The San Francisco 49ers revived a long lost element from their
playbook Sunday.
”
We mixed in some fun,
”
quarterback Alex Smith said. Fun? In football? Chuckles were a
rarity under the stern reign of coach Mike Singletary, but interim
coach Jim Tomsula urged players to let loose in the season
finale
—and it showed.
SAN FRANCISCO
The San Francisco 49ers revived a long lost element from their playbook Sunday. “We mixed in some fun,” quarterback Alex Smith said.
Fun? In football?
Chuckles were a rarity under the stern reign of coach Mike Singletary, but interim coach Jim Tomsula urged players to let loose in the season finale—and it showed.
The 49ers treated their season finale against the Arizona Cardinals as if it were a 60-minute recess. They chucked the ball deep, attempted a pass to a 325-pound lineman and guffawed their way to a 38-7 victory over the Arizona Cardinals.
This was a laugher in every sense of the word.
“We could let our hair down,” said receiver Ted Ginn, who caught a 37-yard touchdown pass.
The 49ers could afford to play freely with nothing at stake other than draft order. On that count, the 49ers apparently nailed down the seventh overall pick by virtue of their 6-10 finish and the strength-of-schedule tiebreaker.
The NFL will confirm the draft order this morning.
A high draft pick is one of the few significant certainties as the 49ers head into an offseason full of question marks. After missing the playoffs for an eighth consecutive season, the 49ers will hire a new general manager and a new head coach and, probably, will land a new starting quarterback.
Smith acknowledged that this might have been his final game with the 49ers. If so, the No. 1 draft pick in 2005 went out on a rare high note. He completed 15 of 29 passes for 276 yards with two touchdowns and no interceptions. It was his highest yardage total in a 49ers victory.
Smith was the 49ers player who appeared to be the most unshackled by the former coach’s absence. No 49er mentioned Singletary by name, but the persistent references to the looser atmosphere were hard to ignore. Asked about the way Tomsula encouraged smiles on the sideline, defensive lineman Isaac Sopoaga said, “That’s how it’s supposed to be.”
Against hapless Arizona (5-11), the 49ers looked nothing like the mistake-prone team that sputtered for yardage during season-crushing losses to San Diego and St. Louis in its previous two games.
Perhaps most revealing, a 49ers team that had been outscored 93-30 in the third quarter this season wound up praising its halftime adjustments. The 49ers blasted Arizona 21-0 in the third quarter, starting with a 59-yard touchdown pass from Smith to Vernon Davis (their 20th and perhaps final TD as a tandem).
Davis, in sticking with the giddy tone of the afternoon, celebrated by hugging fans along the railing.
What if the 49ers had played this loose all season?
“It’s a great ‘what-if,’ ” Smith said. “We’ll never know, I guess. I know we’ll never know. It was great to have this week. It’s still unfortunate. We had a lot of expectations going into the season, and we didn’t achieve them as a whole. We were all part of that.”
Brian Westbrook—buried on the bench for long stretches of the season—added two 6-yard touchdown runs as the 49ers swept their season series against Arizona for a second straight season.
They did it behind Tomsula, the defensive-line coach, whose NFL head-coaching career probably will end at 1-0. Beloved by his defensive linemen, Tomsula thanked his players for putting up with “a little fat guy running around on the practice field. Nobody put me in a garbage can.”
Still, the season-ending win did little to take the sting out of the 49ers’ lousy season. The overwhelming preseason favorites in the NFC West flopped.
The 49ers had no 1,000-yard rusher, no 1,000-yard receiver and no 3,000-yard passer. The only other NFL team that can make that claim is Carolina (2-14). The 49ers lost at least 10 games for the sixth time since 1999.
But for one day, at least, they had permission to smile.
“This was the first time we got to see guys running around, laughing with each other and having a good time,” said cornerback Tarell Brown, who returned an interception 62 yards for a touchdown. “So we definitely finished on a good note.”
— Story by Daniel Brown, San Jose Mercury News
