     
    Colin Kapernick is a talented, but young and inexperienced quarterback.  If he has the right temperament, he’ll buckle down and learn what he needs to learn – it certainly appears that he has the physical skills that can be trained to make him a first-rank QB.
     
    Lest you become TOO discouraged, check back on the 49er’s record for Joe Montana’s first two years…in case you’d forgot, those two years they finished 2-14 and 6-10…….and won the Super Bowl the next year.  So, let’s give Colin a break…….remember:  “Wait ‘Til Next Year!”
     
    🙂

    • It’s funny that you say that, Earl, because I was just saying to someone that Kapernick reminds me strongly of Joe Montana.  Same build, same willingness to run, etc.  And then I added that, with maturity, he’ll probably be as good as Montana one day.  And then he’ll have Crabtree (is that the guy’s name?), just the way Montana had Jerry Rice.

  • Tara S

    My father spent twenty minutes this morning explaining various aspects of football to me… I still don’t really get it. But at least he’s happy after today’s games–he’s a Broncos fan. (Apparently we like Peyton Manning and aren’t crazy about Tom Brady. I don’t even know.)

  • sabawa

    Such a disappointing finish and those refs…..really?  But I get up and do what I have to do today and life goes on.  It’s kind of funny how much hope and energy I had tied up in that game……yet today will roll out just as it would have if they’d won.  Love my Niners.  Pointing my face toward next year! 

  • lee

    I am a Colts fan and I was sooooooo rooting against the Broncos. Manning is a turncoat. Lied about his neck injury, tried to extort the Colts, and ironically, his move was actually a pay CUT once you factor in that the cost of living in Indy is lower–$18 million goes much further thete than does $20 in the Denver area. But it was hard rooting for Brady….

  • BW:  Heh.
     
    I’ve NEVER thought of Colin and Joe being alike – and not just because of all the tats!!  Joe always seemed “slight”, compared to the guys he was playing with – not Colin.  Kapernick is 6 foot 5 inches, if I remember right, which is at least 4 inches taller than Montana.  He just seems like a bigger and more muscular guy.
     
    That said, he needs to learn some stuff, if he’s going to even approach Joe.  The guys calling the game yesterday were talking about when he runs, he’s very upright – rather than getting his shoulders down and making himself a smaller (and more stable) target.  Stuff like that (not to mention his passing) can make an enormous difference in the NFL, and I’m hoping that Colin is a good student – if so, we’re going to have a very nice run, as you so hopefully suggest.
     
    In the other game, I didn’t have a BIG rooting interest, although I lived three seasons in Fort Collins in the ’70s and learned to like the Broncos pretty well.  Sports Illustrated also had a VERY nice article on Manning recently, so I was prepared to be rooting for him.  Since the “Dirty Birds” beat my team, what rooting interest I have in the Super Bowl will be with Denver – being an older brother tends to put me on Peyton’s side a bit, too…..I’m sure it hasn’t been easy hearing about his little brother’s successes!
     
    🙂

  • I could never figure out what was going on with those wide camera shots of sports games.
     
    I even avoided sports animes and movies because of I didn’t enjoy watching games.
     
    For people who don’t get the details of sports, watch some sports anime. They have very good explanations and shots. Although I doubt they have an American Football anime… but baseball works.

  • FunkyPhD

    Seattle should forfeit the victory because of this:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioo1iUdwAlU
    Everything that’s wrong with contemporary American culture is exemplified by Richard Sherman in about 14 seconds.   Sportsmanship has become as obsolete as buggy whips and high button shoes.  Though Sherman received a penalty (after the game was over) for taunting Michael Crabtree, this sort of behavior is constant and ubiquitous in the NFL.  When was the last time you saw a player NOT strut and pound his chest after sacking a quarterback?  It’s sickening.  But not only are players like Sherman NOT punished for these antics, they’re celebrated.  What happened?  Where did sportsmanship go?  Can it be reinstated, or have we irrevocably devolved back to the state of screeching, grimacing savages?   

    • I think the comments at youtube explain it. While the excuse of kids on the anonymous internet is often made, that is less of a factor when Facebook and twitter dominate the social media. It is its own society.
      People who have forgotten life and death struggle, look for exciting and bloody entertainment. Very Capital like in the Hunger Games.
       
       

    • jj

      Don’t google Muhammad Ali, PhD – you’ll end up in the emergency room.

  • jj

    Montana was a lot smaller than Kaepernick, (well, he was 6’1″, 200 lbs; Kaepernick’s 6’4″, 230 lbs.) so the similarities may be more attitudinal than physical.  Quarterbacks have grown a fair amount over the years, and you could pass right by Bart Starr, Joe Namath, John Unitas, Fran Tarkenton and most of their contemporaries gathered around the cheese dip in a crowded room, and be completely unaware of them.  You’d think you were in a meeting of accountants.  They weren’t big, they weren’t imposing, they weren’t much of anything physically.  They looked like guys, nothing out of the ordinary.  More like high school teachers than athletes.  (Namath was one of the bigger ones in his day: standing beside him I was bigger.)  The Seahawk’s kid, Russell Wilson, is something of a throwback to that: he’s 5’10” and pretty slight by contemporary standards.  Kaepernick’s a horse and, to judge by the tattoos, apparently thinks in another life he was a Maori warrior or something.  Maybe he was.
     
    I didn’t find the refs overbearing, and I don’t think anything turned on them this week, either game.  The big bad call that benefited the Seahawks was promptly squandered by them when they fumbled on the next play, and the 49ers ended up with the ball in a better position than they’d have had it had the refs gotten the call right and awarded them the ball on the previous play.  Not much to complain about there: they blew the call, sure; but the end result was improved field position for San Fran.  No harm, no foul.
     
    I actually thought the refs would be far more intrusive, given that the NFL was embarrassed and pissed off about last week’s street-fight between San Fran and Carolina.  That game barely resembled football.  The refs lost control of it instantly – and that bugs a somewhat beleaguered NFL.  I thought we’d have them throwing flags on every play this week, but we didn’t seem to.  (The NFL is actually not very smart: they are hugely reactive; not the least bit active.  You can watch a week or two, and from that accurately deduce exactly where they’ll go and precisely what changes they’ll implement in coming weeks.  Their thinking processes are not obscure.)
     
    Maybe it’ll be an enjoyable championship game.  (‘Super Bowl,’ forsooth!  From whence did that idiot locution spring?)  For once we might actually have the two best teams in the damn thing: the two #1 seeds, and the actual best offense up against the best defense.  Holy Cow – that never happens!  The two #1 seeds have managed to both be there only twice in the last 20 years.  (The NFL’s ultimate goal: parity.  “On any given day…”  blah-blah-blah.  Yeah.  It’s great when the #6 seed plays the #4 seed in the championship game, isn’t it?  Wow!)
     
    I think it has a chance to be a good game, and I think Seattle probably has a slight edge.  Peyton Manning does not do well in big games.  By this stage in his career, to judge by the way he’s covered, you’d think he’d have won half a dozen ‘Super Bowls.’  (I say “to judge by the way he’s covered” quite deliberately.  In the eyes of the popular press the team around him is apparently irrelevant: it’s all about him and he wins what he wins single-handed.  That is of course not the case, as his vaguely dissatisfying and perhaps even ultimately disappointing career proves.)  He is not good enough to win all by himself, despite what the press tells you, and despite the way they feature him.  (If he were, he would’ve.  He likes to win.)  One lone ‘Super Bowl” after all these years, well: his unsung little brother’s doing better than he is.  And Brady makes him look like an also-ran.  I think that up against the Seattle outfield he’ll have an interesting – and not very rewarding –  time.  Kaepernick, faced with nowhere to throw the ball, was capable of taking off and himself running to useful purpose.  Manning isn’t.  He may be eating those balls and rushing those throws into the arms of Sherman and his crew.
     
    I predict Manning gets sacked a lot, throws two to three interceptions, and loses 27-17.

  • 11B40

    Greetings:
     
    In spite of all my years in the San Francisco Bay area, I keep forgetting.  Is it the team or its fans that are correctly referred to as the Forty-Whiners ???
     
    And on a personal note, back in my serious printings days I had to go to a customer meeting at Candlestick Park. I was met at the entryway by a wheelchair-bound security guard who escorted me to the meeting.  
     
    Frisco, things are different there.  Way different.

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